[mythtv-users] Motherboards: help me understand my choices

[Owen Townend]

2008/9/1 Sixten Otto <himself+myth at sfko.com>:
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 2:56 PM, kanetse at gmail.com <kane.tse at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I just bought this board last week (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) for my
>> MythTV backend/frontend; and it's been a nightmare.  I believe the
>> problem to be related to immature Linux drivers for the AMD 780G
>> chipset, although I can't be sure as I'm still trying to get the
>> system to work properly.
>
> Ugh. That's *exactly* the sort of thing I'm hoping to avoid. I mean,
> the entire enterprise is a hobby project, and I enjoy a certain level
> of tinkering. But tinkering turns into frustrated struggling very
> quickly.
>

My combined front/backend is built using this motherboard, and I have
had no huge obstacles getting it to work well. I have Ubuntu 8.04
64bit installed using ATI 8.3 drivers for the onboard HD3200.

My only remaining issue is screen corruption on channel changes
between resolutions (SD-HD and back) escaping to the menu and going
back in clears it. None of the newer drivers fix this issue and seem
to introduce new bugs instead (such as running full screen is garbled
but using --geometry one pixel different to full screen res works).
It's an annoyance, not a huge hassle and it doesn't affect recordings
so it is not a deal breaker for me.

Onboard audio is working well though I have only used the 3.5mm
analogue plugs so far due to my amp's setup. Onboard gigabit has been
flawless for me, though another poster here has had troubles with
theirs.

It is possible to get a 780G board with discrete graphics memory, but
the cost difference is almost the same as that between a 2GB and 4GB
DDR2-800 kit, and any performance gain would be wasted on a TV.

It's a cheap, everything onboard mATX board which _should_ be perfect
for a frontend (HDMI audio+video, optical spdif, HDMI+dsub dual
screen, eSATA, gigabit, etc, etc) but it is let down (slightly) by
graphics driver support which though AMD has come a long way very
quickly with linux support (kudos!), but there's still more work to be
done...

cheers,
Owen.