My recently-built system, on the other hand has different requirements to yours. I don't use it as a PVR (despite having Windows MCE installed) so all I need to use it for is playback of stored music/Divx video. With this in mind (and working to a tight-fisted budget!), I selected a motherboard with integrated graphics - nForce 6100 without any hardware-assisted HD PureVideo decoding - and a low-end CPU: Sempron 3200+. Once drive prices are greatly reduced, I hope to be able to use this system to playback HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. At present, my low-end system can decode 720p h.264 flawlessly (using the CoreAVC codec) but it will probably struggle with 1080p so I'll need to upgrade either the motherboard to obtain UVD (or NVidia equivalent) support or maybe get a cheap dual-core chip.
The prime motivating factor when I was building my PC was to produce a low-profile and almost silent PC and my low-end highly-undervolted processor puts out practically no heat => silent cooling. When thinking of 1080p support I'd therefore prefer to keep this processor and obtain a new motherboard with full h.264 hardware decode in the IGP. This would undoubtedly put less heat into the system than even a low-end dual-core chip.
In effect, we're agreeing here to some extent - your PC's specification should be decided by its expected uses. My point is that adding full decode capability to every IGP is really a no-brainer because it will take what, just a few mm^2 of die space (?) but will enable a much wider spectrum of usage. Of course, once these decode capabilities are widespread, we'll need to start looking towards providing full real-time hardware encode of h.264 which will be a bit trickier. :smile:
The prime motivating factor when I was building my PC was to produce a low-profile and almost silent PC and my low-end highly-undervolted processor puts out practically no heat => silent cooling. When thinking of 1080p support I'd therefore prefer to keep this processor and obtain a new motherboard with full h.264 hardware decode in the IGP. This would undoubtedly put less heat into the system than even a low-end dual-core chip.
In effect, we're agreeing here to some extent - your PC's specification should be decided by its expected uses. My point is that adding full decode capability to every IGP is really a no-brainer because it will take what, just a few mm^2 of die space (?) but will enable a much wider spectrum of usage. Of course, once these decode capabilities are widespread, we'll need to start looking towards providing full real-time hardware encode of h.264 which will be a bit trickier. :smile:
