[mythtv-users] Performance with intel GMA3100

[Adam Stylinski]

So I'm thinking about building a tiny slave backend for some other
residents in my house.  There's just a few questions I'd like to ask,
though.  The Nvidia ION platform does look ideal for this but likely
won't be out for a while, and at the same time probably won't allow for
PCI expansion (I want to throw a PC-HDTV card in this).  Plus the amount
of time it would take before it was properly outputting HDMI with their
Linux drivers would probably be close to an eternity (if Nvidia shows
any pattern with the way it respects its linux userbase-I've seen dozens
of mailing list posts come through my inbox about the Asus micro-ATX
boards not outputting to HDMI properly).  VDPAU right now is next to
useless (although it likely would work with the 9400 the ION would ship
with once the bugs were worked out).  I'm taking a more hurried approach
I think and going with one of these boards:
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=Fuzzy_GM965&class=ipc

My question is this: is xvmc with intel video drivers supported (last I
heard they were working on XvMC), and does it accelerate it to anything
worthwhile.  If I offload no real work to the GPU (opt out of XvMC),
will the GMA3100 chipset be able to draw the frames as fast as the Core
2 Duo renders them?  Granted, with that board a PCI-Ex card is always a
possibility, however I'd like to avoid the space/heat.  So if I do go
with this hurried solution, will the GMA3100 suffice?  Say it doesn't
suffice, I have a PCI-Ex X300 cheapo ATI card, will this passively
cooled card do the job that the GMA3100 couldn't?