Another CPU curiosity thread, apologies in advance

[releasedtruth]

Yeah, yeah, I should know better, but I haven't upgraded my system in nearly 4 years now and thought it might be fun (old system only has a 60GB HD, hardly adequate). I was thinking about doing a barebones system in the realm of perhaps a: 

Phenom X4 965 3.4GHz or i5 661 3.33GHz or i5 750 2.8GHz

Now I've seen the benchmarks, but not sure if that translates for emulation. I'll upgrade to XP 64 and the 64 bit MAME build as well. You can see a common thread here, all in the $200 CPU range. I know it's overkill for most everything, but I wouldn't mind trying some games that have been impossible for me in the past. Advice? Thanks, as always

RT

[Osirus23]

If you're going to upgrade to 64 bit Windows get Win 7 x64.

XP is outdated the the x64 edition can be driver hell.

[ragnar]

What Osiris says is probably true.  Just go Windows 7.  Check out hte Dell outlet.

When you say upgrade, do you just mean that you want to do a CPU swap with your current hardware or are you making a new box?  If a new box, consider the Dell outlet.  Might have to spend $300 but there are some good PCs there.

Curious though, what games do you want to play that you can not currently play?

[ark_ader]

What is wrong with Linux?

Be faster than Windoze.

[releasedtruth]

I think I'm going to put down $400 and get new a new system. CPU/Mboard/RAM/HDD/Vcard (only because the old Radeon is AGP).  I'll ghost this drive to the new one or clean build from the ground up. That may not be too bad if I can keep all my GameEx settings and graphics. Currently I only do SNES/ZiNC/Daphne/MAME.  I'm running a Radeon 9600GT --> Component out. Gives a great 640x432 picture, readable windows. An X1300 PCIe should give me the same for now. I've considered decasing, but a barebones in case would be fine, just put it on a drawer slide.

Current system is a P4-3.0 with 2GB RAM, 60GB HD, anemic 285w PS.   

Win 7 64 is a good idea. I'd love a cleaned out lite version of it even better, shame only enterprises get those setups. Then i'd have 2 complete Arcade PCs, maybe one for the next crazy cab idea....