[mythtv-users] Motherboard Recomendation

[Ryan A. Carris]

On Mar 31, 2005 10:17 AM, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Mark,
> 
> i've had good success with the Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard and Myth
> (KnoppMyth R5A12).  i have an Athlon XP +2700, which is socket A.  i'm
> not sure what the Duron is...
> it has onboard svideo, vga, audio, lan and the nforce2 chipset.  my
> only complaint is that i thought it had SPDIF connectors onboard (it
(snip)

I used to highly recommend the ASUS A7N8X-VM, which is an almost
identical board, HOWEVER, I no longer recommend Nforce2 IGB (onboard
graphic) board.  They just aren't stable under extremly high load

I used one for almost a year in my Myth box with a PVR-250 and a BTTV
tunner.  We also have about a dozen of these in use at work in various
boxes.

My Myth box locked up every once in a while, usually while recording
two programs at once.  I could cause it to happen more frequently by
cranking up the bitrate on my video.  I usually attributed the lockups
to the ittv driver and didn't get to upset.   But then recently, I
turned on commercial detection, and it was happening all the time.  I
finally got upset and looked into the problem.  It was the board. 
There is something about the onboard graphics and the heavy load.  
We've had the same problems at work with these boards.  We could never
get the boards to accept 1gig of memory (2x512) and boot.  We tried
Kingston, Corsair, and Crucial memory, none worked.  Talking to the
Tech Support at Mwave.com where we buy a lot of gear, they tell us
they can't get it to work either, without putting a AGP video card in
it, which worked semi-stable.  They said the IGB boards are all buggy.
So... YMMV,maybe the Chaintech's are better than the Asus, but, I
wouldn't touch it if you plan on having more then 1 tunner.   I am now
very happy running an MSI Nforce2 board and FX5200 card.  Rock solid. 
Amazing.  I can't beleive I used to put up with it locking up  once a
week or so.

I've been meaning to start a Hardware Compatabilty page over at the
WIKI.  I'm picturing a page w/ just the MB name, and a description
that basiclly states: Works Well or Sucks.  I was really thinking
about this after my experance with a Giga-byte FX5600XT card which the
Svideo out just sucked big time, but the Asus Nforce2 onboard was
great and so is this new MSI card.  So, it just varies from manuf. 
But, I haven't got around to it.