Help: E5200, E7400, Q8200, or Q6600?

Hmm, I'm not going to vote in the poll, b/c I don't have experience with them, but IMO, you should go with a quad to say the least. 1080p HD formats take up a lot of processing power, and I can see why you had a conflict w/ a dual core AMD doing that. I'm guessing this is going to be an HTPC or something, right? My suggestion is the q8200 or q6600.

I'm watching speed racer in 1080p on your current Kuma x2 7750 right now.

Xzero had just sold his x27750 HTPC to someone so he's getting a whole new build.

I've told him he might as well save $$ on his next build and get a e52 that'll OC higher than his current Kuma, which already plays all his 1080p movies without a single lag spike.

Experience > theory.

With Gigabyte G31M board, E5200 should be fine.

E5200 for sure, it'll do everything you need for quite cheap!

E5200 I watch most of my movies on my PC now and I never have any problems with it.

E5200 is more than enough for your purposes. You could run an OC'd E2100 and still be fine!

For your tasks, grab the E5200

I agree if you were to get one of those two dual cores I would get the e5200. If you really want to spend the money and want to do things like 5 years down the road get the quad. I know 5 years is stretching it but maybe you can give it to someone adn they could use it

No sense in spending the extra scratch on the 7400 when the 5200 is about as good.

My choice is if your gonna spend the money (165+) on a cpu then get the E8400 cause it will run what you need and be able to run most everything the lower end quads will.The lower end quads are great if you need more than 1 or 2 programs running at once.Then again if its a budget your concerned with go with the best dual core you can afford.I run a Q9550 because I had the extra money when I was building not because I needed it for anything.It will last me for a long time before it will need upgraded.