My current home theater PC is the AOpen i855GMem-LFS:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article218-page2.html

Right now it's running a 1.6 GHz Dothan. I'm looking at my CPU upgrade options for this machine, for possible HD video playback. I'd like to avoid upgrading the motherboard if I can. It uses Intel's Socket 479. I found a XEON DUAL CORE LV 1.66GHZ SOCKET 479 chip here:

http://www.atacom.com/program/atacom.cg ... SEARCH_ALL

Does anyone have any idea if this could possibly work or not?

Intel claims it's not possible (E7520 Chipset required) : http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle ... 149831.htm
I have no idea if it's true, and it'll be hard to find somebody who actually tried...

Thanks.

It looks like my upgrade options are severely limited on this platform/socket 479. I can barely find any socket 479 chips at all!

I overclocked my 1.6GHz Pentium-M Dothan chip by 10% (and it's undervolted-- gotta love Pentium Ms!) and I can just barely squeak by at 90% CPU usage on these WMV-HD 1080p clips:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... spx#sysreq

720p is of course no problem, with < 40% cpu use.

Do you have by chance any power consumption figures along with more complete system specs?

The problem here is not the chipset, it's the socket, and maybe also the bus speed. This CPU is pretty much a Core Dyo T2300 so it won't fit a PM socket. I don't think it would fit a CD mobo either since they have dual CPU support, and if you compare the pic with an Core Duo or PM you'll see that the pins are arranged differently compared to the two other. Here's one of the few mobos I've seen available.

Yes, all the detail is here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000221.html

A few things have changed since the original build, though:

- Swapped out two of three 160gb Spinpoints for one 500gb WD RE16
- Switched to Hauppauge dual tuner card
- Upgraded to 2GB RAM
- Took out WiFi card in favor of integrated Gigabit wired
- Mike C sold me a Seasonic SS-300SFD 80+ (thanks Mike C!)

I'm pondering a switch to Windows Vista, which has a dramatically improved Media Center, but I'm taking it slowly right now.

In most respects, the AOpen i855GMem-LFS boards are really nice--for the last year and a half, both my wife's and my main work system have been based on them. (I just upgraded myself to AOpen i945GTm-VHL and T2500.) However, the real shame is that they just won't run much above 100MHz FSB, because the 100MHZ Dothan chips all seems to easily overclock to 133MHz while undervolted in the 1.1v-1.2v range. From my experience, you could upgrade to a 2.1 chip, but I think you're stuck with a relatively low FSB.