Power Consumption

Arguably one of the most important parts of a home theatre is power consumption because the beauty of an HTPC over any CE device is that it's entirely customisable to act as a multi-function platform. So, while it's not playing back your video and music, it can serve content to other PCs or sit there and download in the background. In this respect many users will want it on for most or all of the day, so a low idle power is essential to not break the bank.

The two CPUs used in these tests are both manufactured on a 65nm process and both are dual-core. However, it’s worth remembering that the X2 5000+ EE is some 800MHz faster and therefore we expect it to use appreciably more power.

We did set the Intel C1E state and AMD Cool'n'Quiet respectively, and we found the MSI-AMD system to be even slightly more energy intensive than the last one we looked at.



Despite the extremely small and low power AMD 690G chipset, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU seems to gobble up any sort of power saving this offers, while the Intel G35-based board from Asus uses quite a bit less power than the MSI-AMD setup, even though the Asus board is more feature packed. In comparison, the single chip Nvidia GeForce 7100/nForce 630i comes out trumps in both idle and load. This is something we’d like to see from Nvidia on its more enthusiast-orientated chipsets too.

If you're going to run a machine all day, then obviously Intel might be more up your street – even more so now the lower power 45nm dual core "Wolfdale" CPUs have launched. That said, the slowest model is "just" 2.66GHz and still very much more expensive than the E4000 series processors. If you will just use the system to watch video, then any of the boards will suffice and offer a pretty big power saving over a full ATX board and discrete graphics card combination.

Value and Conclusions

As it currently stands, none of the solutions are good enough to deliver smooth playback in protected Blu-ray and HD DVD movies – only the MSI K9AGM3-FIH comes close but there's still not enough processing overhead spare to make it a good solution. You could buy a more powerful CPU, but that gets rid of the attractiveness that draws you to the AMD solution and if you're going to splash the cash you might as well buy a discrete graphics product that offloads all video processing from the CPU: using either ATI’s Avivo HD or Nvidia’s PureVideo HD video processing engines.

Integrated graphics is not really designed for gaming; I don't care what the graphics boys try to claim. In this respect, I don't really care that Intel’s gaming support is exceptionally poor on its integrated graphics solution when you consider that the video output quality comes by the bucket load. But what good is its output if it can't actually play HD DVD and Blu-ray discs back in a watchable manner? We find ourselves in catch 22. In addition, for the £40 extra Intel charges, why not just buy a discrete card for the same price and drop it in the MSI?

If you're not concerned with investing in expensive High-Definition players (well, less so expensive these days) and only want to play back HD content from other sources like WMV9HD or h264(or x264) then all will certainly offer a very capable HTPC for all HD video that isn't very high bit-rate h264. Every chipset seems to have its niche performance, but all perform around about the same when you look at the bigger picture. What's surprising is that even though the Nvidia-based solution from Gigabyte has absolutely no hardware acceleration, it still manages to outperform the Intel G35 in terms of lower CPU usage in quite a few cases. But why care if the output is utter tripe?

Most will still prefer to buy a CE device instead for Blu-ray or HD DVD, as there are features on these just won’t be available on a HTPC. Things like Deep Colour support (when disc authors and TVs start making use of it) and also lossless audio streams such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS MasterHD audio. At the moment the S/PDIF loop back from the HD audio chipset is limited to just standard DVD quality Dolby Digital and DTS.

The MSI K9AGM3-FIH, when combined with an Energy Efficient Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is the most inexpensive solution with silicon-level HCDP and HDMI support and also good quality sound and video outputs – all of which just sweetens the deal. Of course, it doesn't support the faster 125W CPUs, but then for under £40, we don’t expect it to. While it’s not the absolute best solution if money was no object, it is the cheapest and still packs a pretty heavy punch.

The Gigabyte board may have a fully featured rear I/O, the best onboard sound of the bunch and if you were unaware of the difference in video quality output, it would probably suffice. However as it stands we cannot recommend it for a HTPC – it's not a bad board, but that doesn't make it the right solution here.

Finally, the Asus has the best features – plenty of upgrade potential, tons of overclocking options, plenty of SATA, all solid capacitors, high quality power regulation and the best quality of video playback quality we've seen from an integrated graphics processor. However it's marred by inferior sound, a much higher price and no actual noticeable video offloading performance enhancement compared to its Nvidia-based competitor from Gigabyte. It not only has far more shader horsepower and clock speed, but it also has more specific video acceleration components – but none of this seems to be used.

Final Thoughts

If you're after a system today, we'd still go for the inexpensive MSI K9AGM3-FIH. It's a perfect interim solution because it's very cheap and comes with a good balance of features. There's also the fact that the AM2 CPU will drop into an AM2+ socket should you want to get one of the newer IGP boards coming in the near future, as these are all likely to feature full-HD video decode offloading. Everything you need is there and while it's not perfect, the video quality on offer is acceptable.

We're genuinely surprised at the outcome – we didn't ever expect the AMD 690G to last anywhere near this long as our preferred choice, however the MSI seems to have got it right with its K9AGM3-FIH as it remains the best solution for the time being.

Asus P5E-VM HDMI

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• IGP Video Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• IGP Video Quality
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 3/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

MSI K9AGM3-FIH

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• IGP Video Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

What do these scores mean?