Hi. Ive been using dvdfab for compressing my dvd's into mkv with h.264.

I'm switching back to makemkv + handbrake and was looking to upgrade.

Currently, i'm using windows XP x32 but will be switching to Win 7 x64 on the machine. I'm getting around 26fps using
the high profile setting in Handbrake with no other changes (this was just a basic test)

I prefer to use medium-high quality settings for tv shows (which is the only video i compress)

I'm trying to decide on a cheap ~$200 upgrade for this system. Its currently a core2duo 3.16 3G mem system on a supermicro board. I can't quantify it, but i believe i was getting faster results under my Asus p5n-e sli board with the same config (I cant quantify it because the machine burned out lol) except it was running win 7 x64

So far I'm looking into 2 options: A dual cpu Xeon setup (most likely 5400 series quad core ~3.16ghz) vs a single i5, maybe 15-2500k 3.3ghz quad core on an intel board (ebay seems to have a couple of cheap used ones)

I tried looking up benchmarks, but all I'm getting is for the newer E5 series Xeon's vs i7. Could someone point me in the right direction?

Other relative minor things this machine will be doing is some very light file serving (to my media player) some emulation (retro gameing and dos box) but by and large, the most demanding thing it will be doing is handbrake so thats why I'm centering my decision around it.

I'm leaning toward the Xeon setup for long-term reliability as thats what my research has come up with, but I'm open to an i5 as well.

I'm shooting for around 60-80fps average, but if it comes down to a 10fps difference between long term stability and speed, i'll stick with stability.

Thank you for your time.