How fast is an EPIA M10000 Nehemiah? (relatively)

[Pandamonium]

I'm trying to think out the logistics of a HTPC that will serve as a PVR, jukebox, and DVD player. The box is going to be entirely contained inside a gutted Toshiba SD-1700 DVD player, so size and heat are important.

I'm almost certain that I will be using the ATI All-in-Wonder VE (Radeon 7500, PCI). My question is mainly platform based. Would an EPIA M10000 (Nehemiah CPU) be that much slower than a AMD 1700+ on a VIA KM400/VT8235 board? I plan to use 512MB of PC2100 memory with either board. How would the M10000 compare to say a Pentium III 1Ghz? I've heard that the M10000 performs on a level comparable to a Pentium II-400mhz from some people, while others say that it can hold its own with a 1Ghz Pentium III-S...

 

[Viper0329]

The AMD will run circles around the Nehemiah. Clock speed alone, the Nehemiah, IIRC is only 1 Ghz. Architecture-wise, the AMD is farrrr superior to the Nehemiah. Go with AMD or the P3.

 

[thraxes]

It's about as fast as a 400-500 MHz P3.

Unlike a AMD 1700+ it requires musch less cooling. As a PVR it is pretty useless as it lacks the muscle. As a pure player of DVDs and DivXs (even with AC3 sound) it will do fine. So for what you want to do the 1700+ would be better suited, just gotta find a way to cool the thing. My suggestion would be to have a supersilent HSF and a hole in the top of the case with a grill directly over the CPU. That way you can use a super silent fan that will always be pumping cool air into the case.

EDIT:
Add some underclocking to the mix (running a 1700+ at 100MHz FSB is still enough for PVR duty) and you should be fine temperature and noise wise.

 

[Pandamonium]

Hypothetically, if a M10000 were paired up with a Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350 (hardware MPEG encoding or hardware MPEG encoding+decoding respectively), should a M10000 be able to handle being a PVR?

 

[Ultim8pc]

Originally posted by: xjedimasterx
Hypothetically, if a M10000 were paired up with a Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350 (hardware MPEG encoding or hardware MPEG encoding+decoding respectively), should a M10000 be able to handle being a PVR?

The M10K works well with the Haupage cards you listed!

Nigel

 

[Pandamonium]

Would it work well enough to say...... encode/record TV while playing an MP3 - or a DVD?

 

[Ultim8pc]

Originally posted by: xjedimasterx
Would it work well enough to say...... encode/record TV while playing an MP3 - or a DVD?

I would imagine so - I think the 250 card takes about 15% CPU time on an EPIA M10K when encoding. Playing back 320Kbps MP3 take about 15% CPU & watching a DVD via Power DVD takes about 40% CPU time...