[mythtv-users] Are VIA chipsets still a no-no?

[Mark J. Small]

HI everybody,

I'm looking to rebuild my backend, and am doing a little research.  My current 
backend is a PentiumIII 1GHz box with 3 Hauppauge Freestyles and an AverA180.  
It works pretty but I'd like a little more juice for transcoding, 
commflagging and some SATA ports for more storage.

Last time I went all Intel to avoid the dreaded DMA problems with old VIA 
chipsets. I'd heard that there were troubles with some NVIDIA chipsets too.

So now I'm thinking about at some AMD chips, but I don't want to run in to 
compatibility issues.  So can anyone tell me if the newer chipsets work 
better?  How about the chipsets that are a few years old (nforce 3, K8T800)?

My ideal motherboard/CPU combo would have:
2 Lan adapters
2 Serial ports (yeah right!)
4-5 PCI slots
onboard video
onboard sound
IDE and SATA
Use as little power as possible, since this is my server, and it runs 24/7

Mark