Cheapest AM2 CPU for HTPC?

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jonjon0nline

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What's the cheapest AMD AM2 CPU I can use with an HTPC? I plan on pairing it with an HD2600XT or Pro to off load from the CPU.

I plan on watching HD and playing BluRay. So far I have the following:

SST-SG01e-BW, SST-NT06 Lite, Gigabyte MA69GM-S2H, Corsair XMS2 (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800, ST60F 600w Modular, Vista 32-bit Home Prem.
 
The 2600 ATI card is a nightmare..

<--highly suggests 8600GT Nvidia card.

And a AMD X2 5000+ is on the safe side with HD/BD playback. No lag here, and I've played dozens of movies natively from the disk in both BD/HD formats.
 
Nightmare? How so? I saw articles where the 2400/2600 cards offloaded more from the CPU. I was planning on throwing a 5000+ BE at it, but was trying to see if I can get by with less.
 
Drivers = nightmare... go ahead and give it a try if you don't believe me.. lol. That and the HDCP doesn't always handshake right. There's been plenty of disappointed people on this forum and other forums.

The Nvidia card just doesn't offload VC-1 much at all, but you don't really need to because it's easy enough for the CPU to take care of.
 
Have you already bought the mobo? If not then I would recommend This Mobo. Its the new mATX gigabyte mobo with hdmi out. People are saying the onboard video will offload from the cpu very well. Someone on avsforum also says he has it working with a 3600X2 for blu ray playback with perfect playback.
 
SC385 said:
Have you already bought the mobo? If not then I would recommend This Mobo. Its the new mATX gigabyte mobo with hdmi out. People are saying the onboard video will offload from the cpu very well. Someone on avsforum also says he has it working with a 3600X2 for blu ray playback with perfect playback.
Click to expand...

Link is broken and it's the same mobo I already have... Have a link from avsforum?
 
Just to let you know my friend ordered this from clubit Tuesday and should be getting it tomorrow. I'll come back here after we play with it to let you know how it works. He wont be using a blu ray drive or hddvd drive but will be using h264 rips so video decoding works on those.
 
H264 and x264 rips aren't as demanding as native disk playback. It might not be too good of a gauge. The native disk playback has to process full resolution audio like uncompressed tracks, encryption, and higher bitrate video.
 
If you're going with a 2600 then just go ahead and get an X2 4400; Wiretap is correct that the drivers are/were terrible for the 2x00 HD cards when it came to HiDef DVD playback but theres one thing you really need to keep in mind with them is that they suck for MPEG2 playback (shader dependent) which means 1080i MPEG2 can easily bring it to it's knees.

The 3x00 series is suppose to correct many of the mistakes that held the 2x00 series back but, honestly, I would go NV since they have the more "competent" cards when it comes to this (drivers are better).
 
CrimandEvil said:
If you're going with a 2600 then just go ahead and get an X2 4400; Wiretap is correct that the drivers are/were terrible for the 2x00 HD cards when it came to HiDef DVD playback but theres one thing you really need to keep in mind with them is that they suck for MPEG2 playback (shader dependent) which means 1080i MPEG2 can easily bring it to it's knees.

The 3x00 series is suppose to correct many of the mistakes that held the 2x00 series back but, honestly, I would go NV since they have the more "competent" cards when it comes to this (drivers are better).
Click to expand...

Actually, just having replaced an Asus 8600gt that would cause my Vista HTPC to blue-screen occasionally (regardless of the drivers used) with a Diamond 3850 card that works great and is cool and quiet, I would go with an ATI card. I've owned both brands for the last 7 years or more and I always go back to ATI eventually.
 
I'll go one step further here and say that both companies have come a long way. The brand (manufacturer) and model of card you choose will sometimes effect the outcome of stability of the drivers as well. I often have at least 2 or 3 computers (such as right now) that are running both ATI and Nvidia cards at any given time and I would have to give my bias toward ATI's 3xxx cards for HTPC performance and stability for this generation so far. The 9xxx cards from Nvidia may change this for a short time. We'll see.
 
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