patseguin Global Moderator Posted July 15, 2014 Global Moderator Share Posted July 15, 2014 I have an XBMC based home built system with an i3 processor. Would I see any benefit to upgrading to an i5 CPU? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigkaye Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 No. I use a celeron 1000M processor, which is worse than the i3 processor and I notice little difference, bit quicker menus maybe - it still streams 40GB bluray ISOs from my network share the same as my quad core i7 does. This is assuming your HTPC just consumes media and you don't rip DVDs, MP3s, blurays, etc. If you are doing that stuff then yes it will make a difference. If you want a speed increase go with an SSD. Massive improvement. I see you already have one however... Dashel 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmeunit Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 I'm running everything on an i3 and everything is fine. I'm running CouchPotato, Sickbeard, Subsonic, Plex, AirServer, XBMC, and a few other things. Booting takes FOREVER because of the disk activity and I'm using spinning drives, but it runs fine. It even transcodes fine with Plex. That's where you "might" see a gain, but if you're not ripping and stuff, like Bigkaye mentioned, I wouldn't bother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tsupersonic Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Is it particularly slow in doing something or are you just looking for a reason to upgrade? What generation i3/i5 are we talking about here? Either way, it should be plenty of power for HTPC purposes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted July 16, 2014 Share Posted July 16, 2014 I just bought an Intel NUC I3 and it runs everything butter smooth Did put an SSD in it for the OS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patseguin Global Moderator Posted July 16, 2014 Author Global Moderator Share Posted July 16, 2014 Actually, I have no real reason to upgrade other than maybe better software decoding of ISO/MVC files. Right now, XBMC runs super smooth with the most resource intensive skins and I get full 1080p 2D and 3D movies.. With the SSD and OpenElec, it boots in only a few seconds and goes right to XBMC. I guess maybe I shouldn't mess with it unless the i5 offered something super beneficial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts