The Celeron single core processors with Core2 tech just got released, with a kick-ass awesome price.

Does anyone into Core2 overclocking know anything about overclocking on a cheap motherboard? My only thought is the 650i Ultra Nvidia board, they are $100 and can clock about as well as any out there and have plenty of options.

Trouble is that they are $100.

Can a Single Core "Core2" tech processor do any HTPC function you need at 1.6 or 2.0 ghz?

Let me specify that I recently "upgraded" my socket 939 4000+ 1MB lvl2 cache PC that I had running stable overclocked to 3Ghz for the last 6 months.

I "moved up" to a Dual Core 4600+ and it is slower in everything but multi-threaded apps, and not faster enough in those to justify the price (double) over a 4000+ skt 939 that will clock to 3Ghz with nothing but Zalman on it.

Basically Dual-Core is just useless gimmickery for most people (including gamers and "power users", not just HTPC or your Grandma. Anyone who legitimately can do enough to tax a single core system most of the time, and isn't using one single program to do it, should have two computers on his desk. Obviously rendering in 3D or 2D or movies is the exception, most other programs do not support multi-threading yet)

So if these Celerons will overclock to 3Ghz and cost around half of a 100 note, then they would be the perfect companion for an HTPC, able to handle 1080p playback in software on a single core, what I assume to be the aim of an HTPC.

1Gig of DDR2 is so cheap right now that it isn't the problem either, $30 for a single stick, $35 if you want a dual-channel 2 * 512MB kit.

The only thing not cheap is the motherboard, I exclusively buy nForce for my last 7 system builds, and AMD nforce is $50-75 for a nice board, whereas Intel nforce is $100 at the low end.

What is a nice board with over/under clocking features that won't break the bank? Preferably around $60-80? I don't know about Via/SiS/Intel lately, the nForce boards can overclock the northbridge to insane heights, the world record is something close to 600-700mhz, up from 200-400mhz stock.

I have never seen a celeron that i liked.

before i knew any better i had 2 celerons, and they were both soooo slow.

is there somethign different about this celeron, or is it cheap for a reason?

reading your reply to my other post, I can see why this would be a decent processor now....you have swayed my anti celeron ways i think

Well, this one is only decent for internet browsing and possible HTPC use, because it is Core2 tech.

Before P4 and its inherent crapitude (oh my gosh, he is just making up words now), the Pentium 3 and Pentium Mobile Celeron variants were widely regarded as a nice budget solution.

Generally speaking, the only downside is/was a lack of Level 2 Cache, otherwise for all intents and purposes it is a Core2 solo. I don't know about 512KB of Level 2 Cache, but it doesn't seem like it would hamstring the processor in a low budget build.

The beauty of a Core2 Solo is that we don't need a dual core for gaming ( I know that this may be heresy, but have a look at the tests, and count me off the games that are actually supporting dual-cores right now).

Single cores may overclock more easily, they certaintly make less heat, and they are half the price, all good from where I sit.

Newegg.com has an nForce motherboard in an "open box return" for $65, that would be a crapshoot. If it pays off you have successfully built a Core2 system for under $300 new with 2GB of DDR2-800 and a case and PSU thrown in.

Get an IDE to Compact Flash adapter and install XPLite with the XP Embedded write capturing driver (so that it can't write to the flash media and wear it out) on a 4 GB flash drive ($35!?!?), and go for the triple threat of an ultra low-power PC with no moving parts other than the PSU and Heatsink fans.

I can play mpeg2 1080 HD on a celeron D with a radeon 9600 without issue using purevideo.
But mpeg4?
Never happen.
Maybe 720.

I really think a cheap low power cpu with a high powered graphics card is the new way to go for HD.

I ran a test last week.
I installed linux on a 933mhz PC with a gforce fx5200 & 256 MB of ram.
I logged into a minial X evironment & ran a video player with Hardware acceleration (Xine with XvMC)
It played a 1080i mpeg2 movie trailer off it's old slow HD almost perfectly!

There were a few pauses.
However the CPU never went above 66% utilization in the video app.
Linux monitoring apps are confusing so it's possible something else was tanking the cpu or it could of just been the lack of Ram.

I havn't been able to play with it since.
The distro I used is designed to allow people to creat their own bootable distros & can be installed to a flash drive.

so i'm thinking of doing this & maybe adding a simple graphic front end that will allow me to browse my media with a remote or allow me to tune in OTA HD.

But, I have to learn some programing & have to build my projector first before I get into all of that.

While I admire your fortitude and experimentation, I must disagree, a single core Celeron "Conroe-L" at 2Ghz is hardly a "cheap low power CPU", um except it doesn't cost a lot, and doesn't use a lot of power, and it is a CPU, OK OK you win.

I think that you NEEED a CPU fast enough to full-software whatever content is most important to you, because the video cards aren't as flexible just yet.

The future is indeed an 8500GT with the power to decode 1080i/p in real-time with no CPU resources hogged. The future is now, a 2Ghz Conroe-L is not a slacker, I am sure it can do 1080i in software if I don't miss my guess, and the 8500GT is ready and waiting for $85.

$85 and $65 for that combo, and a motherboard to put it in, $80 for 2GB of DDR, we are at the point where processing power ( A LOT of processing power) is cheaper than $300!!

The real point is that these systems need to be here yesterday, fully integrated and killing Tivo. $800 for their lame-ass HD solution can easily be trumped (not even considering the monthly "service fee"), and come with a windows Vista Premium bundle and be able to play DX10 games!!

Just a quick chime-in on your OS choices, there are a ton of full-featured Linux media distros, many under 50MB, all come with drivers already and are good to go. I wish I had some Unix core knowledge to troubleshoot them, but they might work fine for you, have a look around and just tweak one of those for yourself. Do a google for "Mini-ITX media distro" and see what comes up.

I hear you on that.
I think i've tried just about every one I could find.
Each one almost did what I wanted.

But I usually just go back to windows & my prefered media center app which does the job.
I would just like a client for it that boots off a CF card to eliminate the need for a HD.

I hear you, give this a quick read. XP Embedded is apparently safe for flash (which is what it is designed for) because of three files that make up a "write filter" service, you can add them to regular WinXP and start the service. Anything that tries to write to the Hard drive (or CF card) is re-routed to a place in the RAM dedicated to this service. Obviously have 512MB to 2Gigs of ram and disable the virtual memory, but with a 1GB stick of DDR2 and a 4Gb CF card each costing about $30, you can afford to go nuts.

Now XP won't wear out a flash card (read-only), and every reboot makes the system the same as it was when you enabled the service. Flushes all Viruses, hacks rootkits, everything goes because nothing can write to non-volatile storage .

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winnt-base...ular-winxp.html

Just some quick info on dual core processors, particularly the low power intel processors.

Basically what they did is crammed two processors on a single die (the physical heart of a CPU) and then cranked the power way down. The reason they did this is because with 64 bit apps and any 32 bit apps optimized for multi-threading, two slow processors trump a single fast processor almost every time.

Plus, a dual core processor runs much cooler and with much less power than a bigger single core processor, so you need less cooling, which means it is also much quieter.

Basically what I'm saying is, if you took a dual core processor and slammed it into a system running 32-bit windows xp (or media center or vista) and your HT apps are not optimized for multi-threading, the bigger single core will win. However, take the same dual core and switch to a 64 bit OS (vista or linux, don't matter) the dual core will suddenly be the faster of the two.

Lastly, on the intel core solo processors, what these are are dual core processors that have one of the cores either disabled or was flawed but the other was still good. Intel packages these up and sells them at a very reduced price, but you must realize these are basically half of what the dual cores are. You won't see much difference in 32-bit apps, but as far as I know they won't even run a 64-bit OS.

Ciao!

Take this with a grain of salt, first off most games/apps aren't multi-threaded, and can't be made so with a magic wand, it will take a lot of work.

Secondly, 64-bit processing is NOT "dual-core" or "dual processor", it is exactly what it says, the ability to execute or read a 64-bit long instruction/register.

A 64-bit OS WILL NOT benefit from Dual-Core.

Dual core does not "automatically trump" single core.

I wouldn't be surprised at these new celerons being half core2 duo's, but the architecture is called "Conroe-L" , and it might be that Intel was planning a single-core variant (and why not? they have dual and quad versions)

Nothing is free, so dual-core has disappointed me, it is not even truly double the work for the clock-speed. I learned this the hard way when I downgraded from a San Diego 939 4000+ to a Windsor AM2 4600+ x2. The San Diego was rock-solid at 3Ghz, yet the 4600 x2 wouldn't clock, and a theoretical 4.8Ghz worth of processor didn't do a damn bit of good except in a couple multi-threaded apps, and still didn't make like double performance, maybe 1.5x performance.

I just mentioned these procs because for $150 it is possible to get RAM, PSU, Mobo, and Conroe-L (read: possibly clockable to 3Ghz on stock cooling), WITH a PCI-E slot for that new 8400GS card with full HD-DVD decode when you want it, or 8800GTS for gaming (remember how dual-core doesn't help with Gaming?)

With 3Ghz of Conroe tech at your disposal, and dual cores generally being a waste of money at the extreme cheap HTPC level, I recommend the single-core option. (IF you do a lot of video transcoding or dual-core enabled applications, or have a bloatware OS like Vista [or XP with 20-30 messenger/useless progs running], then of course get the dual-core, just know what you are paying for.)

Hey nubie I'm getting ready to start my HTPC and I have always liked AMD because they are cheap and pretty decent. I was going to just buy an AMD Athlon 64 running at like 2.6 ghz (dual core version) which would cost me around 120ish. Do you think I would be better off buying the new celeron your talking about? Is the celeron a better bang for your buck than even the AMD's (which I always were better for the money than intel). Let me know what you think.

Well, I haven't built one yet, so I can't say from personal experience.

My opinion would be to find one of the Core2Duo's for $120 and see how you like it.

If you are at all into overclocking then there are Allendale's that will go to near 3.0Ghz out of the box on stock coolers for $84.

If you have ~$150-200 to build the system I am talking about here, and possibly having it not work out for you (I think it will work though, I just haven't the money to prove it right now), then I would shoot for it.

I like the Nforce 650i motherboards, $80-100 for one of those (beware of a possible Bios update issue[all boards, not just nvidia], you might need a supported lga775 processor to flash the bios, or a mobo company that will mail you the proper bios on a chip), and $49 for the Celeron Conroe-L chip, and $40-50 for a pair of 512MB DDR2-800 chips (1GB total), and you can bench it up.

Obviously you need a video card, the 6600GT is a nice card if you are into mild gaming. The 8400GS series was just released, With full HD-DVD decode on Vista (Purevideo HD is now free and can accelerate anything using Microsoft DXVA 2.0)

There are Via, SIS and ATi boards, the ATI might have good integrated graphics and high performance, I don't have any clue with Intel boards, and there are Nforce4 boards available with integrated Geforce 6150 graphics (6150 means DVI out, and possibly RGB/HDTV analog outs), or the VGA capable 6100 series.

I really wish I had the money, I have been wanting to build one for a long time, maybe I should put my system up for sale again (4600+ x2 AM2, DFI Infinity SLI Mobo, 120mm and 92mm case fans, Arctic Freezer 64 pro heatpipes, 6600GT SLI or a 7900GS W/a Zalman 700 (can O/C to 690mhz core!!) $500). For those wanting a solid system it is pretty nice, I just want to build another system and I need the money.