Advice on Media Centre CPU

[Wiggins]

I am in the process of building a media centre pc to go with my new nice and shiny 32" LCD

I recently purchased the Shuttle XPC SD32G2 along with an ATI HD 2600XT ( Vivo of course ), 500GB Drive and so on.

Please can you guys advise on what cheapy core2duo would be able to keep its neck above water when playing HDTV?

 

[squiffy]

Don't have Intel C2D, but any 2ghz dual core will be sufficient (I have 4200x2 in my HTPC) Single core 2ghz will be able to cope with 1080p low CPU intensive codecs (WMV, .TS Mpeg) but for H264 need more CPU horsepower, so go dual core)

 

[Wiggins]

I was going to build one on an AMD Chip as I have been told with an ATI Card they do complement each other on HDTV.

Shame that Shuttle will only accomodate Intel Chips but still provide support for ATI Cards

I may have to go for the E6xx range but unsure.

 

[sarge78]

Any will do for HDTV, If your not playing games then go for the cheepest E2140 + you can always overclock to normal speeds if needed. If you want to endulge in a few games now and again and don't want to OC then the E6420 should be good enough.

Unfortunatly the shuttle's Mobo won't run the new E6x50 chips (1333fsb)

Oh and don't forget to replace the stock cpu cooler, its far too noisy for a media center IMO, someone with a shuttle system might have some good ideas (fanless?)

Sarge.
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[Magsy]

Any of them will do, I'm playing everything (Sky H264/Bluray/HD-DVD) on a Pentium M 1.73ghz due to the acceleration of the ATI HD 2400.

 

[mattyrigby00]

e2140 would most likely be plenty

 

[HEADRAT]

Echo what people are saying here, as long as your GFX card will do the decode then you don't need a very powerful CPU.