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Diego core Athlon 64s, but are run at lower clockspeeds than the cores
are capable of, making them extremely stable. Since this means that
they overclock very well, they are in great demand." So basically, the
Opteron's are really about overclocking, which if your not doing, then
base your purchase decision on which is cheaper for the same clock
speed, taking into account that the Opteron's have no PowerNow!
feature, which makes me think that for a frontend only machine, you'd
may not want to get an Opteron. Of course, if you plan on having a
backend/home server, which will run mostly at full speed anyway, then
an Opteron would be the way to go, plus you can overclock it =D

As for the 3200+ 1080i debate. I think the reason some folks are able
to playback 1080i and some are not also has to do with the fact that
not all 3200+'s are the same. Some are actually slower, by as much as
10%. This is due to the difference in the various core's that have
been labeled as 3200+ processors. From what I can tell, Venice and
newer cores  should handle 1080i playback fine, even while recording
one ATSC channel. My Venice wasn't quite able to handle 1080i playback
and 1xATSC and 1xPVR-150 recording though, I'd get occasional hiccups.
I now have a Winchester in my frontend that plays back 1080i with a
higher CPU usage than my Venice did, and doesn't do anything else
(well, nothing major, just handles the LCD and the software raid for
the local media, which never gets about 5% anyway), runs no window
manager, no XvMC, and no deinterlacing. Which can be a major sticking
point for some, and now that I have a 1080p TV is making me seriously
consider a faster processor, for 1080i deinterlace playback AND to
better support h264 in the future. Core2Duo?...
Given the nominal price difference between a 3200+ and a 3500+ I see
no reason to bother with the 3200+ as all the 3500+ will be able to
handle 1080i playback (without deinterlacing, which makes things
trickier, as it has more dependence on bitrate, scene movement, etc).


-- 
Steve
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