Zacate vs Llano vs ?

S

SSpiro

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 5, 2005
Messages
259
I have posted in here about building almost a year ago, and just never got to do it.

I'd like to pick this back up. I'm sure technoloy has changed.. The original replies I got were for Zacate. Then the next thread i read said Llano is the better choice and half the price..

What is the current go-to, and is Llano still the preferred over Zacate?

Usage is streaming local movie files in full 1080P, and MAYBE bluray playback. No DVR'ing or tuning as of now. Plan on having a few 2TB drives for storage.

EDIT:
Zacate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157228&Tpk=zacate
Llano: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103943 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131813
 
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Zacate is anemic as hell; barely better than Atom. It'll do Blu-ray, but 1080p local and web stuff will choke it. Llano will manage just fine.

That said, I'd go the Intel route, as it's significantly more power-efficient under load. Low-end Sandy Bridge parts should be about on par with Llano chips, cpu and price wise, and they have a much larger selection of mini-ITX motherboards for small form factor HTPC builds.
 
XenIneX said:
Zacate is anemic as hell; barely better than Atom. It'll do Blu-ray, but 1080p local and web stuff will choke it. Llano will manage just fine.
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1080p local will not choke a Zacate. I've had a Zacate for a year and a half and it's played 98% of everything I've thrown at it. Most of what didn't play were shitty rips or 10bit mkv's. Zacate's are slow for stuff like web surfing, it starts to choke with more than 3 tabs open or so but for strictly HTPC use with XBMC it's been fine. When you throw in the very low power consumption and they're pretty nice in that regards.

The Llano's are good but they consume a bit more power than Zacate if power consumption is a concern.

If I'd do it again I would however probably spend slightly more and get an I3-2100 (there's a I3-2100T variant on ebay that underclocked and uses less power and is cheaper) with a low end AMD video card for hardware acceleration. Last I knew SB and IB on board video didn't playback compressed videos with 23.976fps for NTSC video (basically all DVD and BluRay movies) correctly, that is the videos won't playback at the correct speed. nVidia cards are better but I believe AMD ones were the most accurate at 23.976fps playback. The I3-2100 consumers a little bit more power than the Zacate's but are stronger CPU wise.
 
I use Zacate's for my Bedroom HTPC's. They are very very good machines that playback over 99% of my content just like Tch0rT said. If you need a machine that is smaller than a Nintendo Wii, Brazos machine's are perfect.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
Last I knew SB and IB on board video didn't playback compressed videos with 23.976fps for NTSC video (basically all DVD and BluRay movies) correctly, that is the videos won't playback at the correct speed. nVidia cards are better but I believe AMD ones were the most accurate at 23.976fps playback. The I3-2100 consumers a little bit more power than the Zacate's but are stronger CPU wise.
Click to expand...

Has anyone here actually seen this 23.976fps issue first hand? I recently built two HTPC's using Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge parts I3 2120 and a Pentium G2120. I planned on using a GT 430 in the first one to overcome this issue. However after testing using both the discrete and HD 2000 for well over a month, I saw absolutely no difference between the two. Both 1080p rips and Blu-Ray really seem to just work flawlessly. I'm wondering if the issue is a bit overblown. What exactly does it look like?
 
If I'd do it again I would however probably spend slightly more and get an I3-2100 (there's a I3-2100T variant on ebay that underclocked and uses less power and is cheaper) with a low end AMD video card for hardware acceleration. Last I knew SB and IB on board video didn't playback compressed videos with 23.976fps for NTSC video (basically all DVD and BluRay movies) correctly, that is the videos won't playback at the correct speed. nVidia cards are better but I believe AMD ones were the most accurate at 23.976fps playback. The I3-2100 consumers a little bit more power than the Zacate's but are stronger CPU wise.
Click to expand...

Is this the reason that everybody loves the Llano & Trinity? I never really understood why somebody would what they would give you (aside from gaming) besides poorer performance, worse power consumption, and a limited Motherboard selection.

I know AMD has better video drivers and what not. Also how important is this 23.976fps?
 
MrSmegzabush said:
Is this the reason that everybody loves the Llano & Trinity? I never really understood why somebody would what they would give you (aside from gaming) besides poorer performance, worse power consumption, and a limited Motherboard selection.

I know AMD has better video drivers and what not. Also how important is this 23.976fps?
Click to expand...

In all honesty, I really wanted to go the AMD route been a fan since the Socket A day's. However, I wanted to go itx and the motherboard selection was just to sparse for me. As for the 23.976fps, AVS has a great thread on the topic. Apparently Ivy Bridge solves this issue completely and in most cases turning off UAC resolves the issue with Sandy Bridge. Anandtech's and Tom's both have pretty good articles about it. I really hope someone will chime in if they actually seen this bug firsthand.
 
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MrSmegzabush said:
Also how important is this 23.976fps?
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Frame rates are complicated, someone else can probably explain it better but here goes...

Movies are usually filmed at 24fps.

NTSC is usually 23.976fps for film or 29.97fps for video. This is from the interlaced days I believe and both end up as 59.94 fields per second (23.976 using 3:2 pulldown, 29.97 just doubles the fields).

PAL is 25fps.

With digital formats audio and video are usually separate files/stems the audio is synced to 23.976fps (assuming NTSC) and if the hardware can't playback the video correctly at 23.976 the audio with be out of sync with the video.

It's worth noting some people don't notice or care about those inconsistencies. I'm OCD about A/V stuff and I tend to notice and be bothered by A/V being out of sync or sped up/slowed down A/V.
 
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|Tch0rT| said:
If I'd do it again I would however probably spend slightly more and get an I3-2100 (there's a I3-2100T variant on ebay that underclocked and uses less power and is cheaper)
Click to expand...

The only time you should go with the 2100T is if you need the low-profile cooler. They're exactly the same chip, except the 2100T has an artificial limit placed on clock speeds. The regular 2100 consumes the same amount of power while idle and has the extra horsepower if needed.

That said, I thought the new Ivy bridge i3 just came out, one of which has the HD4000 graphics. Haven't heard much about them or seen a review on one yet.
 
MrSmegzabush said:
Is this the reason that everybody loves the Llano & Trinity? I never really understood why somebody would what they would give you (aside from gaming) besides poorer performance, worse power consumption, and a limited Motherboard selection.

I know AMD has better video drivers and what not. Also how important is this 23.976fps?
Click to expand...

There a huge thread on this at AVSForum.

Does your TV accept an input of 23.976 and display it correclty w/ 3:2 pulldown? Basically you need a 3D TV as it will take the 24hz input and display it at 120hz (5:5 pulldown) by displaying each frame 5 times. If not then none of this is a concern to you.
 
Interesting discussion.

So the consensus is to stay away from Zacate? I liked the cost of zacate over the other options, but i dont want to buy a system that i'll be disappointed with.

However, i3 may be out of my budget in comparison. Trying to stay relatively low cost. It's not going to be used every day, essentially just movies.
 
Zacate would probably be just fine for your application. I use mine everyday for Movies, TV Shows, and Music with XBMC. It's mostly fast enough in the UI though background art takes a few seconds to catch up if I scroll though my library too fast.
 
If you want to stay lowcost, an Intel Pentium is fully sufficient for XBMC as is AMD LLano and Trinity.
All three are very good choices for a HTPC.

AMD has a very decent GPU and is for those that want to play games on the HTPC (no high settings of course).

Intel has a better performance/consumption ratio but a minor GPU compared to AMD. However, Intel has 35W CPUs which is ideal for mini-ITX HTPC cramped cases where
you have problems with heatsink-fan height and getting out the heat of a working 65W CPU.

I am using an G630T (35W and tiny stock-heatsink) as my case is very small.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
Frame rates are complicated, someone else can probably explain it better but here goes...

Movies are usually filmed at 24fps.

NTSC is usually 23.976fps for film or 29.97fps for video. This is from the interlaced days I believe and both end up as 59.94 fields per second (23.976 using 3:2 pulldown, 29.97 just doubles the fields).

PAL is 25fps.

With digital formats audio and video are usually separate files/stems the audio is synced to 23.976fps (assuming NTSC) and if the hardware can't playback the video correctly at 23.976 the audio with be out of sync with the video.

It's worth noting some people don't notice or care about those inconsistencies. I'm OCD about A/V stuff and I tend to notice and be bothered by A/V being out of sync or sped up/slowed down A/V.
Click to expand...

I think the issue was that the clarkdale and SB iGPU's would only output at 24.000fps for 24p content, not the 23.976 that is the actual frame out put of 24p source material. The result was that you'd have a gap between the real framerate and the source framerate that would result in an entire frame difference every 30-40 seconds and cause a hitch.

As far as Zacate goes, I have one that does perfectly fine for 1080p local content and cablecard tv viewing. I don't think i'd build a new one right now though, because its getting a bit older at this point and due for a refresh.
 
I'd echo what some of the others here have said. I built a Zacate system early on and have had it for well over a year now. It's performed pretty much perfectly for me. That said, I'd also probably be looking at something other than the Zacate at this point. I've actually been thinking about upgrading my HTPC and moving my Zacate over to a WHS server for back ups and serving music to my AVR.

I would recommend looking at the Sandy Bridge pentiums or even Celerons for an HTPC at this point, or possibly holding out for the IB pentiums to drop in price or the IB celerons to come out.
 
Zacate is sufficient for the tasks you describe; as others have said, it works great for them as it's worked great for me.

I would still buy Zacate for 1080p/BRD.

I would *definitely* buy a G530/cheap mATX board if I wanted the flexibility of an mATX case and the potential to repurpose/upgrade later.
 
Great feedback guys. I'll look at costs of both and go from there. Considering the usage its going to get, i'm still comfortable with putting my eggs in the zacate basket..
 
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