HTPC Upgrade

paradisiac · 20 Mar 2012 at 14:54

ok I know I asked not long back but now finally got the money back from my graphics card. so I have got about £150ish to spend, so am looking at upgrading my HTPC insides.

Current Spec :
Pentium G620
H61M-US3
4GB Zepplin RAM

Possible Upgrage :
LLANO A6-3670 BLACK EDITION 2.7GHZ APU or AMD LLANO A6-3870 3.0GHZ QUAD CORE APU
A75 EXTREME6

would there be much to gain? or would I be better adding a graphics card to my current setup (it struggles on some MKV files).

paradisiac · 20 Mar 2012 at 15:33

ok, that is an option

is the amd llano any better than the i3?

would something like a A9 Android 2.3 1.2GHz CPU Smart TV Box do an ok job, or do they not really stream?

paradisiac · 20 Mar 2012 at 15:41

honosuseri said:
What case do you have bud? Then we know what GPUs can fit.

OcUK Opera Media Case

I have a :
i5 2500k @ 4.6GHz
Z68-EXTREME4
8GB Team Elite RAM
GTX560 2GB

which I use to rip and stuff and its saved on my media server upstairs once ripped. so want my HTPC to be low powered and quiet.

paradisiac · 20 Mar 2012 at 15:57

honosuseri said:
If you use my last link for benchmarks and change my CPU to the llano you can compare them. You can see from there your current CPUs idle power consumption vs the llano.

I would just get a cheap dedicated GPU and maybe a small SSD to improve boot times from cold boot. I certainly wouldn't change socket type.

I have a 60GB SSD in there already

yeh was thinking about just fitting a graphics card, but I find media center can be laggy (I put it down to large libraires and poor cpu).

paradisiac · 20 Mar 2012 at 16:10

honosuseri said:
Well if you don't tell us what you have.... don't be surprised if we suggest something you already have lol

I would do the GPU first and see what that does for performance, you get free delivery so that's even better.

yeh, sorry, I forget what I have in each machine lol

is it worth dropping an i3 in too (or i5 if I can stretch to it)?