Beh.

My desktop machine at home does everything I want, EXCEPT it's totally incapable of keeping up with high def video playback, and is anciently slow when handling it at all, like making DVDs from HD streams. When playing back, it just displays the first 2 or 3 frames and gives up, continuing on audio only.

I took an HD file from the camcorder to work today on a thumb drive, and this machine plays the video without even breaking a sweat. It's a 3GHz Intel Core Duo. Both machines are running up-to-date video drivers, and both are playing with the same version of VLC which has fully self-contained codecs, so there's no difference there.

Now I need to decide whether this is grounds for replacing the machine or not. I can donate the old machine to the church and probably wind up with a $200 tax credit as a result, so it's probably actually not all that expensive to upgrade. Still, it's irritating to replace a machine that still meets ALMOST all of my needs.

Computer hardware advice

I know that subject will bring on the comments.

So, Intel Core 2 is the way to go, from all I can tell. Here's the question:

Dual core 3.06 GHz 1066MHz FSB, or quad core 2.66 GHz 1333MHz FSB?

They're both about the same price, which makes me wonder since it seems to me that the quad core is clearly the run away winner - so why isn't it much more expensive?

Any mainboard recommendations? Either for specific manufacturers (for or against) or specific chipsets (north/south bridge, etc). Usually mainboard video is OK for me, and if not I can always bump that later. I normally go by reviews on Newegg, but they're heavily biased towards overclocking, which I never do (I want stability above all else).

I was looking at upgrading rather than buying new or building a new machine, but by the time I got everything added in, I was only short about $100 from being able to keep the old machine intact, which means I can get the tax credit from donating it which more than pays for the difference.