Which CPU for hybrid

[chipppy]

Ah the good old which CPU question.  This should get some healthy debate going.
Dare I ask the AMD or Intel question, but to at least make it a little less personally.  Which is best for a newbie and why?  Is one easier for the install or ongoing running.  Lets ignore costs or types for the moment.

Second question is dual or quad core?  Lets say the price differents in very little between a dual and quad core.  Which is best and why? 
Is outright speed better or multitasking?
Again is there any know installation isssue that could make life hell for a newbie?

Oh and sorry for any great debate that this could start

Cheers
chipppy

[freymann]

Ah the good old which CPU question.  This should get some healthy debate going.
Dare I ask the AMD or Intel question, but to at least make it a little less personally.  Which is best for a newbie and why?  Is one easier for the install or ongoing running.  Lets ignore costs or types for the moment.

I'm using an AMD 4600+ dual core CPU in my core with 2 MB of Ram. Seems to work just fine.

If the price wasn't much different between a dual and quad core, sure, I'd get the quad core cpu... why not!?

If your hybrid core isn't serving up media to a dozen media directors, a dual core is just fine. I think you'll probably find the biggest bottleneck is the speed of data transfer in your hard drives and network.

[hari]

i like the BE2400 from AMD.

br, Hari

[fearingsept]

For my hybrid I am using the AMD 3800 duel core using the 64bit distro of LMCE. (mistake on my part and plan on going back to 32bit at some point. Not to knock 64bit but I don't see any advantage and I cannot run mame and that makes me sad.)  With only 1 gig of ram
Seems to work pretty well.
Right now I have 2 MD's running with no problem. They are both Intel single core one P4 and one Celeron.

[Afkpuz]

I think that amd and intel both work well.  Its more about the mobo hardware than your cpu, so look into those specs.  I personally use intel

[chipppy]

A quad core AMD 9350e (2GHz) is about $80 more than an Intel Dual core E5200 (2.5GHZ) That is why I ask.  As to RAM I can get the AMD X4 + 4GB 1066 RAM for $315 so I am thinking of hitting that deal.

As to the MoBo I am looking at a Gigabyte high end MoBo with NV 8200 SLI onboard graphics, with GB ethernet.

I am trying to future proof a little so that as I learn and understand more I can just build without to much trouble that is why I am putting in a lot of effort to understanding the hardware.

Cheers
chipppy

[Afkpuz]

I'm interested to know if linuxMCE can properly make use of multiple cores (both dual and quad).  I hear alot of talk about how many windows programs don't take advantage of dual core processing just because of the way they are written.

[chipppy]

hmmmm very good question.  I was assuming that since Linuxmce is a server type system that it would be written to take advantage of the multi core CPU, also remember that it is based upon the Ubuntu Distro, so that is probably were the multi-core utilisation should be occuring.
Being new to Linux and LinuxMCE I dont know.
I will ask on the Ubuntu forums if they know more about this issue, and drop a note back in this htread when I get an answer.