VIA Epia-V 8000

[tweek]

Hi,

I'm thinking of building a dedicated PVR using the VIA Epia-V 8000 board (KustomPc Link). Has anyone had any experience of this mobo/cpu combination? ie is it good enough, are there any problems with it, etc etc.

Thanks in advance

[sub]

To be quite honest, I'd go for one of the faster Epia boards. To me, the M12000 or possibly the M10000 (Nehemiah variety) were the only ones that are really fast enough for video applications.

[MrM]

As Sub said, the 8000 is a bit too slow to be used in a video box. Check these video benchmarks at mini-itx.com. I've seen a couple of similar benchmarks and the result is always the same. You'll need at least a M10000N to be able to play divX/Xvid, a bit less if you're only gonna play mpeg2.

I have a M10000N and with the cpu fan running at 7V you can't hear the fan, but it's still able to keep the cpu at temperatures below 50°C when I'm watching movies in divX.

[chockymonster]

I've been fooling around with an Epia-800 just getting a feel for PVR and whether it's something the wife will let me have in the living room

To be honest the 800MHZ boards are far too slow to do anything video related. With a PVR-250 I'm not able to record long clips without losing audiosynch.

Now I have to work out what board to go for!