Random, outdated question - Athlon XP v.s. 64

[Nebbers]

Okay, so this is one of those situations where normally it wouldn't even be worth bothering but that might not be the case.

Friend of mine is using an old PC for a media center in his living room. It doesn't need to do anything cutting-edge, just emulation and audio/video playing.

It's a Compaq Presario 061 (I think) with an Athlon XP 3000+ (roughly, might be 3200 or something) and 1GB of RAM.

When playing anything 720p and above, mainly .mkv files, the audio goes in and out of sync. It seems to be just a lack of sufficient CPU resources, from what I've read on forums about this problem.

Would swapping the Athlon XP 3000+ for an Athlon 64 3800+ or so make enough difference to solve this problem? I only ask because they're like $15, whereas anything more significant (Dual-core) is too much to make it worth it.

Anything other than this one specific upgrade would not be cost-effective, but this one seems worth looking into.

 

[mfenn]

Athlon XP processors are Socket A, whereas Athlon 64 processors are 939 or AM2 (depending on which exact one you have), so it won't work without a new mobo as well.

 

[Nebbers]

Whoa, you're right... unless I'm remembering wrong and it has a 64, seems like it was a socket 939.

But if so, definitely not worth bothering with in that case. Thanks.

 

[fluffmonster]

minor threadjack...how much power do socket A systems pull? Google was not terribly helpful, and what I did find suggested idle draw of 100W which seems awfully high. I've got a socket A on a Via chipset doing fileserver duty atm which is about to be replaced and curious how much i'll save in electricity.

 

[ther00kie16]

Yea, A takes too much power. But so did the competition's p4. Athlon 64 might've been socket 754, in which case there were no dual cores right? Try the newest VLC. That might be enough to play the files. You may need some pack to play certain files like 10bit.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'd make sure there is no dust in the machine first. A machine like that usually gets neglected and thus dust builds up over the intakes, heatsinks, etc. causing thermal issues which could be related to your issue.

 

[Ayah]

Most Atoms will actually run laps around a Barton. While, they're fairly similar in performance for single core computes, most atoms have 2 cores vs. 1 core for any Barton.

 

[DominionSeraph]

A Barton should be able to do most 720p. I just downclocked my X2 5200+ to 2GHz, disabled all GPU offloading, and pinned MPC-HC to CPU1, and it took a high bit rate video stream (4.57GB for 105 minutes) to start dropping frame rate, and it was still getting 22-27fps on a 30fps source.
Make sure he's running the latest MPC-HC with CCCP.

 

[pauldun170]

I ran a 3800+ box for years. Proc alone wont do it,
Wanna play big MKV files, you'll need a vid card that supports the hardware decode.
If you box is AGP....forget it. Not worth the effort. If its PCIe...any modern cheapo card should handle it.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I ran a 3800+ box for years. Proc alone wont do it,
Wanna play big MKV files, you'll need a vid card that supports the hardware decode.

Unless I'm leaving some GPU acceleration enabled somewhere, it looks like it should be enough:

Yes, I'm totally pegged and there are some slowdowns, but it's perfectly watchable while pinned to a single core running 2GHz.

Here's 720p Flash with acceleration disabled:

Core's running at ~80%, but it's running it.

720p PMV:

 

[mfenn]

minor threadjack...how much power do socket A systems pull? Google was not terribly helpful, and what I did find suggested idle draw of 100W which seems awfully high. I've got a socket A on a Via chipset doing fileserver duty atm which is about to be replaced and curious how much i'll save in electricity.

Wikipedia says that a Barton 3000+ has a TDP of about 75W. It won't draw that much while idling, but it also won't have nearly as good of an idle power as a modern CPU would.

 

[ther00kie16]

Athlon XPs don't downclock and many motherboards didn't support undervolting. Best upgrade would probably be Brazos or new Atom + ram for not much more than a x2.