Author Topic: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?  (Read 12164 times)

eoren1

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System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« on: November 10, 2007, 03:02:52 am »
I'm about to purchase a new motherboard, cpu and case to use with LinuxMCE and was hoping for confirmation that this hardware will allow me to get the most out of the software.
Motherboard: MSI K9AGM2-FIH 690G Socket AM2 1000MHz DDR2-800 M-ATX
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4600+ Socket AM2 (65W)
Case: Antec NSK2480
I have the Hauppauge PVR-150 which I will bring over to the new box as well as 2 gigs RAM and 2 SATA HDDs (320 & 500gb).
My main use of the box will be as a media center with PVR and music use as well as a NAS.
Any thoughts/suggestions?
Also, the AMD 690G chipset that the MB uses can do separate VGA and HDMI out.  I plan on sending the VGA signal to an old TV and the HDMI to my computer monitor via a 30 foot HDMI to DVI cable.  Will the software allow me to have two separate displays (rather than showing the same thing on each display)?
Thanks in advance,
E

Zaerc

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2007, 03:49:54 am »
Let me guess, that mainboard has an SB600 sata controller and an X1250 graphics chip.  Those currently have more then their fair share of problems.  I'm expecting the upcoming 0710 release to solve at least some of the issues, but I think you'd probably want to pick something else.  Untill then it's only usable with IDE drives and you can probably forget about running MythTV.

And I wouldn't get my hopes up to high for that dual screen setup if I were you, that's not how the system was intended so it's likely going to be a bitch to set it up if even possible at all.
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eoren1

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2007, 01:10:12 pm »
You're right on both counts - very disappointing.  Is this specifically a LinuxMCE 'bug' or will I have the same problem by going the Ubuntu/MythTV route separately?
Thanks!
E

Zaerc

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2007, 02:02:53 pm »
The problem is specificly MythTV related, other then that LMCE runs fine (as does Kaffeine when playing TV for instance).  In all honesty I haven't tried the very latest version of the ATI drivers yet, but I doubt the issue has been solved already.
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eoren1

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2007, 02:28:04 pm »
Thanks for the quick reply.
Any suggestions on an alternative Intel setup - CPU and MB (with HDMI) at a reasonable price point? 
Thanks again,
E

Zaerc

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2007, 03:34:18 pm »
All the motherboards I know about are listed in the wiki: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Category:Hardware, see the Mainboards subcategory.
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eoren1

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2007, 04:37:43 pm »
Thanks for the link.
Found this great board:
GIGABYTE GA-73UM-S2H LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7150 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (GeForce 7150/nForce 630i chipsets) which I'll pair with an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 (1.6GHz 65W 1MB L2).
Anyone know if this will work well with LinuxMCE?
Thanks again,
E

totallymaxed

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2007, 05:18:02 pm »
Thanks for the quick reply.
Any suggestions on an alternative Intel setup - CPU and MB (with HDMI) at a reasonable price point? 
Thanks again,
E

Hi,

Well MSI MS-7329 is not an Intel MB but we are testing it now and it looks excellent with onboard 6150 graphics and HDMI output;

http://217.110.237.67/Manuals/7329-engl%20v1.0%20-%20MS-7329%20(G52-73291X1).pdf

Zaerc... I am running straight over to the Wiki now to update the hardware pages ;-)
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Zaerc

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #8 on: November 10, 2007, 07:11:11 pm »
eoren1: The geforce 6,7 & 8 series all seem to work well, although some of the newer ones may require a manual update of the display drivers after installing LMCE (at the moment, but likely to change when the new version is released) I don't recall anyone reporting that they were unable to get them to work properly.  But I can't give you any guarantees as I haven't tried that specific board myself.


Zaerc... I am running straight over to the Wiki now to update the hardware pages ;-)

Awesome, the more the merrier! :)  Thanks on behalf of all the people looking for a good mainboard, much appreciated. 

And on a sidenote: I'm really looking forward to VDR support, since I'm stuck with that forementioned X1250 chipset myself.
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totallymaxed

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #9 on: November 10, 2007, 08:57:37 pm »
eoren1: The geforce 6,7 & 8 series all seem to work well, although some of the newer ones may require a manual update of the display drivers after installing LMCE (at the moment, but likely to change when the new version is released) I don't recall anyone reporting that they were unable to get them to work properly.  But I can't give you any guarantees as I haven't tried that specific board myself.


Zaerc... I am running straight over to the Wiki now to update the hardware pages ;-)

Awesome, the more the merrier! :)  Thanks on behalf of all the people looking for a good mainboard, much appreciated. 

And on a sidenote: I'm really looking forward to VDR support, since I'm stuck with that forementioned X1250 chipset myself.


Well we're working hard on vdr integration and we hope that it will make it into the lmce-0710 release ;-)

By the way I may need some assistance with updating the Wiki... I tried updating the hardware page but when I click on 'Edit' the page I get has an edit field with just a include block in it. I was expecting to get editable markup like i would for a detail link. I know this is not place for Wiki support but some tips from the 'master' would be welcome ;-)
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colinjones

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2007, 05:20:46 am »
Totallymaxed - that MB doesn't seem to have SP-DIF out, how do you get digital audio whilst HDMI doesn't work for LMCE yet? Have you managed to get that working somehow?

Zaerc

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #11 on: November 11, 2007, 05:23:05 am »
I'm not that skilled in editing the wiki either, I just look at other edit pages and try things as I go along, the "Show preview" button usually comes in handy.  But I guess some directions on adding new stuff is overdue a bit as it's not so intuitive, and I never realized this is one of the things keeping people from adding stuff. :P  If this is useful I'll put it in the wiki as well.

To add a new page you can just make up a new url, like this: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Name of the page you want to add (the wiki will replace spaces with underscores automaticly) and edit it.

For hardware I think the best convention is: "Manufacturer_Model-Type-Whatever", in your case that would be: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/MSI_MS-7329.  To categorize the page so that it's easy to find, you can put this at the top of the page:
Code: [Select]
[[Category: Hardware]]
[[Category: Mainboards]]

And below that you can put anything you feel is relevant.  Here are a few things I figured out so far:

==This is how you can do a section header==
===Which can be nested by adding more equal signs===

*This is an unordered (bullit) list.
**These can also be nested

#This is an ordered (numbered) list
##I think these can be nested as well

:This will be indented
::Indented more

 Lines starting with a space will be "preformatted", and placed in one of those typical dotted boxes.

''Italic text''
'''bold text'''
'''''italic and bold'''''

Urls are automaticly recognized, but there are more possibilities.  For example:
Code: [Select]
http://some.domain/page.html  shows the URL 'as is'
[http://some.domain/page.html]  shows up as an increasing number
[http://some.domain/page.html alternative text]  shows up as "alternative text"

[[other wiki page]] link to other_wiki_page, shows as "other wiki page"
[[other wiki page|alternative text]] link to other_wiki_page, shows as "alternative text"

<nowiki>this will stop the wiki from applying formatting, useful if you don't want url's turned into links for instance</nowiki>

Alternatively you can also use the standard HTML tags.  I hope I got all that right and that it's enough to get you started.  The headings will be put into a table of contents at the top, but only when the page gets long enough I think. 


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1audio

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #12 on: November 11, 2007, 07:37:42 am »
The Nvidia 7050 chipset doesn't work with the driver built into LMCE. And the new driver published by Nvidia is very crashprone. There is a newer beta driver but its beta and may not be very stable. The MSI board TotallyMaxxed suggested is pretty special and not available here in the US, however it should work pretty well. (BTW the link seems either broken or on a very slow server). I would stick with a 6150 chipset because they work. I couldn't find a speed or feature difference between them except HDMI that would matter. Asus M2NPV-VM.

totallymaxed

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #13 on: November 11, 2007, 11:00:52 am »
Totallymaxed - that MB doesn't seem to have SP-DIF out, how do you get digital audio whilst HDMI doesn't work for LMCE yet? Have you managed to get that working somehow?

Yes it does it has 2 x SP-DIF headers... looking at them now ;-)

HDMI works fine under LMCE by the way... its now our standard interconnect for screens.
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totallymaxed

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Re: System Specs for LinuxMCE box?
« Reply #14 on: November 11, 2007, 11:17:27 am »
The Nvidia 7050 chipset doesn't work with the driver built into LMCE. And the new driver published by Nvidia is very crashprone. There is a newer beta driver but its beta and may not be very stable. The MSI board TotallyMaxxed suggested is pretty special and not available here in the US, however it should work pretty well. (BTW the link seems either broken or on a very slow server). I would stick with a 6150 chipset because they work. I couldn't find a speed or feature difference between them except HDMI that would matter. Asus M2NPV-VM.

The MS-7329 board is not 7050 based it uses the nVidia C51PVG onboard graphics chip which is a 6150 class part and is supported out of the 'box' by lmce-0704 (we are running the standard lmce-0704 drivers as they work perfectly on this chip). This board is an excellent board and we would rate as certainly one of the best we have tested under lmce.

The link is not broken by the way... maybe its just slow from where you are located.
Andy Herron,
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