What to upgrade on my HTPC to improve performance?

[Snow-Munki]

Hi,

My HTPC is approaching 2 years old now and seems a bit sluggish. Use it everyday for media inclung bluray and MKV etc. Only 720p mainly as that's all my TV can output to.

Also use it for browsing and a few day to day things. Might start to do some network rendering to it in the future but it would be fairly rare.

Anyway current spec is:

Gigabyte ga-ma69gm-s2h ( 690g Motherboard )
Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.3ghz
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4550
Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 320GB HDD

Was thinking of picking up the Athlon II X4 620 for about £70 which my motherboard supports. And a little along the line get a quicker HDD ?

Thanks,

 

[Snow-Munki]

any suggestions ?

 

[mattbill]

I would say a new CPU sounds about spot on if you're wanting to stay with your current mobo/memory setup.