[mythtv-users] Athlon X2 BE2300 ok for HDTV?

Henry A Harper III hah at alumni.rice.edu
Fri Nov 23 17:49:15 UTC 2007


> > I replaced a 4600 (65W) with a BE-2350, and it works well for
> the most part.
> > There are occasional NVP prebuffering pauses, a few more than
> the 4600 had,
> > and I can't play 1080i content at 1.2x like I could with the 4600 - 720p
> > does 1.2x fine. I would like a BE-2400, 200MHz faster, but
> that's another
> > $100 and I would have a spare CPU sitting around after I swap
> the 2350 for
> > the 4200 (65W) in my windoze box. Already sold the 4600 to a
> friend. And now
> > I am "afraid" that there will be a BE-2450 or BE-2500 if I buy
> a BE-2400,
> > since the BE-2400 wasn't out when I got the 2350. For now I'll
> live with it.
> >
> You guys do realize the BE chips are basically hand picked higher
> frequency chips that are factory underclocked (by several hundred Mhz)
> and undervolted so that they use less power. I would personally just
> get the higher clocked 65nm chip and turn on the system power
> management. With power management on and at 1GHz most 65 nm chips use
> around the same power (around 20W).

That would be fine, if I didn't get horrible NVP prebuffering stuttering
(1/sec) on HD content with the power management messing with the clock
speed. I never noticed with the 4600 but I always ran that one at full
throttle with 2 SETI at home tasks so power management never clocked it down.
Then I went all green and got the lower-power handpicked chip, turned off
the SETI tasks, and it doesn't work right at the most green setting. I
compromised by having SETI only run half the day (when I might want to be
watching TV).

FWIW, my Kill-a-watt saw a 10W system difference between the 4600 and BE2350
at idle (110W vs 100W), 20W at full load (170W vs 150W).



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