New Toy

Well I broke down and bought an xbox 360, hopefully I can still get my sleep at night :-)

New Media Center PC

So I'm in the process of gathering parts for building a new Media Center PC. I have an older PC that I'm playing with, but I decided that a new PC will give me the best performance.

• Case
  
• APEX TX-346 Black/Silver Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case ATX12V 300W
• Quantity of 1
  
• Motherboard
  
• ECS AMD690GM-M2 AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
• Quantity of 1
• Processor
  
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor
• Quantity of 1
• Memory
  
• Transcend JETRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
• Quantity of 1
• Hard Drive
  
• Western Digital Caviar SE WD5000AAJS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
• Quantity of 2
• Keyboard/Mouse
  
• Logitech 967561-0403 Black USB + PS/2 Cordless
• Quantity of 1
• DVD BUrner
  
• LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE
• Quantity of 1
• TV Tuner
  
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Dual TV Recorder Tuner Card w/MCE Remote 253 PCI Interface
• Quantity of 1
• This card has dual tv tuners on it, it allows you to watch a tv show and record another or record two shows at once.

Windows Media Center

So I'm in the process of setting up a windows media center to create my own dvr station, my plan is to start with a PVR-500 tuner card, I can record two channels at once. Then pickup a xbox 360 and use it as a media extender.

This guy explains pretty much what I'm going to do. I'll post specs on the media center pc once I get it up and running.


http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/turn-your-windows-pc-into-a-media-center-powerhouse-on-the-cheap-298408.php

Dual Core vs Quad Core

So I was doing some research today on Dual Core vs Quad Core processors and I came away with this.
Today's quad core can't take advantage of all 4 cores and applications can't take advantage of the cores either.

So with that said neither can dual cores. So from everything I read it is better to spend the money and get a faster dual core processor then it is to get a slower quad core processor. Plus its cheaper.

Well not bad for the first post...

Peace

Mikey