Budget CPU for a (E)HTPC: Intel or AMD - that's the question

[kick]

Looking for a really cheap dual core CPU for an emulation/HTPC box. I don't plan to overclock,don't need more than 2 cores and all I care is very low price and the best single threaded performance for the buck. The Pentium Dual Core E5200 looks nice and cheap,but Athlon64 X2 CPUs are just as good.

Is the Athlon X2 5600+ the better choice? How does this CPU compare to the E5200? (they're about the same price)

One advantage of the Pentium Dual Core is support for SSSE3 instructions.Is there really a noticable speed improvement in emulators/emu plugins that are using these instructions instead of plain SSE3?

[sweener2001]

this will fly right into the face of not wanting to overclock, but if i might recommend the athlon 64 X2 5400 black edition.

all you need to do is increase the multiplier and you can get it up to 3.2 or so easily. no voltage tweaking or anything. you would have to buy a cooling solution separately, though.

[kick]

this will fly right into the face of not wanting to overclock, but if i might recommend the athlon 64 X2 5400 black edition.

all you need to do is increase the multiplier and you can get it up to 3.2 or so easily. no voltage tweaking or anything. you would have to buy a cooling solution separately, though.

The overclocking potential is a nice feature,but when you're aiming for less noise (the most important thing),heat and power consumption (with no plan to spend extra cash on expensive coolers),that's not an option.

[sweener2001]

that's the joy, though, of an unlocked multiplier. no voltage increase means it won't get hotter and obviously won't suck any more power, which means you don't need an expensive fan. it's basically another 400 MHz for free.

[funkyass]

phenom II seems to do well as a quad core

expect core2 price cuts soon.

[Gil_Hamilton]

this will fly right into the face of not wanting to overclock, but if i might recommend the athlon 64 X2 5400 black edition.

all you need to do is increase the multiplier and you can get it up to 3.2 or so easily. no voltage tweaking or anything. you would have to buy a cooling solution separately, though.

The overclocking potential is a nice feature,but when you're aiming for less noise (the most important thing),heat and power consumption (with no plan to spend extra cash on expensive coolers),that's not an option.

If you're considering heat and power consumption, there's no question. You should get the Intel part.


For low noise, you REALLY want an aftermarket cooler, though.


Personally, I got a Pentium Dual-Core and overclocked it.
Stuck a bigass PASSIVE heatsink on it. It sits right under my power supply fan and right behind my case fan, and keeps my CPU adequately cool.


I'm using a Ninja, but I wouldn't get it again.
The mounting solution is... not good. You can either use the plastic snap pegs like a stock Core cooler, or buy extra hardware.
And the latest revision apparently makes the snap pegs nearly impossible to work with.


I've got no performance objections, though.
Let's be honest, it was designed to cool a P4 passively.




From there...

My video card is passively cooled too. This really makes a bigger difference than the CPU cooler. Almost no video cards come with a decent cooler.

I'm using an Accelero S2. I'd get the S1 next time, though I can't really complain about my S2.
(Aside from making the official blood sacrifice to the computer gods for the build when I banged a knuckle on it. But I knew blood would be spilled somewhere. It's not possible to build a new computer without drawing blood.)


My only fans are an exhaust fan at the back and the power supply fan.

Careful power supply selection left that damn near inaudible. The case fan came with the Ninja, and is equally near inaudible.

The case is an Antec, and came with silicon grommets in the hard drive cage to decouple it from the case.


My system's noise level is below the noise floor in the house. I can catch a hint of noise if the centrai haeting/AC isn't running, and I focus.
But it's essentially silent if the optical drive isn't spinning.

Which was my goal.
Now to stifle the AC unit!

[grinvader]

One advantage of the Pentium Dual Core is support for SSSE3 instructions.Is there really a noticable speed improvement in emulators/emu plugins that are using these instructions instead of plain SSE3?

Unless you compile them to make use of the extra instructions, there's jack chance of an improvement.

For those that do give you the source, I have no idea if the compilers are tuned for ssse3 atm.

[kick]

One advantage of the Pentium Dual Core is support for SSSE3 instructions.Is there really a noticable speed improvement in emulators/emu plugins that are using these instructions instead of plain SSE3?

Unless you compile them to make use of the extra instructions, there's jack chance of an improvement.

For those that do give you the source, I have no idea if the compilers are tuned for ssse3 atm.

GSdx by Gabest / PCSX2 is an example

[kick]

Athlon II X2 240 vs. Pentium Dual Core E5300

- Similar price (dirt cheap) and performance
- 65W TDP (perfect for a HTPC/torrent box)
- both are good overclockers

[I.S.T.]

The latter has much better OCing, IIRC. You can hit 4 ghz on those damn things!

[Gil_Hamilton]

Athlon II X2 240 vs. Pentium Dual Core E5300

- Similar price and performance
- 65W TDP
- both are good overclockers

This might've been useful nine months ago.

[kick]

Athlon II X2 240 vs. Pentium Dual Core E5300

- Similar price and performance
- 65W TDP
- both are good overclockers

This might've been useful nine months ago.

Yeah, the best bang for the buck at the moment is the Athlon II X4 620.
Dirt cheap quad for the masses. Undervolt this baby and you have a winrar

[PHoNyMiKe]

you can get some nice barebone systems, here's one for $199. a dual core would be great for emulation because one core could run just the emu, and windows would consume whatever else it wants for spyware and things of that nature. 1GB of ram is pretty weak though.

if stictly for older system emulators, you could probably get away with onboard video.

[I.S.T.]

Oh, boy, generic PSU maker.

That is a good deal, but replace that PSU, fuck.

and 1 gig is fine for XP unless you play semi-recent games.

[kick]

a dual core would be great for emulation because one core could run just the emu, and windows would consume whatever else it wants for spyware and things of that nature.

2 cores are not enough if you use PCSX2 or any other multi-core optimized emulator.

3 cores (and a midrange low-power ATI GPU) is all you need.

You can use 2 cores for emulation and the third one will take care of the system processes, AV+antispyware and everything else.
The GPU will offload all the HD video decoding and post-processing, so you can surf the net while your friends play PCSX2 and your family is watching Full HD videos.

[nintendo_nerd]

2 cores are not enough if you use PCSX2 or any other multi-core optimized emulator.

Really? That's weird, I could have sworn the developers of PCSX2 specifically stated they would not take advantage of more than two cores.
It's not that it wouldn't benefit from three of four cores, per se, but it would require a massive overhaul of the code, which isn't something they want to do. First post on the search results: http://forums.pcsx2.net/search.php?acti ... order=desc

[odditude]

try reading the whole post next time.

You can use 2 cores for emulation

[kode54]

If power is a concern, Intel would be the way to go. If you don't care about your system chugging the current, go with AMD.

I would have recommended Core i5 750 specifically, but that's not really HTPC. Or is it now?

It's not really budget either, heh. I guess AMD is king there, if you buy the cheapest processor available.