New AMD APU's

[Elmo Putney]

I'm really liking the way AMD are integrating GPU's onto thier chips it's a really nice direction for htpc's, has anyone tried the already released E350 boards with NPVR, looks like they are up to the job as a server or silent client, and although still more expensive than a PCH refurb you could probably sling one together for £180 ish without an OS.

[hasso]

I'm now using the above (mATX board) as my main GBPVR server. Installation was quite easy (Windows 7 32bit). Did get some BSODs which I suspect were due to a Seagate 2TB green drive I was using. I think those are now resolved now that I'm running Windows 7 SP1. Got the mATX as I need the slots for the three tuner cards (two PCI T500s and one PCIe HD4400.

I'm satisfied with the overall performance. Maybe just a tad slower than what I was using before (see signature), but since this is a dedicated media center, this is not really noticeable to me. Sometimes during skipping ahead or behind there a bit of pixelation which quickly goes away.

It runs cool, no fan used on the MB, and I took all the case fans out except for the PSU one which pretty well runs silently. Loudest sound is now actually the fan in my 5 year old Sony LCD 40" TV.

Power consumption... overall saving of 30-40 watts when in use. In standby I think it's about a watt.

Just don't make the mistake of plugging your keyboard/mouse into the USB3 ports for installation. They won't work.. not at least in the OS until you install the USB3 drivers. The order of installation for me was: Windows 7, all drivers from the CD, tuner card drivers from the CD, update of AMD Catalyst to the latest version, update to Windows 7 SP1.

Other things to note: no onboard RAID. When first using Vista on the board, I tried using Windows soft RAID, but everytime the machine came out of standby, RAID was broken. Having said that I've had no issues taping three shows and watching another from one drive.

Let me know if you have any specific queries.

[mvallevand]

The E-350 isn't really the new AMD APU. Yesterday I was reading the announcements for the AMD A8-3500M APU (llano) and its sounds impressive. On this linux review http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...inux&num=1 the E-350 and Atom 330 are pretty much on par and I find my Atom really just average as a computer.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

the E-350 is a good bit more powerful than an Atom 330. It only looks close in that review because they're being compared to the massively more powerful A8. I used E-350 boards for the last bunch of customer PC's I built, they were quite impressive; conversely I use Atom D510 (a little better performing than the 330, but not much) boards for the firewalls I build, and I did once test Windows 7 on one of them and found it merely acceptable.

[imilne]

Can they do proper 23.976Hz like the discrete ATI cards (and unlike anything from nVidia or Intel who still can't get it right)?

Iain

[jcjefferies]

I looked at this board a couple of days ago and was previously looking at a Dual Athlon motherboard. The built in Radeon HD 6310 video seems to support UDV3 so should do H264 acceleration. However if you read the E-350 processor spec one of the selling points they are pushing is "DirectX® 11 enabled, and capable of playing back 1080p HD content." Looking at the spec the video chip is built into the processor.

Hasso, I would be interested in the processor load playing SD and HD and how much memory it needs to run NPVR. Also did you have any problem getting NPVR to use acceleration and which decoders did you use.

[hasso]

Last time I checked I think the CPU load was at 25% playing back an 1080i recording. Haven't tried any 1080p content. Yes it does do hardware acceleration. For HD playback I've got the Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 codec... from HDPack 2.4. For memory I've got 2x2 Kingston 2G DDR3 1333 sticks, but since it's running Windows 7 32bit, the OS sees 2.5G plus 512MB for video.

[pBS]

25% seems pretty high for full acceleration...i get under 10% watching h264 livetv and recordings..using a HD4650 with cyberlink codecs...
that board does look good for htpc, i don't think it'll feel less responsive because of the cpu if only using for video..

[ga_mueller]

Yeah. Pretty high is right. 10% CPU here with an Atom 330 and 1080i content/Cyberlink PDVD9 decoder and the worlds crappiest video card. With 25% CPU I don't think there is any accel.... but does it stutter???

[hasso]

Well, maybe 25% is a bit high and I'll check again when I have a chance (wife presently watching movie)... But no stutter, no jerky panning or tearing. Looks pretty good in my opinion.