[mythtv-users] motherboard suggestion? for be/fe for amd phenom cpu

[Florin Andrei]

diane mittnik wrote:
> 
> My only requirement is a phenom quad core processor capable board (and
> avoiding too many PCI-X or other legacy PCI slots, preferring PCI-E,
> Is this thinking right?).  What motherboard should I get that can play
> back 720p with preferably a lower wattage graphics choice.  I'm
> assuming on-board graphics would consume less energy from what I've
> seen in the mailing list archives, and I'm thinking I can add a
> (preferably low cost) graphics board later should I move up to 1080
> resolution prior to splitting the backend/frontend.

I have somewhat similar requirements. I'm currently building a dedicated 
FE/BE based on this board:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2817
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128340

It is Phenom-capable, but I'm actually using it with an Athlon 64 X2 
5200. :-)

Onboard GeForce 8200, perfectly capable of 1080p to HDMI. I verified it 
can play HD (1080i show, deinterlaced on the fly for the pre-defined 
1080p desktop resolution I'm using now) while it was flagging 
commercials at the same time.
Also has VGA and DVI outputs.
You must use the NVidia proprietary drivers, support for the 8200 is 
included in the recent drivers (the nvidia "envy" packages in Ubuntu 
always track the latest NVidia official releases).

I don't think I'll ever need a separate graphics card, the onboard stuff 
seems good enough.
I plan to try and enable whacky modes such as 1080i, 480i, etc. If I can 
get MythTV to actually use them, then I won't need to do deinterlacing 
on the FE. Why should I even try to do that, when the TV is already 
pretty good at it.
I'd like, if possible, to enable 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i, with 
1080p being the default (desktop) resolution, and hopefully Myth can 
switch between modes (I've heard it's doable but haven't even tried it 
yet). That would be great, since I see no point spending precious 
CPU/GPU cycles on something that the TV can do for free.

Onboard sound chip with analog and S/PDIF outputs, there's a coaxial 
connector onboard, an optical connector is available as an optional 
expansion bracket.
The sound support is the only catch. The Realtek ALC888 chip inside is 
only supported, at this moment, by Alsa-1.0.18rc3 or newer. The stable 
Alsa releases (1.0.17 or older) don't support it yet.
Fedora 10, when it comes out, looks like it will have Alsa-1.0.18. I'm 
not sure about Mythbuntu-8.10
All current stable distributions have Alsa-1.0.17 or older.

https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=4143

But if you're comfortable with compiling/installing a newer Alsa from 
source, it should be OK and it's actually pretty simple.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

I'm waiting for Alsa dev team to fix the crash when enabling S/PDIF, 
then sound will be 100% functional. Until then, I'm using analog sound, 
which is OK since I only have stereo sources on this box. Digital sound 
would be more like the icing on the cake.
I almost returned the mobo because of the sound chip, but then I decided 
it's good enough for what I'm doing (SD, HD and stereo sound).

I'm not 100% done testing it, but so far so good. Pretty much everything 
is on-board. With CPU throttling and a CPU that's low-power in idle mode 
(the cores on my CPU are at 75 deg F when idle!) and with using only one 
hard-drive for everything, the power consumption should be pretty low.

The OS I'm testing with is Mythbuntu 64 bit, currently 8.04.1, I'll 
upgrade to 8.10 when it becomes available.

I'm using the HDHR tuner.

Further tests will include a DVB-S card which, hopefully, should be the 
only PCI card I'll ever plug into this system.

> I'm also assuming that ATI for graphics would be a better choice going
> forward because of their loosening up on some source code on their

I'd stick with NVidia for a while, until the direction becomes clear.

> I've looked at the wiki and watched the list for a while but I'm still
> a bit confused on what capabilities to  look out for on the
> motherboard.  Digital audio, scart, etc.

Yeah, it's pretty much a coin toss. The way I did it: I just browsed 
Newegg based on certain criteria (cheap, AMD64, everything on-board 
including fast enough graphics, etc.), and picked the best-matching mobo.

Make a list of your own criteria and do the same. Make sure whatever 
store you buy from has a good return policy.

> memory.  I'm hoping that with newer memory (DDR2) using paired dimms,
> I can use 4x1GB dimms without worrying about confirming this on a
> specific board. Am I correct?

I'm using this board with 2 x 1GB DDR800.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/