I had previously written about the D945GCLF board from Intel that comes with their new flagship Atom 230 low power processor. I had investigated its use as a potential HTPC platform as it is an integrated platform that is powerful enough to playback almost all kinds of video content. There is also little argument that it is a low power platform, which is important for a machine that will be placed in the living room.

Up till today, the only other alternative seemed to be the VIA Nano processor platform. It is another low power platform that is in direct competition with the Intel offering. AMD seemed to have little to offer as an alternative. But a detailed benchmark released today from Tom’s Hardware has blown all prior expectations.

They took an underpowered Athlon 64 processor and under clocked it at 1GHz versus the 1.6GHz speed that the Atom runs at. They coupled this processor with an advanced HTPC focused motherboard that has a modern Radeon 3200 graphics processor with built in HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs. The result is an AMD platform the runs faster while consuming less power than the Atom platform.

While the Atom platform requires 1 fan to cool down the main chipset, the AMD platform is capable of running without a fan on both the chipset and the processor. This allows it to run silent, which is fairly important for a HTPC. I would not want the HTPC fans to be drowning out any movie that I may be watching on it. So, this gave me an idea on options.

It may actually be better to build an AMD based HTPC system that runs completely silent. The price of the D945GCLF is listed as under RM250 for dealerships. The prices of the low powered AMD processors are pretty cheap. A low powered Sempron 64 LE-1150 is listed at under RM100 from the latest LowYat prices. There are a number of AMD motherboards that are priced from between RM150 to RM350, depending on the specifications.

From various benchmarks, the Sempron 64 is easily 3-4 times faster than the Atom and 2-3 times faster than the Athlon 64 2000. Although the fully loaded power is 60% higher than the Atom system, the idle power is only 8% more than the Atom. Another advantage to using the AMD system is that the processor can be replaced with a more powerful and lower powered one, when such a processor becomes available in the future. So, there is a further upgrade path available.

So, this is just another very plausible option to consider.

Notes: Sempron LE-1150 (RM90) LE-1200 (RM95) and GA-MA74GM-S2H (740G@RM240) A-S78H (780G@RM265) shelf price.

I have to say that I have been quite impressed so far, with the relative ease of use of Kubuntu. When I first bought this laptop of mine about a year ago, I did contemplate on whether to convert to 64-bit or otherwise. The new laptop came with a Athlon X2 processor that is capable of executing 64-bit code. There were both pros and cons to doing it and from my initial survey at the time, there were more difficulties than advantages.

The reasons to shift to 64-bit are mainly to do with memory and speed.

With a 32-bit computer, the maximum amount of memory that can be addressed without segmentation is about 4 gigabytes. However, due to the way that most modern PCs are constructed, some of this memory is reserved for accessing devices attached to the processor instead. However, I only have 2 gigabytes of RAM installed in this notebook anyway, and I will not require much more than that in the near future. So, there is no reason for me to switch to 64-bits for memory purposes.

With the use of 64-bit data paths, larger numbers can be computed at once. This will come in particularly handy for people who use a lot of large integers or double precision floating point numbers, which are typically used in scientific computing. Since I am not a user of these sorts of applications, I will not significantly benefit from using 64-bit computing. So, you may ask why bother switching then.

Due to the vagaries of the IA32 architecture used in most modern PCs, there are only 8 internal 32-bit registers in a processor. These registers are used to perform all the computational functions of a processor. Data is usually held in these registers and manipulated, before being stored in main memory. The AMD64 extension both doubles the size and number of register to 16 internal 64-bit registers. Technically, this means that more data can be processed inside the processor at a time, increasing speed.

So, there is technical justification for switching, but it was mainly due to the fact that I just wanted to try it to see.

All I can say that the experience was extremely fruitful. I completely reformatted, installed and updated Kubuntu to the latest version with KDE4.1 in just about 3 hours. I can attest to the fact that there were no significant issues with the switch. All the problems and workarounds that were needed in the past, seems to have been fully handled by Kubuntu automatically. For example, when I installed Firefox, it automatically installed nspluginwrapper, which allows the 32-bit flash plugin to work in a 64-bit environment.

As for the perceived performance advantages, I have experienced some aspect of it. Decompressing an archive is much faster than before, as well as compiling code. I have not yet tried encoding a DVD but I suspect that it should be much faster as well. This is not to say that there were not other problems with the installation, it’s just that these problems were also there in the 32-bit installation and I could fix them easily.

So, all in all, I think that it is a no brainer. I will install 64-bit linux on every other 64-bit machine that I get in the future. There is little reason not to anymore. And most importantly, the Atom 230 that I plan to get for my HTPC, supports the EMT64 extensions too.

Time to embrace the future!

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, there is a high chance that I’ll use the Atom based mini-ITX board from Intel as my HTPC platform. It seems that the board is actually capable of 1080HD playback as evidenced in the following video.

This system uses the D945GCLF board with an Intel Atom 230 1,6GHz HT and 256MB 533MHz DDR2 memory only! It claims to use passive cooling and would be very quiet if so. The movie is a 1080p film encoded in WMV9 or VC1 format. This is not as computationally intensive as H264 but is a good indicator. So, the board is definitely powerful enough to watch HD video encoded in MPEG4 and equivalent codecs.

I smell disaster for Intel here. If people catch on that this is all that they need for a regular computer, who is going to fork out 3 times as much for a dual core or even more for a quad core machine. And once people clue into this fact, what’s to stop system builders from building non-Intel low end machines like ARM or MIPS based systems.

Interesting.

I think that I have finalised on the main computer board that I’ll be using for my HTPC. The standard PC boards are a little too power hungry for a HTPC while the VIA boards are a little under-powered. Furthermore, the VIA EPIA platform is not easily available in Malaysia. I know because I have tried getting them before, directly from the local VIA distributor. They are certainly not cheap.

Yesterday, I checked my price list and found that Intel are now directly selling their new Atom based mini-ITX boards through the channel. So, I can buy it directly. Furthermore, they are selling it for a very cheap price. This seems like the best bet to me, for the moment. The D945GCLF board comes in a mini-ITX form factor (17cmx17cm) and has a 1.6GHz Atom processor and GMA950 graphics based chipset on it.

Although it’s not an ideal board, it is certainly usable for regular applications, including a HTPC front-end. The graphics are more than sufficient for 2D (i.e video) acceleration. The main processor, has an average power dissipation of about 2W. So, if you look at the picture, you may be wondering why there’s a big heat sink and fan on it. The big heat sink and fan is not on the processor, but on the northbridge chipset! Sneaky bastards!

Regardless, the Atom processor comes with hyper-threading technology and scores a 153 on a Cinebench benchmark, which makes it about the same performance as a Core 2 Duo running at 500MHz. I was able to playback standard-definition (720×400) H264 on my old laptop with a AthlonXP 500MHz. So, the Atom platform should be more than sufficient.

In fact, I am quite enamoured by this board. I have always been a fan of small form factor PCs running on low powered devices. I used to source some of my boards from Taiwan, in the past. I’m actually thinking of buying a bunch of these boards and using them for various other purposes, including building a Eee Monitor like desktop for myself.

An integral part of any HTPC is definitely the video display. It wouldn’t be called a HTPC otherwise. Assuming that the motherboard chosen is capable of sending video output in VGA, DVI and HDMI, there are several alternatives to choose from, when building a HTPC: Computer monitor, LCD TV, projector. The trade-off here would be size versus price.

But then, something dawned on me recently. There is no real point in building a HD capable HTPC when there are no HD sources for me to watch. Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) TV is only presently in trials and isn’t supposed to go into service until after 2010. Even Astro does not yet broadcast in HDTV although it does have the capability to do so in the future. So, my main source of media will probably be DVD quality video, which is meant for SDTV (720×480/720×576).

In other words, there is no need for me to set up a HDTV quality rig yet, at least not for another few years. By that time, the prices of HD capable devices should have dropped. So, for the moemnt, I will focus on building a SDTV capable display system:

• Monitor: 22″ 1680×1050@RM800. Viewing distance: 2.5m
• Plasma TV: 32″ 1366×768@RM2,100. Viewing distance: 3.7m
• LCD TV: 32″ 1366×768@RM2,400. Viewing distance: 3.7m
• Projector: >32″ 800×600@RM2,500. Viewing distance: >3.7m

So, a monitor isn’t really useful in a living room unless I plan to only watch thing alone. The moment that I have a few friends over, it isn’t going to cut it. This leaves the LCD TV and projector as the only viable options. Since they are both priced equally, you would think that the projector is the way to go. But there are plenty of drawbacks to the projector idea.

A projector would require a darkened room to work well. This means that the living room lights need to be off and the curtains drawn. This may or may not be suitable for everyday viewing. Also, a projector is a fairly noisy device as it needs a cooling fan to cool down the light bulb. Furthermore, the bulb itself has a limited lifespan. The cost to replace a bulb can be in the range of RM 1,500 per bulb.

So, the best option would still be a TV. Considering that there are no HDTV sources, I might just get a regular SDTV instead. A good 29″ colour TV can be had for under RM 1,000. But a much more power efficient and sexier alternative would be a 32″ plasma, which can be had for RM 2,000. There is just too much choice to be had.

Now, going back down to a lower resolution opens up a whole other can of worms with regards to the processor and graphics chip. It is perfectly possible to watch standard definition content, even when encoded with H264, on a low powered PC. I’ve tried it on my 500MHz Athlon with RS100 graphics and it works perfectly at <50% cpu utilisation. So, I would imagine it to work on an entirely passively cooled EPIA platform with a 1GHz VIA processor and Unichrome graphics.

So, we’re back to square one.

I’ve been investigating different combinations of devices for building a Home Theatre PC (HTPC). This will be one of the first things that I build when I get home. My main considerations when building a HTPC is the WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor) factor and future proofing the machine.

The WAF factor can be broken down into:

• Silent machine so that it doesn’t make a din while it runs.
• Aesthetically pleasing so that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb in the living room.

Future proofing the machine would mean:

• HDTV capable display (1920×1080)
• Digital outputs either with DVI or HDMI
• Capable of BlueRay playback

As usual, the problem is: fast, silent, cheap (pick any two).

To have a high WAF factor, requires using a low power machine so that it can be passively cooled in a small case. For this, the logical combination would involve a ultra-low power VIA processor with Unichrome graphics. However, its ability to playback high-def content is suspect because of the lower processing capabilities. Another alternative is to use an Intel/AMD processor coupled with an ATI/NVidia graphics chipset, which should provide enough power to playback any future video content, but would also dissipate quite a lot of heat in the process.

Furthermore, I am limited by the actual parts that can be purchased off-the-shelf. I would not want to import anything if I don’t absolutely have to. So far, the best option that I’ve come up with is this:

1. CPU: AMD 4050E (45W)
2. GPU: AMD780G (ATI3200) or NF8200 (Geforce 8200)
3. RAM: 1Gb

The different motherboards that support the graphics chipsets cost about RM 320 and come with all the necessary video outputs (DVI + HDMI). The ATI chip has UVD (AVIVO HD) technology while the Geforce chip has PureVideo HD technology. Both of which allow the processor to offload the HDTV decoding pipeline to the graphics processor. However, there is one catch. At present, none of these technologies are supported in Linux.

Seeing that I’ll be building a MythTV based HTPC, Linux acceleration is important. Of the two vendors, ATI is more likely to have acceleration support in Linux than NVidia. AMD has done a lot in recent months to provide cross-platform parity for its drivers and has caught up to NVidia in terms of driver quality. But on top of this, AMD has released documentation for the ATI graphics processors, which makes it possible for third party drivers to support it better.

The CPU was chosen as it is a low-power desktop processor. With a maximum TDP of 45W, it is the second coolest desktop AMD processor and almost cool enough to be a laptop processor. So, it may actually be possible to cool it passively with a suitably large heat sink. An alternative to being aesthetically pleasing would just be to hide it out of sight, except for the IR receiver.