Which AMD CPU for a HTPC with Vista premium?

[Squilliam]

HTPC thats going to do voice commands with Dragon 09 and playback of my ripped dvd collection. What CPU do I need to run it?

I have a gigabyte 780g motherboard with HDMI and 1gb of ram.

What I need is a CPU to run it.

I could get either

A Sempron LE-1200 2ghz for $52

An Athlon X2 - 4800+ 2.5ghz Brisbane core for $100

An Athlon X2 BE-2350 2.1ghz for $130

Im kind of doing it on the cheap, im stealing ram from my main PC and using old hard drives and an old Matx case I have lying around. I don't want to pay for capabilities I don't need but I would be worse off not paying for something I need now and paying again later.

I had a look in Tomshardware and they said there was essentially no difference between the CPU's when in idling due to cool n quiet but I was wanting to know if the X2 - 4800 would be significantly louder at all than the sempron or the X2 BE and if I would be better off with the BE?

Edit: I won't be encoding or recording TV I have a seperate games pc.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

TBH any dual-core CPU on the market should be more than capable of handling the tasks you mentioned.

How about the new X2 4050e which has just a 45W TDP and runs @ 2.1GHz. $66 @ the Egg right now.

If you'd like a little more horsepower I'd recommend the 65W Windsor core X2 4600 for the same price.

You'll be happy with either one.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I've got a 4450 (2.3Ghz) and I really like it. You wont hear it at all even with the stock fan and my htpc is in the living room under the tv. You only hear it in the morning when you just woke up and everything is still quite in the house but you wont hear it at all during the day. I didnt manage to run 1080p content on it smoothly though so you'd have to use the onboard gpu if you want that (I also got a 780g board only no hd-tv so I still use a pci card) or buy a quadcore (for some reason my q6600 plays 1080p with only 25% on the cpu while the amd doesnt do it smooth even @ 100%).

 

[ShaidarHaran]

I didn't see any mention of 1080P specifically, but that's definitely a good point to keep in mind when building. I don't have any experience with 1080P playback on 780G specifically, but according to these tests it handles most formats of 1080P video with ease.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Is their any specific reason why you want to run vista on it btw? I got XP in combination with media portal and I think that works great. I dont know how the codec support in vista mce is but in xp mce there are alot of formats that you cant get to work. With media portal you can run just about everything and you got alot more customization options (I also got weather reports running etc). Anyway if you really only want to play dvd's just about any cpu you can buy new will do. Even my old 1ghz thunderbird could almost run all dvd's smooth. My 4450e sits at 1Ghz all the time when playing DVD's.

I spend 250 euro's on the following config:
amd 4450e
Gigabyte 780g board
2gb ram
Earthwatt high efficency 380watt psu (and its damn silent as well!)

I reused the case and hdd's from my old thunderbird htpc.

 

[Squilliam]

TBH any dual-core CPU on the market should be more than capable of handling the tasks you mentioned.

How about the new X2 4050e which has just a 45W TDP and runs @ 2.1GHz. $66 @ the Egg right now.

If you'd like a little more horsepower I'd recommend the 65W Windsor core X2 4600 for the same price.

You'll be happy with either one.

I live in New Zealand so no Newegg for me sadly.

I've got a 4450 (2.3Ghz) and I really like it. You wont hear it at all even with the stock fan and my htpc is in the living room under the tv. You only hear it in the morning when you just woke up and everything is still quite in the house but you wont hear it at all during the day. I didnt manage to run 1080p content on it smoothly though so you'd have to use the onboard gpu if you want that (I also got a 780g board only no hd-tv so I still use a pci card) or buy a quadcore (for some reason my q6600 plays 1080p with only 25% on the cpu while the amd doesnt do it smooth even @ 100%).

I have a 1080p HDTV but I don't have the bandwidth to download nor can I rip 1080P off BLU ray and I have a PS3 for that anyway. Im going to see how it runs, my build has a decent PSU in it and im only running DVD quality movies. But thanks for the heads up on the 1080p part.

I didn't see any mention of 1080P specifically, but that's definitely a good point to keep in mind when building. I don't have any experience with 1080P playback on 780G specifically, but according to these tests it handles most formats of 1080P video with ease.

Thanks for the info, its great to know I made a good choice!

Is their any specific reason why you want to run vista on it btw? I got XP in combination with media portal and I think that works great. I dont know how the codec support in vista mce is but in xp mce there are alot of formats that you cant get to work. With media portal you can run just about everything and you got alot more customization options (I also got weather reports running etc). Anyway if you really only want to play dvd's just about any cpu you can buy new will do. Even my old 1ghz thunderbird could almost run all dvd's smooth. My 4450e sits at 1Ghz all the time when playing DVD's.

I spend 250 euro's on the following config:
amd 4450e
Gigabyte 780g board
2gb ram
Earthwatt high efficency 380watt psu (and its damn silent as well!)

I reused the case and hdd's from my old thunderbird htpc.

Nice setup! Well I couldn't get it out of my head to not play games on my TV so I settled for a nice 4800+ which according to review sites makes the IGP run a little faster than the slower semprons. As for Vista I have it on my main gaming machine so I thought it would be easier to keep everything at the same level for ease of use/networking etc. I will definately check out media portal at some later date but for now I'll see how the Media centre in vista treats me.

Thanks for all your help guys, but I think I've settled on the 65nm Brisbane 4800+