Llano Or HD3000?

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

Buchanan0204

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Hows this looking?
Looking to build a small HTPC case. I want it to have a bit of grunt as well, can't stand slowness!

I'm coming from an Atom+ION based system. It wasn't very snappy. Although the rubbish 2.5" Hitachi HDD may have been an issue.

Anyway. It's use will be as a HTPC and a general browsing machine. No gaming.

I'd like it to output to my 5.1 home theatre setup via HDMI if possible. If not, Spdif. Full blown bluray support with 5.1 is what I'm after. So DTS-MA LPCM and whatever the other technical terms for good audio are. I'm far from an expert in that field if you hadn't noticed

I looking at the AMD E-350 boards. However. After some reading, I can do a bit better I think. I'm on the fence with this.

Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3
Fractal Design Array R2 Mini ITX Case (With the 300W PSU)
i3-2100

I will also be adding my WD green 2TB drives. Possibly an SSD for boot drive.

That's pretty much it.

So my questions are. What do you think of it? Could I do better? How quiet is the PSU?

Could I add an aftermarket cooler to the i3 to make it quieter? Possibly a passive cooler? Or will this not fit in the Fractal?

Let me know your thoughts, all are welcome.

Budget is probably in the region of £350 tops. No more. This has to include, case, PSU, ram, mobo, cpu (or APU combo)

What about the AMD route. If I'm not mistaken it's integrated GPU is a lot better than the HD2000 and even HD3000 graphics. It's also 40 quid cheaper.

Thanks!
 
Llano definitely.

Either the E-350 or have a look at their A75 range of mITX boards.

Eg/
AsROCK A75m-ITX, which you can pair up with any Llano APU
Which will give you more grunt over the the E-350 (the E-450 is also out as well, but doesn't offer much more over the original other than small clock bumps)

Do you have an AV Receiver for this to go in to take advantage of the audio over HDMI?

First thing to do will be to pick a case you are happy with, then fill it with components. Guys in the SFF thread are good at these things! :)
 
R088ieS86 said:
Llano definitely.

Either the E-350 or have a look at their A75 range of mITX boards.

Eg/
AsROCK A75m-ITX, which you can pair up with any Llano APU
Which will give you more grunt over the the E-350 (the E-450 is also out as well, but doesn't offer much more over the original other than small clock bumps)

Do you have an AV Receiver for this to go in to take advantage of the audio over HDMI?

First thing to do will be to pick a case you are happy with, then fill it with components. Guys in the SFF thread are good at these things! :)
Click to expand...

Ahhh... Decisions!

Educate me... Why this over a sandybride setup? I've read numerous reviews. They all playback blurays fine. Power consuption is low. Encoding is better on the Intels... but I wont do much of that, if any on the HTPC.

I'm looking at the Fractal I mentioned in the first post. I will indeed be hooking it upto a receiver... was hoping it would be able to work with my 5.1 setup and be able to produce the LPCM and DTS-MA OK.
 
Asus F1A75-I DELUXE
AMD Llano A6-3650
Fractal Design Array R2 Mini ITX Case - With 300W SFX PSU
4GB Corsair 1333Mhz

How is this looking folks!

Would It be this? Or an H67 with an i3 (HD3000)

The first to accumulate 4+ votes is the one I'll buy. I'll also do a build log and mini review for others who are interested in purchasing this for an HTPC and a little light gaming on the couch with an xbox controller :D
 
Sound wise you need to look at the HDMI port on what ever you are going to buy.
It will state whether it supports DTS, DTS-HD and DTSHD-MA.

Intel are still playing catch up on the graphics front. Whilst the chips are fantastic at transcoding (hence the use in the Z68 motherboards) their decoding is average.

(lazy copy and paste from the SFF thread you were in a second ago):
The HD3000 chip in my i5-2500k doesn't maintain 23.9fps in decent movies, so you may end up getting a decrete graphics card.

It will play old dvd movies which have been upscaled onto blue ray disks. They tend to be around 20GB in size (just the movile file). But the full blown HD content, around 40GB, will stutter. Avatar stutters badly, and 3D content is worse.
Click to expand...

Apparently the ivybridge iGPUs are going to be a big improvement.
Their (i3) upside, like you said, on idle their power usuage is rock bottom.
The Llanos idle very low as well, sometimes lower than the i3.

Edit/

Asus F1A75-I DELUXE
AMD Llano A6-3650
Fractal Design Array R2 Mini ITX Case - With 300W SFX PSU
4GB Corsair 1333Mhz
Click to expand...

Board supports DTS (tick :)), Asus don't seem to comment on any further options.
Get some 1600Mhz RAM. THe APUs use the RAM for their graphics chip, and faster RAM gives better results.
Case is a bit cubey for my taste but that ones on you (have a look at the silverstone ML03s... just for comparison :))
 
Last edited:
My HTPC uses a geforce 210 fanless to play back high definition video and blue ray.
 
R088ieS86 said:
Sound wise you need to look at the HDMI port on what ever you are going to buy.
It will state whether it supports DTS, DTS-HD and DTSHD-MA.

Intel are still playing catch up on the graphics front. Whilst the chips are fantastic at transcoding (hence the use in the Z68 motherboards) their decoding is average.

(lazy copy and paste from the SFF thread you were in a second ago):


Apparently the ivybridge iGPUs are going to be a big improvement.
Their (i3) upside, like you said, on idle their power usuage is rock bottom.
The Llanos idle very low as well, sometimes lower than the i3.

Edit/



Board supports DTS (tick :)), Asus don't seem to comment on any further options.
Get some 1600Mhz RAM. THe APUs use the RAM for their graphics chip, and faster RAM gives better results.
Case is a bit cubey for my taste but that ones on you (have a look at the silverstone ML03s... just for comparison :))
Click to expand...

I'm not a massive lover of the case either, looks wise. I liked the fact it accomodated 6 hard drives. Will definitely be useful. I'll look at the silverstones though.

Cheers on the RAM. It was all the reading on the Intels... they don't benefit from 1600Mhz. 1333 was there max.

I think most of the boards support DTS over HDMI.

Do you think scrapping the whole integrated GPU thing and going for a dedicated card would be a wiser choice? Most of these boards offer 16X PCI lanes anyway.

I am leaning towards the Llano however.
 
I went with the descrete graphics option in the end, I grabbed a 6450 so I can't preace about getting an all in one.

an i3 with either a GT520 / 6450 (or higher) would work just fine. That way you will have enough CPU power to do pretty much anything and all the video content will be handled by the graphics card*.
* unless you use new 10bit extensions, but the i3 will help with those.
It will come down to your budget and preferences.

Try and find a board that does do DTS-HD-MA, that way you get lossless audio.

Couple of options:

Llano A6-3650 - £90 (Can be swapped for dual or tri core models)
Zotac A75m-itx WIFI - £105
Kingston 1600MHz RAM - £22
Silverstone ML03 -£45
Corsair 430W PSU - £37
2x80mm fans - £10
Total: £309 (ish - depending on where you source it from)

Intel i3-2100 - £95
Asus P8H61-I Intel H61 - £65
Kingston 1600MHz RAM - £22
nVidia GT520 - £40
Silverstone ML03 - £45
Corsair 430W PSU - £37
Total: £304 (ish - depending on where you source it from)

Case just put in for an example.
 
The Asus board I suggested originally is a bit better than the Zotac. I'm definitely sticking with that.

So... Now just to choose what graphics will be better for blurays/games

HD3000 or Llano. More reviews reading I think.

Anyone else want to jump in and share their thoughts.
 
This is proving much harder than I suspected it would.

So many mixed reviews online. Anandtech are now slagging the dedicated cards, the GT420 and 6450!!!

I've got no idea what to go for now. Llano, HD3000 or a dedicated card.

I can settle on a mobo no problem. It's the processor/graphics that's the issue.

If I want to play some games as well. (nothing major and not it's primary use) I'm best going for the Llano I suppose.
 
Can someone confirm if Intel still have problems with outputting 23.976fps?

If that's the case. I'm considering going down the H61 ITX route with a pentium G620 and a dedicated Nvidia card for the bitstreaming.

Any info on this would be good. All articles I found are 1 year old.
 
Did it anyway, needed to update the drivers.
So just for info.
HD3000 on i5-2500k. GPU @ stock.

Out of the few 2D films I tested all, except avatar which dipped to 19 @ one point, stayed at a constant "24" fps. So they have done quite a bit to sort out the issues.
Still have issues after skipping forwards/backwards, it takes upto 4-5 secs to resume the frame rate again, and has stuttering in video and audio until it does.

Llano seems a sound choice! Especially if you need more graphics power down the line, then you can use hybrid corssfire just by adding a matching 6 series card.
Good luck with the build.
 
R088ieS86 said:
Did it anyway, needed to update the drivers.
So just for info.
HD3000 on i5-2500k. GPU @ stock.

Out of the few 2D films I tested all, except avatar which dipped to 19 @ one point, stayed at a constant "24" fps. So they have done quite a bit to sort out the issues.
Still have issues after skipping forwards/backwards, it takes upto 4-5 secs to resume the frame rate again, and has stuttering in video and audio until it does.

Llano seems a sound choice! Especially if you need more graphics power down the line, then you can use hybrid corssfire just by adding a matching 6 series card.
Good luck with the build.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. My old Atom+ION setup was the same. It skipped for a good few seconds when skipping in. Even on SD movies. Very annoying.

Well... after 3 days and hours and hours of research. I opted to buy the Asus o play mini from OcUK. £55. It bitstreams the audio via HDMI, playsback all file formats inc .mkv. No stuttering, streams across network, Gb lan, Wifi, Youtube and other video casts built in.

Saves me a lot of hassle and a lot of cash. Granted, it's not as flexible as XBMC. But it certainly saves me hassle trying to configure all the drivers and settings for the audio etc. Sometimes Apple have got the right idea making things just work. I am getting a bit sick of all this tweaking with Windows... and nothing ever works :(
 
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