HTPC: Trinity A8-5600K vs A8-5500?

[Jumpman23]

So which one would be a better buy for an htpc. They're both the same price, but 5600K is a bit faster and unlocked, but has a 100W TDP while the 5500 is a bit slower with a 65W TDP. How big would the actual power savings be? I assume idle power consumption between the 2 should be similar, but under load would be a different story.

 

[Rvenger]

If they are the same price go for the A8-5600K. You can always downclock and undervolt it and I bet it will be within the 65w TDP if necessary. 5600k would just be a better value for the money and pose a better resale and will have the extra power if/when you need it

 

[Arkadrel]

Just because they put "100W TDP" doesnt mean it uses that exact amount.
Just because they put "65W TDP" doesnt mean it uses that exact amount.

Maybe the A8-5600k uses 70W TDP or something, but AMD is keeping it simple, so they only have "2" standards (either 65w or 100w). Since its above 65W, they just call it 100W and be done with it.

Dont expect the 5600k to use 35watts more than the other, it doesnt work that way (not for Intel either).

 

[AtenRa]

So which one would be a better buy for an htpc. They're both the same price, but 5600K is a bit faster and unlocked, but has a 100W TDP while the 5500 is a bit slower with a 65W TDP. How big would the actual power savings be? I assume idle power consumption between the 2 should be similar, but under load would be a different story.

In idle and in Video Playback both will use the same amount of power. If the price is the same go for the 5600K.

 

[piasabird]

Tom's hardware did a review comparing trinity to the ivy bridge 3rd gen i-3. Obviously the trinity won by most respects. However this was only playing games on the integrated on-processor Graphics Processor. Actually all the game settings were turned down quite a bit. Even though the AMD graphics were twice as fast on average as measured by FPS. I noticed that the AMD processors were running 4 threads as opposed to two threads on the Intel i-3. I kind of wonder how these AMD processors would do as a HTPC. I also wonder what kind of CPU coolers they were using for the test.

I also noticed the processors that they used on the AMD side were like 3.8 ghrz.

 

[Jumpman23]

So far there hasn't been much mini-ITX boards released yet but I am seeing that these boards cost as much as a 5600K at the very least and much higher than ATX or mATX boards. However, the i3 has much cheaper mini-ITX boards. So I am wondering if Trinity is really that much better than the i3 for the price.

 

[Madpacket]

Trinity is a better overall solution for a HTPC, especially if any sort of casual gaming is something you're planning on. It has lower idle power characteristics than Intel's Core series which is likely the most important area to save power on as your computer will spend most of its time in idle states. Trinity scores higher for video quality playback and handles 24 FPS properly.

If you want to go with an ITX form factor ASRock will have a board available soon else there is plenty of low cost Micro ATX motherboards already available.

As far as going for the 5500 vs 5600K - If you have zero plans on overclocking go with the 5500 to save a bit of power and money. My suspicion is the K parts are "higher leakage" parts which handle higher volts/speeds well but may not be quite as power efficient as the non K parts even when undervolted etc. The difference in power draw though is likely very small but I would love to see some direct comparisons between them to be sure.

 

[Hubb1e]

Trinity is a better overall solution for a HTPC, especially if any sort of casual gaming is something you're planning on. It has lower idle power characteristics than Intel's Core series which is likely the most important area to save power on as your computer will spend most of its time in idle states. Trinity scores higher for video quality playback and handles 24 FPS properly.

If you want to go with an ITX form factor ASRock will have a board available soon else there is plenty of low cost Micro ATX motherboards already available.

As far as going for the 5500 vs 5600K - If you have zero plans on overclocking go with the 5500 to save a bit of power and money. My suspicion is the K parts are "higher leakage" parts which handle higher volts/speeds well but may not be quite as power efficient as the non K parts even when undervolted etc. The difference in power draw though is likely very small but I would love to see some direct comparisons between them to be sure.

All true, but it all depends on your needs. If you are just running your HTPC at the normal 1080p/60 and doing no gaming then either solution will work fine for your needs. Take note though that Pentiums and Celerons don't feature the Intel Clear Video post processing that the i3 series has. And, I haven't seen any tests on the lower end Trinity chips to see if they have to turn off certain post processing features because the lack the speed to handle them.

If it was me I would go for the basic dual core A6-5400K because CPU performance just isn't important for my use case and I'm not interested in ruining the picture with edge enhancement or noise reduction algorithms. All I need is capable deinterlacing, quality scaling, and hardware acceleration for h.264, VC-1, and mpeg-2.