Newbie- need help picking out a basic cpu for streaming videos/photos

[matchan]

im building a pc to stream 480p/720p media and photos. This Box has intel 950 GMA video. I am looking for an inexpensive cpu. This will run ubuntu 8.10/boxee or xbmc (htpc software)

Can you please suggest which cpu would be a better value (price/perf)

celeron 430
celeron 440
celeron e1200
celeron e1400
pentium e2180

also last question - how much better is the lowest of the cpus (celeron 430) compared to a intel pentium 4 2.8ghz?

are the dual core celerons much faster than 1 core celerons ? what about the Pentium dual cores ?

thanks
matchan

 

[cusideabelincoln]

From Newegg prices, the Celeron E1200 would probably be the best deal. It's only $10 more than the cheapest chip, the Celeron 430, and it's $20 less than the Pentium E2180. It should also be powerful enough to stream 720p content - although that may depend on how that content is encoded. I'm not a video guru, so I can't quite say for sure.

And I was just about to say I don't know the answer to your second question, concerning the Celeron 430 vs. P4 521 (2.8 GHz), but I actually found a review that has both chips in it. The Celeron 430 is just as fast or a lot faster, depending on the application: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/...ron-420-440-page1.html. I think the 430's power consumption advantage alone makes it the better chip than the P4 521.

For multithreaded applications, a dual core Celeron will definitely be a lot faster than the single core ones. The Pentium Dual Cores (E21xx and E22xx) are even faster than the Celerons.

Now if all you're going to do with this PC is stream data (movies and photos) off the hard drive over a network, then the Celeron 430 will be more than you need. Could you be more detailed as to exactly how you're going to use the PC? If you don't have any plans to actually play the movies directly from the PC, then the you can pretty much stick the cheapest processor you can find in it.

 

[SpeedEng66]

here's a thread testing a cel 420 with linux/myth
cel 420 vs celeron d 2.9
cel 420 vs 2180

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=67&threadid=2175419