picking a processor

[jimmybobo]

I’m deciding between the i3-2100t and the i3-2120. Seems like there’s not much power consumption difference when the two are idling. I would think that recording video several hours a day would be processor intensive, and therefore, the power use difference might be significant. Am I correct? Or is recording video more a gpu function?

[RehabMan]

Unless you’re doing some kind of post-processing on recordings (removing commercials, or transcoding for mobile devices), recording is mostly I/O bound.  That is, it is neither CPU or GPU intensive.  Your GPU gets used during playback of content.  While recording content the GPU is likely idle, and the CPU is pretty much waiting to shuffle data from one I/O path to the other (tuner card/network -> hard disk).

My main HTPC uses a i3-2100T and I have a couple of other HTPCs that are running a Pentium G620T, and all systems work great.

[Aaron Ledger]

Either way, it is hard to go wrong. It’s your choice really, a little better power consumption/heat dissipation requirements vs. a little better performance. Unless you are doing something processor intensive (commercial skip analysis, software-based video encoding), there’s not much use to the slight improvement in performance of the i3-2120 for HTPC applications. The i3-2100t is better suited to smaller and thinner chassis as well as quieter system.

[Author]

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