Creating a New HD Rdy HTPC

[-Oz-]

whurlston: sorry I actually ordered the case about 3 hours before I saw your message and to my regret it had already processed so I couldn't cancel it.

Rumour has it Nvidia is exiting the chipset business, so I would count that as a strike against the 8200. Neither chipset seems to have a definite edge in power efficiency. As far as stereo vs multi-channel encoding, that would be another plus for the 8200.

Yea, I saw that news too but it seems false. Now the multi-channel encoding gives it an advantage BUT Nvidia hasn’t implemented Dolby True HD or DTS-HD which ATI has; I'm not sure what difference that will make to me.

I will have a receiver that takes audio via hdmi cable so that'll be nice.

[whurlston]

whurlston: sorry I actually ordered the case about 3 hours before I saw your message and to my regret it had already processed so I couldn't cancel it.

No prob. I was hoping you would see it before you ordered.

Yea, I saw that news too but it seems false. Now the multi-channel encoding gives it an advantage BUT Nvidia hasn’t implemented Dolby True HD or DTS-HD which ATI has; I'm not sure what difference that will make to me.

I will have a receiver that takes audio via hdmi cable so that'll be nice.

You can get True HD and DTS-HD if you have a BluRay player software like TMT or PDVD Ultra. What's not implemented yet is the multichannel TrueHD/DTS-MA/LPCM bitstreaming via HDMI. This only affects BluRay/HD DVDs.

[gh_speedyg]

Have you descided which mobo you are buying? There are LOTS of choices for the 8200 (I think newegg has like 6 different boards). Which one have you picked and why?

Just wondering because I'm planning on putting together a new pc to use as my primary pc (mostly internet, video and audio, but definatly some light-med gaming), but I'd like to get something I can turn into a HTPC when I'm done with it. Is there a reason you've chosen AMD over Intel?

[observer_11]

Just wondering because I'm planning on putting together a new pc to use as my primary pc (mostly internet, video and audio, but definatly some light-med gaming), but I'd like to get something I can turn into a HTPC when I'm done with it. Is there a reason you've chosen AMD over Intel?

Both the 8200 and the 780G chipsets are exclusive to AMD motherboards. Currently these are the only 'onboard' integrated graphics chipsets with acceptable performance for a HD ready HTPC.

If you are planning on gaming, then a discrete PCIe graphics card might be better, and in that case the Intel motherboards are definitely worth considering.

[Captcol]

I have the xFx 8200 mobo and after some inital probs it seems pretty good so far. The vid driver that comes on the disc is no good and it took ages to find a newer driver on the nvidia site but it made huge improvements

I was sitting on 2 or 2.1 for vista experience score before the driver update and then it jumped to 2.6. I have all the fruit turned off but I read somewhere that to get HA etc working you need at least one of the triple core amd chips, I am currently running a 4800+ with 2gig of ram.

Mine is used mainly for sd sat, and playing back of some HD content, not sure if it is true HD content tho as it is borrowed.

[mvallevand]

Both the 8200 and the 780G chipsets are exclusive to AMD motherboards. Currently these are the only 'onboard' integrated graphics chipsets with acceptable performance for a HD ready HTPC.

The HD-ready Gigabyte Intel G45 x4500 IGC based board is out now and no doubt others will be out over the weeks and months ahead.

Martin

[gh_speedyg]

The HD-ready Gigabyte Intel G45 x4500 IGC based board is out now and no doubt others will be out over the weeks and months ahead.

Just checked out these boards on the Gigabyte website. Unfortunatly, they are all ATX form factor.

[feilh]

I have the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard with the 4850e running Vista Home Premium.

The stetup was easy. I don't think it will do h.264 hardware acceleration. Several of in these forum's have been confused if we are even getting Mpeg2 acceleration when we are using GBPVR. I have been able to get it to play a beautiful picture with less then 40% CPU using EVR. Using VMR9 I only get about 20% utilization.

I actually haven't found you need 4GB of memory. I rarely see my memory usage go over 1.2GB doing HTPC. 2GB doesn't cost much, but it all adds heat to the system.

[observer_11]

Looks like the 790GX chipset is ready.

[-Oz-]

Have you descided which mobo you are buying? There are LOTS of choices for the 8200 (I think newegg has like 6 different boards). Which one have you picked and why?

Just wondering because I'm planning on putting together a new pc to use as my primary pc (mostly internet, video and audio, but definatly some light-med gaming), but I'd like to get something I can turn into a HTPC when I'm done with it. Is there a reason you've chosen AMD over Intel?

observer pointed out why I am using AMD. I also believe that in general they run cooler/quieter. Also, AMDs low power CPU seems like a good move. Also, the intel G45 chip which does onboard video "well" doesn't offload the video rendering as well as either the ATI or nvidia.

I am definitely going gigabyte, just seems to be the most widely used and the other options I saw on newegg were lacking spdif out (which I need as a backup in case the hdmi audio doesn't do what I want). The GIGABYTE GA-M78SM-S2H is my most likely choice.

I will have to install and use vista though because nvidia isn't updating their software for XP as often. That annoys me.

I"m going with 4gb of ram because its just under $70 after rebate and that way I can give the videocard a whole 512mb without affecting the operating system at all (it can use the other 3.Xgb that the 32bit version can see). The other reason is with the GA-M78SM-S2H there are only two ram slots so upgrading would suck in the future. The ATI version does have 4 ram slots.

And feilh: you should definitely be using hardware acceleration with that board for h.264. Check the codec you are using.