Ongoing HTPC Motherboards with HDMI (2 Viewers)

[globaldonkey]

There seems to be a lot of motherboards coming onto the market now with HDMI support built in. Has anyone had any experience with these, and do they perform well. I was looking at the Asus P5E-VM HDMI

 

[luna_s]

i'm using the abit AN-M2HD - great board for the money,
but ive heard good things about the gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H

both socket am2 which will work out cheaper than using the intel based asus
plus the boards are half the price

 

[Nemulate]

Yes I have that Gigabyte m/b. Its much better than the Asus M2A-VM I had before but there is an issue with MP and the 690G chipset which is in both m/bs.

 

[globaldonkey]

Thanks luna_s and Nemulate.

OK so AMD is definitely cheaper, but is it better? Seems if there are chipset problems it may not be. Are there any solutions or workarounds for the Chipset problem? How serious is the problem?

Would love to hear from anyone who is using an Intel motherboard with HDMI.

Do you know if the HDMI interface on these boards supports sending audio as well as video to the HDMI interface, or is that an OS dependant thing?

I've been told that if you are going to only use the system as a dedicated HTPC (which I am), you may as well go with an on-board HDMI adaptor (which seems to make sense), but I have an inherent uncertainty about motherboard GPU's. Is this a well founded concern? I'm thinking that if it doesn't work out, I could always go and buy a dedicated GPU later.

 

[charli181]

Yes I have that Gigabyte m/b. Its much better than the Asus M2A-VM I had before but there is an issue with MP and the 690G chipset which is in both m/bs.

As quoted, the Asus M2A VM HDMI does have some problems with the 690G chipset. It requires either running the Catalyst 7.2 drivers or modifing the skins to disable the reflections (FLIPY parameter) through a text editor. Other than that, the onboard GPU works quite well, although I have not tried H264 or Bluray/HDDVD.

I am running ffdshow as my video codec with software deinterlacing and 1 core runs at 80% on MPEG2 HD TV (13Mb/s). My CPU is AM2 +4800 with 1GB of Ram and that is good enough for me.

As for the sound, It does run thru the HDMI output to the LCD TV but, I have an Amp, so I just have sound connected with coax digital output to amp all the time. ( As Tim 'The Tool Man' Allen says "More power - agh agh agh").

Just becareful as the M2a VM comes in 2 variants. The standard which has not got the daughterboard for HDMI and digital output. The M2A VM HDMI has the daughterboard but it consumes the PCI-E slot which then rules out an add on Graphics card if you want HDMI and digital output.

Food for though...

 

[Nemulate]

Just be careful as the M2a VM comes in 2 variants. The standard which has not got the daughterboard for HDMI and digital output. The M2A VM HDMI has the daughterboard but it consumes the PCI-E slot which then rules out an add on Graphics card if you want HDMI and digital output.

Food for though...

Again the Gigabyte board doesn't have this issue, onboard hdmi and usuable pci express socket for video card!

 

[cul8er]

If you are about to buy a new mATX motherboard for AMD CPU then perhaps you should wait for this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series

Scheduled January 2008.

 

[luna_s]

im running a am2 4600 with a gig of ram

plays hi bitrate x264 1080p without a problem (altho the cpu fan will spin up...)

Im perfectly happy with it, btw i wasnt aware of any issues with the chipset ?
mine seems to be fine, using drivers that came with the board on the cd

Im using SPDIF straight to my amp

 

[OgdenP]

Im perfectly happy with it, btw i wasnt aware of any issues with the chipset ?
mine seems to be fine, using drivers that came with the board on the cd

Yes, that is the key. If you use the original drivers, it works fine (as yours and mine do). But if you upgrade to one of the later versions of the Catalyst Drivers you will have problems.

 

[Ramjet99]

Interesting, what are the issues that are being experienced?

I have upgraded to latest catalyst drivers as a matter of course on my GA-MA69G-S3H so is there something I should be looking for?