HTPC w/ onboard video?

[Spartan]

Hey yall -- thinking about building a htpc and to keep costs/noise down, use a mobo with onboard video. Has anyone any experience with anything like this:

GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Seems like that would be a nice solution once bundled with a low wattage Athlon... Maybe even use passive cooling on the CPU?

[gangaskan]

onboard is usually ok for small things, but just remember it has no dedicated memory, so you will take a hit on memory, with DDR 2 being ludicrously cheap, you can peg 4 gigs for under 100 bucks and still have a pretty good sized video cache.

it probably do HD somewhat fine, but i'd rather have a card that could do those options with ease.

[whurlston]

I use a BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 and it works very well for HDTV. I even play HD-DVDs with it.

[Spartan]

I use a BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 and it works very well for HDTV. I even play HD-DVDs with it.

Do you use XP or Vista for that? Conflicting reviews on newegg seem to indicate that HDMI + WinXP doesn't work all that well due to a possible lack of driver support)...

[whurlston]

XP with VGA. I was using HDMI but I needed the HDMI port on my tv for something else. The tv had a free VGA port so I use that. I can run tests with the HDMI if you want.

[Spartan]

XP with VGA. I was using HDMI but I needed the HDMI port on my tv for something else. The tv had a free VGA port so I use that. I can run tests with the HDMI if you want.

I'd be interested to read what you find out. No hurry though, b/c at this point I am just speccing some things out -- then have to convince my wife that we NEED this!

Anyhow, I always thought that VGA was analog and hence inferior to HDMI/DVI... At least it is when I use VGA to connect my 19" LCD to my 'puter....

[dslowik]

I use the onbaord video from my BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 on Vista. I'm not doing HDTV at the moment and use S-Video for my output.

[carpeVideo]

Whurlston - does that board have a firewire port on board (doesn't look like it) and does the have non-standard resolutions? (ie near 848x480 for EDTVs)

CV

[whurlston]

I'd be interested to read what you find out. No hurry though, b/c at this point I am just speccing some things out -- then have to convince my wife that we NEED this!

Anyhow, I always thought that VGA was analog and hence inferior to HDMI/DVI... At least it is when I use VGA to connect my 19" LCD to my 'puter....

I'll have some test results for you by the end of the week. It seems that all the reported issues relate to HDMI audio. I never noticed them because I use analog audio out to my receiver. The VGA running at 1366x768 looks as good as it gets on my 42" 720p Vizio. I was even able to push 1080p to it with the VGA port but the desktop font was too small.

[whurlston]

Whurlston - does that board have a firewire port on board (doesn't look like it) and does the have non-standard resolutions? (ie near 848x480 for EDTVs)

CV

It does not have firewire. That is my only issue with it but I decided the I wanted the 7050 video over the 690 more than I wanted built in firewire. The number of resolution options are staggering. I will check for that specific resolution when I get home and let you know.