Building a budget ITX system...AMD or Intel ? (~$300)

[dashumshop]

Building a budget ITX system...AMD or Intel ? (~$300)

Undertand that i3 >>>>> A6...and there is just $20 difference

main purpose are watching movies and internet...

is it worth going for i3...is that too powerful ?

 

[Skurge]

You can go for one of those dual core celerons and slap a passive cooler on it.

 

[Shaydza]

If I was you I would wait a little bit and slap in an AMD trinity processor. the current llanos are fast enough for movies etc but having the ability to jam games on the system as will pushes it over the top.

Still if you have no interest in being able to game on it then a simple celeron g530 will do it.

 

[Soulkeeper]

if you go the llano route i'd suggest an A8 they really aren't that much more expensive than an A6

llano are very good for budget itx builds imo
assuming that you don't care about future upgrades, or overclocking
Just get low latency 1866 mem for best performance

the i3 route would mean the ability to potentially drop in an i5/i7 later on

ultimately the llano A6 and the i3 performance difference is likely not going to be noticed by the average user imo. A8 vs. i5 are likely close enough to not often be noticed for the usage scenarios you describe either.

 

[dealcorn]

Building a budget ITX system...AMD or Intel ? (~$300)

...main purpose are watching movies and internet...

Could you explain why you need more than a DN2800MT? There are many good reasons to want more, but movies and Internet are not a good reason.

 

[podspi]

Could you explain why you need more than a DN2800MT? There are many good reasons to want more, but movies and Internet are not a good reason.

Unless you're talking about playing Netflix HD :biggrin:
No way Atom could handle that. It (still!) isn't hardware accelerated... Pretty much (imho) eliminates Atom and Bobcat from any machine that is going to be used to play HD video.

 

[antisocialmunky]

A8 is great. Via is better than atom (lol).

 

[beginner99]

Could you explain why you need more than a DN2800MT? There are many good reasons to want more, but movies and Internet are not a good reason.

Atom sucks in video playback and flash heavy websites. And a Pentium + mini-itx board doesn't cost much more anyway.

One thing I'm uncertain about is the missing features of the Pentiums concerning HD200 Graphics like Intel® Clear Video HD Technology. ut those features are probably more marketing than anything else?

 

[AtenRa]

I would get the following.

1.Intel D2700DC. iTX form factor
Intel Atom 2700 is dual core with HT at 2.13GHz paired with Intel Graphics 3650 (based on Power VR). It is capable of Blu-Ray 1080p playback but the board only has 2x SATA.

Next Generation Intel Atom GMA 3650 vs. i3 GMA HD Graphics

2. Asus F1A75-I DELUXE + AMD A4-3400
Plenty of features with this bord and a dual core processor capable of playing BDs and every HD video.

3. P8H67-I + Intel Pentium G530.

Graphics Drivers are not the best thing with Intel, but you should be able to upgrade to IB later on.

 

[Chapbass]

I went with a Biostar LGA1155 MB and an inexpensive Dual core Celeron for my needs...barely cost anything (what, 50 each for MB and proc, 100 total?) and works just fine, I use it for XBMC and 1080p playback. I had a 160GB laptop HDD laying around, bought an inexpensive miniITX case and 4gb of ram for another 80 bucks for both (case came with a PSU that was halfway decent, for case/psu combos), and called it good. I thihnk my total purchase was about 180-190 bucks. Throw in 50 more for a blu-ray player if you want.

 

[dealcorn]

But you skipped the important part of whether you are happy with your rig's performance.

 

[Citizen X]

AMD owns all!

 

[KingFatty]

I've thought about building a little computer for the TV. But currently I use an old laptop that has discrete Nvidia graphics card for hardware acceleration of flash/streaming video/bluray/XBMC. What are some good reasons to move away from my current laptop form-factor toward this type of system? The laptop folded up fits nicely with the other home theater systems, so I haven't found an urgent need to upgrade yet, though I'm looking for excuses to update/justify to the wife heheh etc...

But for my position on the OP's question whether to go AMD or intel, I would think the idea of playing games on it would be good just in case. Even if you aren't a gamer, it would be nice for a party or something to fire up a party game or something, so seems you'd be able to take advantage of a more powerful GPU.

 

[nenforcer]

AMD quad core Trinity A10 on Socket FM2 will be out by June while Intel 77W TDP Ivy Bridge CPU's which will be released on April 23rd and include a dual core Core i5-3470T w/ HD 2500 graphics.

I'd wait for the Trinity systems to be released before building a Mini-ITX system.