Celeron 887 to Kabini Athlon 5150 or 5350?

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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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Ok,

I currently have a Lenovo IdeaCenter Q190 taking care of my HTPC duties. It is a decent enough streaming box, but I'm finding that it can't quite handle the live TV duties that I'm throwing at it. I have 2 x HDHomerun tuners on my network. Live TV is fine most of the time, but if there are a couple of recordings going on, it will start to stutter pretty regularly.

I'm thinking about replacing it with a Kabini Athlon 5150 or 5350. I've upgraded the drive in the Q190 to a SSD, so I already have that.

I figure I can put together a whole system for around $150-$170.

Will I see any significant improvement?

The price definitely seems right...
 
DesiPower

DesiPower

Lifer
Nov 22, 2008
15,366
740
126
Nobody answered probably because people, IMHO, these days are not too much into using AMD on HTPC. I dont have much knowledge either, from the specs, 1.6 ghz quad core, it sounds like it should be enough. The celeron is 1.5 dual core, so CPU is a upgrade, along with the architecture upgrade, it should have enough juice for what you are trying to do.

Personally, I HATE those laptop hardware packed into "slim" or "small" cool looking boxes. I just hate them, just stay away from those and you will be fine.
 
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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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Maybe I will look for an Intel option and be done with it.

I'm think I want to build it in an Antec ISK 300-150...
 
DesiPower

DesiPower

Lifer
Nov 22, 2008
15,366
740
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That's not a bad idea, you can go for i3-4130T, its low powered with HD4400, will pretty much do everything you want
 
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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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Quite a difference in price though... 2-3x the cost just for the CPU and Motherboard...
 
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basslover1

Golden Member
Aug 4, 2004
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TSDible said:
Quite a difference in price though... 2-3x the cost just for the CPU and Motherboard...
Click to expand...

I just bought (haven't received all the parts for it) a new HTPC featuring an Intel Pentium G3220, low end Gigabyte H81 mobo, 4GB of ram, a 120GB SSD and 80+ bronze PSU for 255. You might not need a PSU, so that would be 205.

This review has the Pentium out-performing the 5350 in nearly every benchmark.
 
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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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basslover1 said:
I just bought (haven't received all the parts for it) a new HTPC featuring an Intel Pentium G3220, low end Gigabyte H81 mobo, 4GB of ram, a 120GB SSD and 80+ bronze PSU for 255. You might not need a PSU, so that would be 205.

This review has the Pentium out-performing the 5350 in nearly every benchmark.
Click to expand...

My main concern is being able to record/watch up to the 4 tuners I have available. That is where the Celeron fails right now.

Will the g3220 handle that? It is considerably cheaper than the i3...

I also have a low profile, passive, 6450 profile so graphics may not be an issue... I think it should handle anything I throw at it.
 
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basslover1

Golden Member
Aug 4, 2004
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I had that concern too, but it soon faded. When I'm doing research on my next PC upgrade, I always try to get a feel on how it would perform compared to my current rig.

With that said the G3220, in every benchmark I've seen, runs circles my current AMD 4850e CPU, a CPU that I haven't had a problem recording/watching 4 streams at a time with.

I'm more concerned about GPU performance out of the G3220, but you have a discrete card to use if necessary, I don't. You should be fine with the Pentium.
 
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tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,355
642
121
There are also very few people who are recording lots of shows. My "recording" box wouldn't ever be a low power box. It'd be a high power box for Recording, Reencoding, etc. So I really don't know if what you have is "enough" because I paired my 4770k with my Ceton InifiniTV 4 Tuner.

When watching HDTV, I have 1 core being utilized at 30% on my 4770k. So maybe an upgrade could help?

I don't know if I'd try Kabini though. I think it'd be up to the task as it's a quadcore, but HDTV is important to me. Recording id and Reencoding is very important to me. So that's why I have a 4770k. So that no matter WHAT I am doing on machine there is more than enough resources to ensure high quality rips.

That said, nothing can fix TV Signal and sometimes your TV Signal just stutters. I get it sometimes even on my PC. Sometimes I just lose signal completely.

Me personally, if I had the spare cash I'd test Kabini because it's so cheap that worst comes to worst, I put it in a spare room as an XBMC box. But if I'm serious, I buy a decent intel processor.
 
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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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Went to Microcenter today... Bad idea... :)

Went with a 4340 since it's eligible for a combo discount. I think I will be happier in the long run.

So now that I have the 4600 IGP, should I bother with the discrete graphics (AMD 6450 passive)?
 
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tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,355
642
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Use it first. I don't see a reason why you'd need a discrete card.

And nothing wrong with Microcenter at all. Microcenter combo deals are better than purchasing online. Microcenter pushed the 4770k for me from affordable, to a steal. Microcenter is one of the best things out there for intel.
 
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TSDible

Golden Member
Nov 4, 1999
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I got it set up last night... no case yet, so it is just out in the open...

It's a beast.

So much faster and more responsive than the Celeron system!
 
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