Hi,
My HTPC is getting on a bit. It's an old Conroe E6400 Core 2 Duo running on an old Asus board with 4GB DDR2.
I've recently lost the AMD 5450 discrete graphics card (long story) so I need to replace it with something silent and capable of HTPC stuff (HDMI, bitstreaming, 3D video, etc.) plus a bit of light gaming and Steam in-home streaming. An Nvidia GT730 2GB DDR3 would be around 50 quid.
However the alternative is to scrap the Conroe and buy a cheap APU solution. A decent Haswell looks pricey at 100 quid plus mobo on top. However a AMD A8 7600 AND an AsRock mobo can be purchased for around 100 quid and probably has better graphics than the low end Haswells. I'd need a couple of DDR3 sticks but I might be able to find some old stuff at work.
I'm stuck between ancient 2-core mid-range CPU plus modern lowish-end graphics vs modern low-end APU for twice the price. Would rather the cost be kept low to spend money on the main gaming rig.
Opinions welcome!
Cheers,
Ian.
Oh PS. I've looked at replacing the HTPC with something smaller (NUC / Pi2) and decided against it.
My HTPC is getting on a bit. It's an old Conroe E6400 Core 2 Duo running on an old Asus board with 4GB DDR2.
I've recently lost the AMD 5450 discrete graphics card (long story) so I need to replace it with something silent and capable of HTPC stuff (HDMI, bitstreaming, 3D video, etc.) plus a bit of light gaming and Steam in-home streaming. An Nvidia GT730 2GB DDR3 would be around 50 quid.
However the alternative is to scrap the Conroe and buy a cheap APU solution. A decent Haswell looks pricey at 100 quid plus mobo on top. However a AMD A8 7600 AND an AsRock mobo can be purchased for around 100 quid and probably has better graphics than the low end Haswells. I'd need a couple of DDR3 sticks but I might be able to find some old stuff at work.
I'm stuck between ancient 2-core mid-range CPU plus modern lowish-end graphics vs modern low-end APU for twice the price. Would rather the cost be kept low to spend money on the main gaming rig.
Opinions welcome!
Cheers,
Ian.
Oh PS. I've looked at replacing the HTPC with something smaller (NUC / Pi2) and decided against it.
