Comments on: another new htpc mini-itx

By: nightmorph

nightmorph — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:59:24 +0000

Eh, thought you meant a regular PCI or PCIe slot, like most min-ITX boards have.

Y’know, there’s room for a PCIe x1 slot on those IONITX boards in addition to the miniPCIe slot; shame Zotac didn’t include one. Granted, there aren’t too many PCIe x1 peripherals, aside from networking cards which are taken care of by the mini-slot. But I have seen a few TV tuners, which might be a good fit.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:17:27 +0000

Oh, you said the IONITX. Whoops. It has a PCIe Mini. Look closely. Two of the four ION boards come with a bundled 802.11n wifi card, and the other two are just empty, so you can put your own in. I’ll probably get my own Intel.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:15:55 +0000

I’ve been wanting to get an ATI card for a long time, just to see how well they handle and how good the video looks, because sometimes there is *some* artifacts / blocking with the nvidia on playback of DVDs. I have a second Mini that is starting to die, and I might replace it with something that uses an external video card. I dunno. I would consider ATI if I knew I wasn’t gonna go HD on it. I’d love to get one to play with it, but I’m not that rich.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:13:37 +0000

I’ve thought about ATI, but the nvidia PureHD stuff works, and it works now, and it works well enough … besides, these things don’t cost *that* much (amazingly enough) that I could always switch to something else later on down the road, and a year or two from now they’ll probably be much more powerful, with the bugs worked out, etc., etc.

That said, I think I decided on the fanless. I had lunch with a good friend of mine who jogged my memory. He said, “your version of quiet and a normal person’s version of quiet are two completely different things.” I pick up on any background noise. Fanless, it’s gotta be.

I’m willing to bet that all the problems were with the MSI board. Google seems to agree with me. Apparently they are crappier than I thought.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:11:13 +0000

The 9300 has a PCIe on it (see the newegg link above).

By: nightmorph

nightmorph — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:52:48 +0000

Huh, your blog software hates using greater-than-less-than symbols. Meant to say that both the R500 (and lower) and the R600 (and higher) chipsets have proper 2D acceleration. I’m about to buy a nice low-wattage card as I’m aiming to downsize/sidegrade my desktop. Will probably go for a 4xxx part, rather than 3xxx. Either chip will deliver working 2D accel.

By: nightmorph

nightmorph — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:50:19 +0000

Uh, double-check the specifications for the IONITX, dude: it does not come with any expansion slots. No PCI, no PCIe, nothing.

Here’s a relevant review of the 9300 board by SilentPCReview; it’s probably just the sort of review you’re looking for:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/zotac-gf9300itx

Tech Report has a good review of the IONITX:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16893

I know you’re after hardware video decoding, so it’s expected that you’d go for the VDPAU stuff nVidia offers in their proprietary driver. Otherwise, I’d suggest finding an ATI board, as the =R600 chipsets are now completely working for 2D accel. Flicker-free Xv playback.

Interesting, AMD is making improvements to its UVD2, speeding up transcoding: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16994

The problem, though, is that neither UVD1 nor UVD2 have come to Linux in any form, despite repeated promises by ATI to do something with their XvBA (x-video bitstream acceleration). Not even the proprietary drivers support it. Developers have poked the sample code and the proprietary driver headers, but right now there’s still no way to do anything with the (theoretical) beginnings of XvBA support.

Shame, really. ATI stands to gain so much if only they’d get off their butts and prod their partners to do the same and finally deliver some progress on XvBA for Linux. They don’t usually do free drivers, but if not a code drop, at least s’more documentation and specifications would go a long way toward securing their place in the Linux community.

By: Levi

Levi — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:16:58 +0000

I recently was looking at similar systems for a myth frontend. I decided to go with a micro-ATX system instead because it was quite a bit cheaper. If I was going to go mini-ITX, though, I’d definitely go for the ION. It’s an integrated solution that’s been proven to work well with MythTV, and for the extra cash over the ATX systems you actually get reduced fan noise and fewer moving parts. Get a passively cooled chassis and net boot, and you’ll have a silent box, which is worth way more than CPU flexibility.