CPUs...

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Right - Vista brings my 2Gb Athlon XP 2400+ machine to a crawl and I've had
a number of BSODs (the best one of which was telling me I had faulty RAM
although I can run memtest for as long as you like and it's fine) so maybe
it's time to forget reusing old hardware (I had previously been trying to
reuse stuff like DDR RAM instead of changing to DDR2) and get a bit more up
to date hardware-wise.

So - Athlon X2, Pentium D or Core 2 Duo?

I know the Core 2 Duo is the current flavour of the month but it's also
quite expensive and I don't know whether it would even be of any real
advantage to me.

I use my desktop PC for ripping DVDs, watching stuff that has been recorded
on the MCE box downstairs or DVDs off the network server, email,
bittorrent,
web browsing, MSN, IRC etc. Nothing excessively taxing except for the DVD
ripping and DVD playback I guess.

Any opinions on the pros and cons of the different processors?

Phil