AMD 64 3000 754 to a x2 4000 AM2 and vista media center

[tbird635]

All,
I have a fairly stable media center pc I put together based on a AMD 64 3000 socket 754 with AGP ATI graphics (x1300), and std and hi def tuners that actually does what I ask it to. The problem/question is, I'd like to move to Vista Ultimate (i know, bad idea) and am thinking along the lines of an x2 4000 am2 and a SAPPHIRE PE-AM2RS690MH AM2 motherboard which has pciexpress but also built in 1250 xpress graphics and an onboard hdmi connector. What I'm wondering is, will the new mobo/cpu combo make up for the performance hit I'll take with vista? In other words, does it have enough oats? Planning on 2gb of ram to start with. Newegg has the goods for about $160 for everything but vista.

 

[ragemonkey]

Your specs look good. A rig with baseline of an x2 4000+ and 2Gigs of RAM will handle Vista just fine. The motherboard is a good one (I am guessing 690V or 690G chipset?) As long as you are using a decently fast Hard Disk then it should work real well.... even with the onboard gfx.

The only suggestion I would make is to use something a little better than onboard graphics for Vista. Vista can tend to bog pretty hard using onboard video. For right around $40 you can pickup a x1550 off newegg. It will give you a bit more graphics power than the onboard x1250, and its definately worth the extra money if you want to play any games.

 

[KyleSTL]

That should be plenty. It you're really conserned about quality you could go for a passively-cooled 2400 or 8400/8500 card. Cards with on-board video decoding could be helpful in the future, too, which takes a ton of load off the CPU. Other than that, I think you have a good plan.