Nvidia ION (Atom) vs ATX platform

[bundi]

I'm building a media PC for someone and they plan on viewing a lot of HD content.

I like the idea of these Atom PCs and this new ZOTAC board that has a 9400M on board sounds like it would be pretty good. However it's $224 bucks (atom 330).

There's also an mini-itx LGA775 board that has onboard intel X4500HD video (no pci-e x8 or x16 slot). I've never liked the on board intel video stuff... but is it good enough for HD video like the model name so clearly indicates? :)

The 775 Processor is going to be way faster than the intel Atom, but I would guess that the atom is going to have a bit better video card.

I'm leaning toward the 775 way because even if the X4500HD isn't that great, the CPU will make up for it when viewing video.

I suppose I could also go ATX, and have upgradability... but I'm trying to compare apples to apples here.

The machine won't be used for gaming.

[Xaroxantu Zero]

By HD content are we talking about downloaded content or Blu-Ray? Because with the right codec (CoreAVC), you'll just need a good CPU to render HD videos.

Also, is physical size not an issue?

[nobb]

Check out "Combined Community Codec Pack." I like it better than CoreAVC when it comes to decoding HD content. Even on my new laptop that has a Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and a 9400M video card, it has stuttering issues playing HD content with CoreAVC, whereas CCCP works fine.

[bundi]

Price is more of an issue than size is, like I said before... I suppose I could go ATX, but I'm trying to compare apples to apples.

He'll be running blu-rays and MKV files, (mostly x264).

Desktop will be running at 1920x1080.

[bundi]

Originally posted by nobb
Check out "Combined Community Codec Pack." I like it better than CoreAVC when it comes to decoding HD content. Even on my new laptop that has a Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and a 9400M video card, it has stuttering issues playing HD content with CoreAVC, whereas CCCP works fine.

On a 9400M you should be barely even working the computer, it has hardware acceleration, there are guys running 1080p video with hardly any cpu utilization with 9300's even.

Make sure you have Hardware acceleration enabled in your player, VDPAU, or Purevideo for windows enabled in your player.

[HaganDazs]

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=36236&vpn=GF9300-D-E&manufacture=Zotac

This zotac board is similar to the Ion/Atom board, but you can use a LGA775 cpu instead. And its mini ITX too, if you want a small case.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by nobb
Check out "Combined Community Codec Pack." I like it better than CoreAVC when it comes to decoding HD content. Even on my new laptop that has a Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and a 9400M video card, it has stuttering issues playing HD content with CoreAVC, whereas CCCP works fine.

I'm sure it's a setup issue.

CCCP uses ffdshow which is a CPU hog. Very nice quality wise but is a hog.

CoreAVC is still the most efficient H264 codec I found. It even runs on my old P4 2.4Ghz.

[bundi]

Originally posted by HaganDazs
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=36236&vpn=GF9300-D-E&manufacture=Zotac

This zotac board is similar to the Ion/Atom board, but you can use a LGA775 cpu instead. And its mini ITX too, if you want a small case.

This is great, I was having a hard time finding a 775 board that was mini-itx and nvidia graphics... 9300 is a great chipset for video.

_
Aren't any of you using direct rendering from the video card with HD? ie Purevideo? I haven't used windows in a while, but in linux there are a couple ways to go about it now. And I'm sure you can do the same things in Windows.

You can use the multithreaded version of ffdshow that uses more than 1 core.. this improves framerate quite a bit about 1.8 times faster for dual core and 2.8 times faster for quad.

However if you are using a newer Nvidia chipset (purevideo 2 or newer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU ) there are guys getting full framerate with little to no cpu usage.