entertainment system, which cpu?

hi i'm about to build a home theatre system, but I have no clue on what cpu to use.

should I go with an AMD dc +3800? or a Pentium d/c cpu?
All I will be doing is watching movies on a 40" lcd, and maybe using dvd shrink to shrink/burn dvd. (Looking for fastest cpu that can shrink dvd like nothing)

thanks.


pls no flame war, just answers pls.

I haven't had the opportunity to use the Pentium D yet but the Athlon X2 run cooler, especially when overclocked, and DVD Shrink is deadly fast if the files are on the hard drive (deep analysis and shrink in under 10 minutes with the setup I have).

IMO, if using a computer as part of your home entertainment centre, you want it to be almost silent. It's harder to make a Pentium D system silent because of the power draw and TDP of the CPU in comparison to an Athlon64 X2.

I hope someone can chime in with an idea of how a Pentium D setup handles DVD Shrink.

What else will you have in this system? And which case are you going with?

Ya I'd agree with that. X2-3800 and an ati video card.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2725&p=7
dont know what you want to take from these numbers...... i have no idea how well intels OC now. but anyway my opty 170 hits 2.6 stable and 2.7 if i wanted the extra volts. its fans are not loud eather my other fans are louder then the cpu fan.. not sure what your run of the mill intelD hits.

i ran an mpeg-2 encode with tmpgenc (not exactly dvd shrink, but same concept) on a 920D at stock speeds and the 3800+ at stock speeds was the winner by a longshot. I dont remember exact times, but i think it was something like 15 minutes for a 1:45:00 movie...

thanks guys as for the case I'll be using this:
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/CoolerMaster/Products.aspx?pid=633

this machine is not going to overclocked and this case comes with 3 case fans. not sure, maybe this is a bit overkill but it matches my wall unit and black couches haha.

Also another thing I have a lot of family vids on VHS and even on betamax lol. I would like to transfer everything to dvd. So heavy multitasking with encoding, should 1gb ram be good? Or go big and get 2gb!?