XBMC hardware uATX?
#1
I'm looking at purchasing the "GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9400 HDMI Micro ATX Intel" Motherboard for running XBMC on. I would hope to use the HDMI to connect this through my reciever for video and audio.

Any thoughts on why this wouldn't be a good board to run XBMC with Ubuntu? I only have experience with XBMC on ATI hardware to date so this may or may not be an issue.

Thanks,
Devan
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#2
Looks nice enough http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...E7AUM-DS2H and not super expensive. Not sure what EXACT hardware it has onboard for say audio but if it's anything like the ASUS P5N7A-VM then it ought to be a winner with some tweaking. Maybe cruise the Ubuntu forums and see iof anyone has had issues with it otherwise I'd jump on it and check it out - someone has to go first Wink
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#3
devanl Wrote:I'm looking at purchasing the "GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9400 HDMI Micro ATX Intel" Motherboard for running XBMC on. I would hope to use the HDMI to connect this through my reciever for video and audio.

Any thoughts on why this wouldn't be a good board to run XBMC with Ubuntu? I only have experience with XBMC on ATI hardware to date so this may or may not be an issue.

Thanks,
Devan

I know people have gotten audio over HDMI to work with the 8200 chipset. Check out the XBMC install on nvidia thread in this forum, as you may need to upgrade your version of ALSA to make it work.

I'm using an ASus m3n78-vm nvidia 8200 board, and outputting audio/video via HDMI to my receiver. It took some fiddling to get the audio working, but now it's fine.
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#4
He WILL almost certainly have to upgrade the ALSA and unless he runs on Hardy he will also have to upgrade the NVIDIA drivers too as last I looked the drivers for NVIDIA in the repo's didn't support HDMI audio. HDMI audio reauires both up to date ALSA and NVIDIA drivers together...
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#5
mr_raider: Are you getting full audio (both digital and analog) to the receiver through hdmi? I would like to get a linux compatable mobo that will output everything through hdmi.
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#6
I'm thinking of buying ASUS P5N73-CM and equipping it with a Intel Core™ 2 Duo E7400 2,8GHz.

Would this system benefit from a GPU upgrade from the motherboard-internal NVIDIA GeForce 7100 to a GeForce 9500 GT? Or is it mostly the CPU which is important when it comes to playing HD-content?
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#7
khaoohs Wrote:mr_raider: Are you getting full audio (both digital and analog) to the receiver through hdmi? I would like to get a linux compatable mobo that will output everything through hdmi.

The ASUS P5N75A-VM has been used by many to get everything over HDMI - using it in two machines now. Look here. This has been discussed OFTEN.Cool
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#8
khaoohs Wrote:mr_raider: Are you getting full audio (both digital and analog) to the receiver through hdmi? I would like to get a linux compatable mobo that will output everything through hdmi.

I'm getting audio over HDMI. I have never tried analog.
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#9
mr_raider, I'm about to build a few boxes with that board, may I ask what cpu have you paired it with? I plan to use the cheapest athlon x2 I can find, and wait for VDPAU to mature to offload the processing then, have you tried that branch?
Did you have any issues with the board worth mentioning?
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#10
FaberfoX Wrote:mr_raider, I'm about to build a few boxes with that board, may I ask what cpu have you paired it with? I plan to use the cheapest athlon x2 I can find, and wait for VDPAU to mature to offload the processing then, have you tried that branch?
Did you have any issues with the board worth mentioning?

I'm using an x2 4850e. I suggest a 5050e which is almost the same price. If you can stomach higher 65W TDPs, you can get a 3.0Ghz core. If you really want the best dual core, go for the 7750, but it runs fairly hot TDP 95W.

AMD should release some L3 cacheless versions of the Phenom IIs with 2 cores later this year, some with 45W TDPs.

The issues I had was getting HDMI audio to work. It required nvidia driver 177 (default on Ibex), and rebuilding ALsa from source, which is trivial. After that, since I used a full Ubuntu/gnome install, I had to resolve my pulse audio issues. I chose to build from source with one of the newer SVN versions that enabled pulse audio. All is well for now.

I haven't tried the VDPAU stuff yet, since all my content is 480p.
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#11
Some good feedback about the Gigabyte board in the mcubed forum (may require registering before acessing the thread)

http://www.mcubed-tech.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=998
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XBMC hardware uATX?0