[mythtv-users] Motherboard advice

Karl Newman newmank1 at asme.org
Fri Jun 29 23:26:59 UTC 2012


On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 3:53 PM, phrippenatthekrotz
<phrippenatthekrotz at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> Greetings
>
> I am after some advice regarding a new motherboard and processor.  Much
> research on the web has me leaning towards a Intel board and CPU.  However
> which combination is going to give the best performance, there are so many
> choices, one get confused.  This is to be a FE/BE set up and I would like on
> board graphics.  Sadly there dose not seem to be an up to date data base of
> boards for a Myth setup and so many recommendations on forums seem to be
> contradictory.
>
> Is there any "dream" or desirable board and chip combination that you folk
> would recommend?
>
> This system will run Mythbuntu 12.04 or Wheezy.
>
> Here is some that I am considering, but this list is just possibles.
>
> Asus P8H67-I
>
> Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
>
> Asrock H67M-ITX
>
> MSI Z68MA-ED55
>
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Phil

I recently (re)built my combined FE/BE system using the cheapest
low-power Sandy Bridge processor I could get (i3-2120T) with the Asus
P8H67-M PRO/CSM. I have VAAPI working, running at about 7% CPU for SD
MPEG2 recordings or x264 DVD rips. The integrated graphics should work
fine for you, but reports are that an add-on nvidia card with VDPAU is
still a better experience in terms of setup and quality. You may want
to consider the newer Ivy Bridge Z77 chipset, but I don't know how
well it's supported in Linux currently (and in particular with that
distro). The H67 is well supported now, which was one factor pushing
me toward the older chipset.

Unless you have plans for some cpu-intensive program other than myth
on your box, I wouldn't worry too much about performance. My new setup
replaced a 7 year old single core AMD64 3500+ that could commflag 1
show pretty much in real time, and this chip is noticeably faster than
the old one in many key tasks (compiling, transcoding, commflag).

Karl


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