[mythtv-users] Foxconn A7GM-S
John Finlay
finlay at moeraki.com
Wed Nov 5 23:54:13 UTC 2008
John Meissen wrote:
> Anyone have any success/failures/opinions about the Foxconn A7GM-S
> MicroATX AMD motherboard? http://tinyurl.com/5cu8wc
>
> It looks like a nice choice for a MythTV box, and NewEgg has them for
> what looks like a decent price.
>
>
I just purchased this board to use for my backend server because it has
6 SATA connectors. I installed both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 9 64 bit
versions to see which one I liked better. I also tried to install the
fglrx driver for the video and to get a mythfrontend going.
In general seems like a good MB for a reasonable price.
Ubuntu installed easily and it has a mechanism to install the fglrx (and
nvidia) drivers easily. Mythtv was easy to install. I initally set up
the frontend to run in a window at a size that would fit my display.
That worked well for displaying the gui but playback of HD seemed to use
a lot of cpu and the playback was not smooth. Trying various profiles
didn't seem to helpp but since I wasn't planning to use it for playback
I didn't care. I then reset it to notplay in a window and set the size
back to (0,0) which then caused the display to hash when mythfrontend
started up - it seems that there is a problem with the driver when the
native size is used. Anyway I'm not able to get mythfrontend working
anymore. Haven't used much other than firefox so I can't comment on
stability, etc.
Fedora seemed to install easily but when the display started after
installation it was put into some weird mode that was based on frequency
- this made the display window a lot larger than the native resolution.
I was able to change the resolution and that seemd to fix the problem.
This was using the radeon driver. I tried to figure out how to istall
fglrx but it doesn't seem to be available for Fedora9. I got a
mythfrontend working but it seems to have some weirdness ana won't cover
the screen. Playback was really poor so I've abandoned that effort.
Generally Fedora 9 seems OK but more finicky than Ubuntu and much harder
to get media stuff installed - finally just gave up.
I liked the fit and finish of the board and it looks like the quality is
better than other boards in this price range - I've got ECS and Biostar
(avoid ECS) boards. I like the Biostar as well but the board models
change so fast that it's almost impossible to recommend a board since
they seem to go out of production in a few months.
I'd recommend this one for BE use but not for FE unless you put a
Nividia card in at least until better drivers are available.
John
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