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Icey Wrote:I've been keeping my eyes open for a new/upcoming motherboards that could be suitable for XBMC. Knowing that in general ATi/AMD graphics dont play nice with Linux, I put aside the currently popular 780G chipset and focused on Intel & nVidia. Intel G45 is still on the horizon and looks like it will turn up around September which of course leaves the current nVidia option as 8200.
However, we are just starting to see the arrival of nVidia 8300 based boards and the Asus M3N78-EM is the first one that seems to tick all the boxes. I guess it should be available later this month.
Anyone else have any thoughts about this?
Can't confirm any ATI/AMD Problems with Ubuntu 8.04 at least.
Though I got my PCI Nvidia 8500GT running right now, that was cause I wanted Component out first before I got my new Plasma with HDMI, the onboard ATI 1200 on my 780G board works flawlessly with the ATI driver provided by Ubuntu. I'll report more, as soon as I got my HTPC box done. Few more things to do like fan control, digital sound etc.
boba
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does it really make sense to be specing hardware right now given all the development work in the GSoC in terms of GPU hardware acceleration? If the work is succesful, wouldn't that greatly reduce the hardware requirements to run XBMC?
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BLKMGK Wrote:Are you really telling me that you think they perform equally clock for clock? How about heat dissipation? Power usage? I have an E8400 running 3.8Ghz in this workstation, I do not think I could achieve the same performance with an AMD for a reasonable cost. Yes, I've owned many AMD and until the C2D that was all I had in house.
In this case we simply need "good enough" for the task at hand. I've seen lots of folks with AMD having playback issues, far fewer with Intel I think. IF you can get smooth playback and no dropped frames with the $100 chip buy it but don't buy it just because the rated speed is close for a lower price.
Well, of course Intel Core2 is faster clock by clock, but in my eyes it can't be the solution to put a dual core 5 ghz machine into your living room just to play videos, can it?
Anyway, as I stated before, I didn't test 34384734 1080p videos, but any of the H264 1080p trailers I threw at my AMD 4850e (running at default clock) played perfectly fine so far. So I do not see a reason to put a system into my HTPC, which could participate in the super computer top 500 list. That's simply rediculous. Plust, HW MPEG4/H264 etc. accel will come to linux sooner or later.
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I think we all know the only 1080p test we care about is the killa sampla. Trailers generally aren't encoded at too high a bitrate anyway.
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I got my components (see my sig) yesterday and slapped them together but I am having trouble with the front panel (power, LED, speaker, etc.) plug (which is all one piece) not matching up with the connector on the Mobo. I am going to try my hand at pulling each wire out and connecting it manually, but I have never done this before so this is frustrating. I am contemplating dropping $75 for a new case (the one I am using is old) just to avoid the issue.
So, I had hoped to report total success last night but alas, it looks like one or two more days before I'll have a chance to get XBMC up and running on the new system.
Supporter of all things Linux, Android, XBMC and NextPVR