Atom 330 - Decent CPU?

[pm]

Originally posted by: Lithium381
i've been thinking about getting the atom 330 to run a small print/file server in the closet. since it's ultra low power, for a 24x7 machine it should serve it's purpose fine... i love how it's marketed to do e-mail/chat and everyone comes in here bashing it for it's inability to handle HD tasks. you all probably look at an 18-wheel semi truck and say "why can't it get 45mpg like my prius, it sucks!" lulz

The topic of the thread was whether it works well in a HTPC. Whether it can handle HD is totally relevant - in fact in the third post the OP says he wants it to do 1080i. I don't think there's any question at all whether or not it makes a good 24x7 print/file server. But whether it can handle HD is a very good question if the OP wants to put it in a HTPC.

From my perspective, HTPC's are tricky things to design for. You want them quiet and low-power because you are leaving them on 24/7 and sticking them next to your TV, but you actually need a fair bit of raw computing power to encode and decode video streams. So you need to figure out the smallest computer that will do what you need it to do, but still provides a level of performance that's enough to get the job done.

ZStream, I'm not very interested in raw benchmarks, but I will be curious what you think of your Zotac Ion as a HTPC. My Pentium M system is big (ATX) and higher power than I'd like (usually about 60W+). At this point, I'm likely to wait for the next-gen Atom, but I might consider going to the Zotac Ion if you are thrilled with it. I'd be grateful if you shared your experiences with it when you've played with it for a while.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: pm
ZStream, I'm not very interested in raw benchmarks, but I will be curious what you think of your Zotac Ion as a HTPC. My Pentium M system is big (ATX) and higher power than I'd like (usually about 60W+). At this point, I'm likely to wait for the next-gen Atom, but I might consider going to the Zotac Ion if you are thrilled with it. I'd be grateful if you shared your experiences with it when you've played with it for a while.

Well I have everything up and running.

Windows 7 Professional
2gb Ram
500gb HD
Atom O/C to 1.9Ghz

I downloaded a bunch of 720p video's from http://www.microsoft.com/windo...o/contentshowcase.aspx

Everything plays fine, cpu usage goes from 20-55%. Navigating the menu screen is a breeze, the Rosewill MC remote works great. Now I am stuck trying to find a use for the thing, thought it would be great to have one of these for multimedia purposes.

If anyone knows how it is possible to do 720p streaming video, from like hulu and port it over to media center would be great.

 

[Bryf50]

I know you already got it but I'll give some input. The main problem with using the atom as an Htpc is the reliance on the gpu to play videos. In my experience, I found that many files refused to play correctly with hardware acceleration. It was really a headache to deal with switching codecs and settings around to make sure my gpu was doing the work. In the end I decided to just get a beefier cpu that doesn't have a problem playing 720p and probably 1080p on its own. It was just much easier that way.

 

[Zstream]

Well no problems here as of yet. Like I said, it was overclocked to 1.9ghz. Maybe I will lower it back down *shrug*.