Htpc? Cpu or video card?

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sladesurfer

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 4, 2006
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Which is a better set up.

Celeron haswell with gtx 750 ti

Or i3 haswell with intel hd 4600

Im building an htpc. Mostly streaming/playback 1080p movies and maybe 4k
 
sladesurfer said:
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder how much performance hit i will get from an i3 to a celeron.
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For HTPC purposes, I can't imagine there would be much difference but I'm not in a position to speak authoritatively on that. Also, I'm not sure if the 750Ti is the best solution for HTPC. There may be something in the red camp that offers superior video handling performance vs silence. Something like this seems like a better bet for HTPC purposes.
 
cortexodus said:
For HTPC purposes, I can't imagine there would be much difference but I'm not in a position to speak authoritatively on that. Also, I'm not sure if the 750Ti is the best solution for HTPC. There may be something in the red camp that offers superior video handling performance vs silence. Something like this seems like a better bet for HTPC purposes.
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Thanks or the reply. Imma look in to that :)
 
Really depends on what you plan to do with it.

If you just want to watch tv and mkv videos then you only have to worry about proper frame rates. Like alot of gpus cannot handle the thematic 23.4hz they usually round up to 24hz and cause a jutter that some people can see and not see.

If you are worried about this I can recommend the nvidia 430gt ,radeon 5450 or the haswell based intel gpus ( not sure thats available in celeron yet, I think celeron is still IVB)

If you want to do MADvr style stuff. You need like a radeon 7750+

Can you get away with current intel celeron(sandy bridge) and intel gpu for LiveTV ? Sure can! I did it for long time.

If I was buying new parts today? I would get a Haswell core i3 and use the intel gpu.
 
I currently have three HTPC's and I've tested those exact combinations, Including the 750 ti.

Sandy Bridge Celeron G550 Intel HD Graphics
Sandy Bridge I3 2120 Intel HD Graphics 2000
Haswell I3 4340 Intel HD 4600

For streaming 1080p, TV playback and even 8/10 Bit Anime encodes any one of those will suffice. The celeron however strugles with 4K and pegs both cores. I've also never encountered the 24p bug with any one of them. If you plan on doing any kind of moderate gaming with decent frame rates you'll have to add a discrete card. While the HD 4600 is better then the previous generations it stills fails when it comes to even light gaming. I recently added MSI's 750ti Gaming to the 4600 box and was quite pleased with the performance. Cool quiet and very low power consumption as well.
 
A Haswell chip with HD 4600 should handle 4k media playback without a hitch. I recall seeing reviews showing that it is plenty capable for 4k H264 playback. Just make sure the board has a DP input because I believe you hit the ceiling around 2560x1440 with HDMI.

Unless you're going to be gaming, I don't really see the need for a discrete GPU.

I also believe Haswell GPU's do not suffer from the 23.976 bug.
 
sKiDmArK said:
I also believe Haswell GPU's do not suffer from the 23.976 bug.
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You would be correct.

For most modern playing hardware decoding takes care of everything. A 750ti has vdpau feature set e and even (supposedly) has partial acceleration for decoding H.265 which is ideally going to eventually become the primary encoding for 4k videos.

A 4600 will also hardware decode 4k fine, there was an entire anandtech review about it if you wanted some deeper reading.

You'd need the 750ti to start playing around with MADVR, it really just depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.
 
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