[pichon]

I have narrowed down my motherboard choice to the GIGABYTE GA-M78SM-S2H because I have been told that its nVidia 8200 will pass 7.1pcm to my receiver via the HDMI. Please correct that info if it is wrong.


In addition to HTPC (blu-ray, music, and dvd) duties I would like to be able to run a few games off of it. Nothing too fancy though.


With that in mind here are the contenders:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 2.7GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core black edition Processor


AMD Phenom 8650 Toliman 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Triple-Core Processor


Like I said, what would you pick and why?

 

[RodNewstrom]

The reason there are so many different choices is not because one is universally better than another but because each has it's place depending on what you're trying to do.


I have a LOT of equipment in my HTPC case: nMediaPC 2000B case with CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX PS, J&W Minix 780G MB, Phenom 9350e, 4GB DDR2 SODIMM, 2x G.Skill FS-25S2-32GB SSD RAID 0, 1x WD5002ABYS 500 GB HDD, LG GGC-H20L HD DVD/BD read, 4x2 HDMI Matrix HSS0402, USB-UIRT, Hot Link Pro IR Repeater, Blaupunkt THA-275 and THA-475 Class-D Audio amps, D-Link DUB-H7 7 port USB hub, Tritton AX360, Hauppauge 1212, and 2x CurtPalme HDFury2.


With this rig, thermal dissipation matters a LOT, so I was originally planning on using the 45W Athlons but switched to the 9350e 65W Phenoms at the last minute. Here's why:


1) I'm set up to record from one channel while playing on another and...

2) I would like to be able to rip while doing the above and...

3) This is not only my HTPC but my home server as well. Even though I run

single digit CPU loads running ANyDVD/PowerDVD on Blue-Ray, I was worried that external server requests would cause it to stutter, so I threw in the extra throughput.


I decided to put the whole beast into a seperate sound-proofed and ventilated cabinet and add a control head (Lilliput touch screen and external LG Multi-Drive) external so I could tolerate more dissipation without creating a lot of noise.


If the Nvidia chips in your board are at all like my 780G, you don't need hardly any throughput to play Blue-Ray. Thus, the trade for CPU selection involves what ELSE you want to do, how much power the system can dissipate and, by extension, how loud it can be. Cost, of course, is usually a factor.

 

[jruser]

I would get the 9600 or the 7750 and take the 8650 off of the list. The 9600 is $10 more than the 8650 yet has an extra core.


The TLB glitch has almost no chance of occurring, and if it does there is a BIOS fix.



9600 would win out if you were planning on running applications that benefit from multithreading or you plan on doing multiple processor intensive processes at once. Otherwise, the higher clockspeed of the 7750 would benefit more.

 

[mr007]

It beter to have a faster dual core then a slower quad core.

 

[pichon]

I think I may go with the AMD Phenom 9950 BLACK EDITION. It is faster and has an extra core. Any thoughts? Newegg has it for $159 and it is 2.6ghz quad core.

 

[RodNewstrom]



Quote:
Originally Posted by mr007 /forum/post/15522665


It beter to have a faster dual core then a slower quad core.

This has been shown to be true for single applications which suffer overhead in threading (if theaded at all). When running multiple applications, however, the cores allow additional jobs to be run with no impact on the other jobs. In my case, this means I can be watching a DVD using my external BD player while ripping a BD to my RAID array on another while simultaneously servicing network requests to pull media off the RAID as well.

 

[jruser]



Quote:
Originally Posted by pichon /forum/post/15524279


I think I may go with the AMD Phenom 9950 BLACK EDITION. It is faster and has an extra core. Any thoughts? Newegg has it for $159 and it is 2.6ghz quad core.

Note that the Black Edition processors do not come with a heatsink, so there will be an extra expense.


With that in mind, the 9850 and 9950 are decent. I don't think the 9950 is worth the extra money over the 9850 however. Also, note that there are two versions of the 9950 (a 125W version and a 140W version). You will want to make sure your motherboard is certified to work with a 140W processor.


If the extra money isn't a big deal to you, the 9950 is good, but it is hard to beat the 9600 for overall value (since it comes with a heatsink). I doubt you would ever notice the .3ghz difference in an HTPC (unless you are editing/encoding HD video).