A straight up side by side comparison; which is best?

[stu8080]

I agree, i think there is nothing in it now on processors, certainly not value wise. The motherboard is the deal breaker, i find much better HTPC motherboards for the AM2 socket. Either combo should be well overpowered for GBPVR now, and should see me well in the future... I cant wait, no more compromises because the computer just cant cut it... i should be able to do allsorts of clever things with this. not bad for £200!

By the was im getting the Antec Fusion v2 Case too... You can see why im imprerpressed with it, 3 HDD space, covered DVD drive, good cooling, VFD display, volume knob and handy front ports and very sleek looks!

I love buying new toys! :-)

Thanks for all the tips

[whurlston]

I just got that case (in black) and I'm pretty impressed with it. I loaded it with a BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 with an AM2 5600+ and I'm extremely happy with it. I wish the Biostar had firewire onboard but oh well.

I went with the 5600+ instead of the 6000+ so that my DDR-II 800 clock speed would match so I could get full performance from my ram without having to overclock anything.

[stu8080]

i never got my head round the speeds, especially not when AMD 64 came about.

If i have the motherboard at 2000MHz and my processor at 1000MHz what memory speed would i need to look out for? Will this combo work???

[whurlston]

The 5600+ runs DDR2-800 at a true 800 MHz speed but the 6000+ runs DDR2-800 at 746 MHz. A good article on clock speeds can be found at http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cp...hp/3660771

[mvallevand]

Mvallevand: Which chips have virtualisation potential, and what are the advantages?

This is a reasonable explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

If you don't know what it is you probably don't need it. Basically it provides for improved performance with software like Virtual PC/Server (free), Virtual Box (free) and VMWare (server free) and several among othe. On this computer I have virtual machines running Vista, XP and 2000 often simultaneously for testing GBPVR and Happauge in all these environments. It's also great for evaluation, ie right now I am hopping back and forth between tests of Windows Home Server and freenas.

Martin