[mythtv-users] Motherboard upgrade question - ION2 or CPU grunt?

[Mike Perkins]

As I mentioned recently, I'm thinking about upgrading my system, having 
unexpectedly - and entirely legally - received a recent cash boost.

With the upcoming Olympics in mind, I want to go from my current SD-only setup 
to HD. This will be initially UK-Freeview (DVB-T2).

The board I'm looking at is the Asus AT510NT-I (Atom/ION2) [1]. I'd put 4Gb on 
this even though it's probably not needed just yet. From mini-itc.com I can get 
this for £169.00 + VAT.

While I was looking through the motherboard page, I came across another board of 
interest, Gigabyte E350N-USB3 [2]. This board plus (cheaper) 4Gb would cost £129 
+ VAT.

Now, this has an AMD processor, so I'd be doing the whole decoding thing in CPU 
rather than GPU if I went that way. Does anyone here use this board, and/or know 
if it is capable of handling HD? I know there are people here who suggest that 
ION2 boards have their limitations, but if I went with the Asus that would be 
all it would do. Does the Gigabyte board have the grunt to handle HD?

Another factor I'm looking at is future upgrade paths. If I subsequently 
upgraded my front-end to a better board that isn't out yet, is the ION2 useful 
for much else? I know that I could certainly put the Gigabyte board into use as 
a general server. I don't want to waste a board I could make use of in the future.

Does anybody have other motherboard suggestions? I'm limited to mini-ITX for the FE.

[1] http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~AT5IONT-I
[2] http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~E350N-USB3

-- 

Mike Perkins