[mythtv-users] AM2+ motherboard with support for ECC RAM for media player / server

[Bob]

Bob wrote:
> Unbuffered / Registered obviously.
>   

Bad form Bla Bla Bla but just to update the list, the abit A-S78H also 
supports Un-buffered ECC RAM, it doesn't have FireWire though
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=A-S78H&fMTYPE=Socket%20AM2

> This is an edited repost of something I sent to debian-user list last 
> month with little result, so apologies to those who, like me, are 
> subscribed to both.
>
> I'm building a couple of Debian / MythTV based home media players /
> servers and want reliability + low power consumption and noise, at the 
> moment I'm leaning towards
>
> CPU                    45W Dual Core Athlon64
> Motherboard            ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI
> RAM                    4GB DDR2 ECC RAM as fast as I can find [0]
> GPU                    Radeon X800, X1900, X1950 [1] or on-board [2]
> HDD (system)           Toshiba MK8037GSX or some other SATA laptop drive
> HDD (Data)             Western Digital 1TB Green Power
>                            or the Samsung ITB F1
> and some DVB-C card
>
> I'll probably go for ATI/AMD graphics because
> A: I want to reward AMD for the recent opening up of their GPU specks
> B: no other GPU matches the on-board one on the 780G chipset in terms of 
> performance for power consumption, at a rough guess with the on-board 
> GPU, a 45W CPU and a Laptop HardDrive or net boot I should be able to 
> get the whole systems power to 30 or 40 W idle and maybe 70W under load, 
> if I can do that then it can be passively cooled with no fans and 
> potentially no moving parts at all.
>
> The ASUS AM2+ boards are the only ones I can find with the traces / BIOS
> support for ECC RAM but this one doesn't have FireWire on-board which
> I'd like, can anyone suggest another mATX system with USB2, SATA2, ATA,
> FireWire, Digital sound IO and ECC RAM support that would meet my
> requirements? [3]
>
> Does anyone know weather an Athlon X2 4850e (2500MHz) or Athlon X2
> BE-2400 (2300MHz) (both 45W ) is going to be capable of decoding H.264
> 1080p in Blu-ray quality if the only assistance it gets is with scaling 
> via XV which already works for GPUs <= R400 in the Radion diver [5] but 
> I don't think does yet in RadeonHD? [6]
>
> How about when we get IDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform) and MC
> (Motion Compensation) video acceleration in RadeonHD?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
>
> [0] ECC for prolonged uptime and reliability without having to go for 
> full Opteron with Registered ECC RAM, the fastest ECC sticks I can find 
> are DDR2-800, I can't find any 1066s and would like to for some headroom
>
> [1] I haven't decided which GPU to go for, I'll have to do more research
> into how well R500 and R600 GPU are handling video playback at the
> moment, I have a feeling that for simplicity I may have to get an R400
> GPU as an interim measure and then when RadeonHD matures a bit I'll
> switch to either the On-Board or an R500 based discreet card [4]
>
> [2] for the first time in my life I'm considering on-board graphics (the 
> 780G chipset).
>
> [3] not necessarily AMD but preferably
>
> [4] Because the R600 Unified Video Decoder (UVD) has integrated DRM
> we'll probably never get access to it, in which case any
> hardware-assisted video decoding the Linux world sees will be in the
> same form as the R500 stuff, (pixel or vertex shader)  I'm unsure if 
> this will mean that R500s will ultimately be "better" than R600s but I 
> suspect they'll be the same, either way for Home Theater PCs I'd really 
> like someone to start putting Mobility Radeon GPUs on PCIe cards.
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=955&num=1
>
> [5] and maybe R500 too as Dave Arlied has been running the Radion driver 
> on R500 hardware, but he has a powerful beard so it's probably not a 
> solution I, with my puny stubble, want to rely on for my everyday video 
> playback needs quite yet.
>
> [6] up to 40Mbit/s, probably not is my feeling from reading round, I
> think an X2 6000+ (3000 MHz) at 89W or 125W can *just* do it.
>
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