Q I’ve been following articles on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and have decided to build my own system. I’ve settled on the Asus AN8-VM CSM MicroATX motherboard, which can support the Athlon 64, 64FX and 64x2 processors.

Currently I’m thinking of an Athlon 3200+ processor as anything bigger or faster is unnecessary for Media Center applications, and therefore a waste of money. What do you think?
Vince Rutter

A According to Microsoft, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 requires a minimum of a 1.6GHz processor with 256MB of Ram and 4GB of free disk space. That said, Microsoft’s minimum requirements really are a bare minimum, and you should be looking at running Media Center 2005 on at least a 2.4GHz class of processor.

While the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ is clocked at 2GHz, it performs similarly to a Pentium 4 clocked around 3GHz, so should be more than sufficient. As for whether faster processors are a waste of money, this depends on what you’ll be using your Media Center for.

If you’re into the idea of streaming your content to multiple Media Center Extender devices such as the Xbox 360, you’ll need a faster processor and more Ram, although a 3200+ should handle one or two clients.

High-definition video may be a different matter. Software decoder companies such as Cyberlink advise us that the H.264 format used by Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies typically requires 3.6GHz dual-core processors.