Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
SonicSilicon wrote:I do want this to run with lower power to keep heating down while being reasonably performing. That includes the processor being quad core. The Athlon II 620e has a TDP of 45w. Would a Core i-series really provide that much better performance or efficiency? For the same wattage there's only the i5-3570T at 2.3 GHz versus 2.6 GHz. (I can't even locate a unit for price comparison.)
SonicSilicon wrote:I'm sorry for being stubborn on this; I just can't seem to see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU, so far. Now I'm worried it may be a mistake, but don't know why.
Waco wrote:SonicSilicon wrote:I'm sorry for being stubborn on this; I just can't seem to see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU, so far. Now I'm worried it may be a mistake, but don't know why.
I think the point is that a "lowly" dual core i3 with hyperthreading is faster in essentially everything (including video encoding) compared to the quad core you chose and uses less power as well.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/106?vs=289
SonicSilicon wrote:I'm being stubborn on this; I just can't see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU...
Waco wrote:That's why folks keep recommending Ivy Bridge processors.A "lowly" dual core i3 with hyperthreading is faster in essentially everything... and uses less power as well.
JustAnEngineer wrote:If you're going to add a graphics card at all, you would be better off with an Ivy Bridge Core i3 processor on an LGA1155 motherboard with a Radeon HD7770 1GB. For HTPC considerations, you might look at this recent thread for some inspiration.
If you're not going to install a dedicated graphics card for gaming, then an A10-5700 APU on a socket-FM2 motherboard might be a good choice.
If you're going to play games or use a cablecard tuner, you need Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit for this system.
kc77 wrote:I was about to agree until I looked at the price of the AMD processor. It's a $70 processor. The 3220 is $130. At that price the AMD chip actually makes some sense and it's not nearly as crazy of an idea.
Waco wrote:If you're using integrated graphics, increased memory bandwidth can provide a measurable increase in performance. If you're using a dedicated gaming graphics card so that the CPU isn't competing with the IGP for bandwidth, there's much less difference.DDR3-1066 versus DDR3-1600 versus even DDR3-2400 isn't going to make much of a difference in normal use...most applications aren't very memory-intensive.
SonicSilicon wrote:I may have found a major reason to give up on the 620e :
http://techreport.com/review/23246/insi ... day-cpus/7
If a Phenom II X4 850 is being burdened so much with both a game and transcoding a prerecorded video, I doubt a 620e with less processing power could handle a game and recording a live stream simultaneously.
Unfortunately, I'm having absolutely no luck finding power consumption for CPUs with integrated video disabled. (I find the lack of search results baffling.) I thought it was covered in some of the Tech Report benchmarks, but I'm still not having any luck. Honestly, I'm feeling rather overloaded with information at this point.
[EDIT] Is ECC memory something recommended? I vaguely recall it having a performance penalty, but I'm not sure if that's true any longer. I'll need to look into prices.
Waco wrote:You're not going to be running ECC RAM without a Xeon CPU...it'll run (I think) but I'm pretty sure it won't utilize the ECC capability without a Xeon CPU...
Graphics output, multiple displays, ECC memory, specific PCI Express configurations, Intel® vPro™ Technology, Intel® Trusted Execution Technology, and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) may not be available on all computing systems. Please reference the system, motherboard or chipset specifications for compatibility.
SonicSilicon wrote:As for 3.3 versus 2.8 GHz, would less than 20% gain in performance really be that noticeable?
SonicSilicon wrote:I've been going trough Intel's ARK section of their site, and the only information on whether or not any particular motherboard supports ECC is this disclaimer:Graphics output, multiple displays, ECC memory, specific PCI Express configurations, Intel® vPro™ Technology, Intel® Trusted Execution Technology, and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) may not be available on all computing systems. Please reference the system, motherboard or chipset specifications for compatibility.
It's a bit frustrating reading that over and over since I went there to find out in the first place. I guess I'm looking at the wrong articles.
chuckula wrote:Intel puts up that disclaimer because even if its chips support those features, they also need to have motherboard support and there is not guarantee that your motherboard will provide support for those features. In general, if ARK says that a chip supports or doesn't support feature X, then you can be confident that the *chip* does or does not support that feature. YMMV on motherboards though, and that is really beyond Intel's control in many situations (the exact same situation applies for AMD chips too).