AMD zacate 18w or Atom D525?

[JasonKnights]

Hi there Im thinking of putting together a small media centre type pc over christmas. Ive seen two motherboards with onboard CPU and GPUs (just need to add RAM and HDDs etc. Ive been tryin to look which will perform the best as there both the same price?

option 1 is Asus AT5IONT-I, Intel NM10, Atom D525 Dual-Core,

option 2 is Asus E35M1-I DELUXE AMD Hudson M1 Integrated AMD Zacate 18w

its only for watching movies and downloads really, wont be gaming on this one. thanks

 

[mmj_uk]

IMO go with:

Asus P8H61-I - £65.
HIS ATI Radeon HD 5450 - £24.
Intel Celeron Dual Core G530T Sandy Bridge Core, Socket 1155, 2GHz, 2MB Cache, 35W, OEM (not currently sold by OCUK) - £40.

Atom/Zacate have decent GPU's but you'll likely find that they're both let down by relatively slow CPU's, the SB Celeron/Pentium's have extremely low power draw at idle and are 3-4 times faster... the only drawback is sorting out a heatsink and whether it'll fit your case.

If it's a straight dual between your two choices I'd say the AMD Zacate is better all around.

 

[JasonKnights]

I have a case which will allow stock coolers. its mini atx so not too small. il definaltey look into them thanks. just want something quiet and what doesnt draw to much power

 

[mmj_uk]

I have a case which will allow stock coolers.

Does it allow for a GPU? if so it's a no brainer I reckon.

just want something quiet and what doesnt draw to much power

I forgot to add you can pick up a stock Intel LGA1156 heatsink (Google "Intel E41759-002") for £5 from the place that sells the Celeron, it's LGA1155 compatible.

I've not seen power draw compared between Celeron and Atom/Zacate but at idle or average load it's not going to be massively different and you get a lot more CPU horsepower for 1080P etc. I have a E350N-USB3 (AMD Zacate) and it seems sluggish just browsing Youtube.

Anyway see what others think but that's my recommendation, mainly because I've replaced my Zacate with a Pentium G840 and it's miles better.

 

[JasonKnights]

Yeah thanks for the advice I did a quick comparison with my desktop CPU at stock and the result was staggering, everything looked like it takes 15times longer on the atom/zacante than my i7. I will go the route you have suggested thanks. I will bevable to fit a low profile gpu in the case

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another option is the A4-3400 for around £50 to £55 and the AsRock A75M-ITX which can be had for around £70 to £75.

The IGP in the A4-3400 is bascially the same GPU as the HD6450 graphics card. Software such as Sony Vegas can be accelerated by OpenCL which the Llano IGP supports. At idle and during 1080P it will have similar power consumption to a Pentium dual core. However,the IGP on the A4-3400 should be better for media playback and OpenCL acceleration will prove useful too. Even the latest version of WinZip supports it.

 

[DragonQ]

Atom and Zacate are great for low-power servers but aren't really powerful enough for an HTPC, especially if you want high quality video.

Your best options are AMD Llano or Celeron G530 + nVidia GT430.

 

[vanandjuanunited]

Hmmm what lol

Play all my videos on a zacate with zero issues both on 1080 p tv and 1080 pj

 

[DragonQ]

From what I remember, both Atom and Zacate fail at 1080i (with proper vector adaptive deinterlacing, either GPU based or YADIF) and also 480/576i with a renderer using high quality resizing (e.g. MadVR).

 

[mmj_uk]

Another option is the A4-3400 for around £50 to £55 and the AsRock A75M-ITX which can be had for around £70 to £75.

The IGP in the A4-3400 is bascially the same GPU as the HD6450 graphics card. Software such as Sony Vegas can be accelerated by OpenCL which the Llano IGP supports. At idle and during 1080P it will have similar power consumption to a Pentium dual core. However,the IGP on the A4-3400 should be better for media playback and OpenCL acceleration will prove useful too. Even the latest version of WinZip supports it.

Yeah that's a good spec for the price too. The only real question mark is power consumption, heat output and noise. I've not used Llano so can't comment first hand.

 

[sarge78]

Doesn't Llano still have best idle power consumption? It's fairly decent under load too. You could get away with minimal cooling if your not utilising the the full APU (GPU part).

Hmmm what lol

Play all my videos on a zacate with zero issues both on 1080 p tv and 1080 pj

The problem is less popular formats not support by boggo player software for hardware acceleration, you can't rely on the CPU cores for decode the big stuff (you don't want that anyway...)

Phone SoCs can decode 1080p H.264 high profile/40Mbps these days. I'm using a S2 snapdragon powered 'HTPC' atm, haven't turned on the old E8400 box under the TV for ages!