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HTPC CPU

lordsegan

Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
624
Hi, I just inhereted an AMD Athlon X2 240 based system from a friend.

Would such a system have enough CPU power to be a credible 2012 HTPC?

Will pair it with a decent vid card such as the 5670.
 
as long as you pair it with a card that has hardware HD decoding should be fine. I have a HTPC with a geforce onbaord graphics and x2 250 and it works great.
 
Yes, you'll be fine. I think there's one of those or a 245 in my parents' HTPC. My HTPC has an AM2 x2 5000 and both can play pretty much anything. Mine has an HD5450. I don't do any post-processing.
 
I will just reiterate what was already posted. Currently have an AMD X2 Athlon with a 5450 and my receiver currenlty does not decode HD. I will tell you that my HTPC set up sounds WAY better than my PS3 hooked to the same system playing a Blu-ray disc.
 
It will be just fine. I've underclocked a x2 4850 down to under 2GHz and used that with a 5450 and SSD to make a very low power/noise HTPC that does 1080p perfectly.
 
It will be just fine. I've underclocked a x2 4850 down to under 2GHz and used that with a 5450 and SSD to make a very low power/noise HTPC that does 1080p perfectly.

Not trying to hijack this thread, but would an X2 4600+ work ok? It plays DVDs fine but I have never tried a Bluray yet. It has an HD 4850 512mb video card.

Also it currently runs windows XP, would upgrading to 7 be worthwhile, taking advantage of DX11?
 
Not trying to hijack this thread, but would an X2 4600+ work ok? It plays DVDs fine but I have never tried a Bluray yet. It has an HD 4850 512mb video card.

Also it currently runs windows XP, would upgrading to 7 be worthwhile, taking advantage of DX11?

I ran an x2 4600+ with a geforce 8500gt on win7 and never had any problems with bluray. If gpu decoding is working properly then the cpu is barely touched at all.
 
I ran an x2 4600+ with a geforce 8500gt on win7 and never had any problems with bluray. If gpu decoding is working properly then the cpu is barely touched at all.

Alright, thanks. Does Directx 11 offer any benifits to video playback over DX9? Or are there any other reasons I may want to run Win7 rather than XP?
 
as long as you pair it with a card that has hardware HD decoding should be fine. I have a HTPC with a geforce onbaord graphics and x2 250 and it works great.

^this

Your CPU isn't great but with the help of a decent GPU like a 5670/6670/GT 430 it will be fine with nearly anything you can throw at it (looking at you 1080p/60fps).
 
Note that if you need to play back 10-bit h.264 (pretty much only Anime fansubs at this time) your CPU will struggle, and 10-bit h.264 can't be offloaded to your video card.
 
Note that if you need to play back 10-bit h.264 (pretty much only Anime fansubs at this time) your CPU will struggle, and 10-bit h.264 can't be offloaded to your video card.

10-bit @ 720 on that CPU shouldn't be a problem at all. 10-bit @ 1080 will depend on the bitrate. Either way there isn't an Anime released today that doesn't come in variety of formats and bitrates.
 
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