VIA vs. Atom in 810..

[patmankn]

totallymaxed,

do you guys have plans to testdrive the Zotac Ion A/B Board?
With the Atom 330 it looks quite promising to me. Here in Germany its about 180€(for the A with Wifi&fan) and 120€(for the B w/o wifi) (tax incl.) + Shipping for the A & B model. I guess the A is provided with a small external PSU as well.
http://www.mini-itx.com/2009/05/12/zotac-ion-itx-a-motherboard-review

Another Board came to my eyes: http://www.pointofview-online.com/showroom.php?shop_mode=product_listing&category_id=86
They have models with single & dual Core. Fine thing about them is... they support up to 4x SATA + 1 PCI-e 16x.
Maybe not the best choice for an MD... but for a file server it is! (4x2Tb + raid controller. is not to bad!).
The POV does not come with a PSU. The POV 230/330 is available starting from 125/140EUR (tax incl.) + Shipping.

Cheers..

Pat

[cirion]

Totallymaxed, if you want to test VDPAU on the Acer Revo, the latest XBMC Live CD supports it out of the box
Just boot the CD, Choose Nvidia in the startup, and when booted set decoder to VDPAU.
Insert a USB drive with x264 content and se the CPU use in a terminal.

I have tested this on one of my MD's with a GF8600GT card and it works
CPU is at 2-8% load while watching 1080p content.

[totallymaxed]

totallymaxed,

do you guys have plans to testdrive the Zotac Ion A/B Board?
With the Atom 330 it looks quite promising to me. Here in Germany its about 180€(for the A with Wifi&fan) and 120€(for the B w/o wifi) (tax incl.) + Shipping for the A & B model. I guess the A is provided with a small external PSU as well.
http://www.mini-itx.com/2009/05/12/zotac-ion-itx-a-motherboard-review

Another Board came to my eyes: http://www.pointofview-online.com/showroom.php?shop_mode=product_listing&category_id=86
They have models with single & dual Core. Fine thing about them is... they support up to 4x SATA + 1 PCI-e 16x.
Maybe not the best choice for an MD... but for a file server it is! (4x2Tb + raid controller. is not to bad!).
The POV does not come with a PSU. The POV 230/330 is available starting from 125/140EUR (tax incl.) + Shipping.

Cheers..

Pat

Yes we do plan to test the Zotac boards asap...should have some samples in about 10 days I hope.

Yes good point...the 4 x SATA ports on those boards make them interesting.

Andrew

[skeptic]

BTW, what all is required for h.264 gpu playback?  Does it have to conform to very specific standards or is pretty much any h.264 video ok?  I transcode all my DVDs to h.264/ac3/avi format because mkv has a problem with green garbage and this format gives great results on screen and is compatible with my Archos.

As far as I know any h.264 encoded content will benefit from the vdpau enabled hardware acceleration...as will mpeg2 content to a lesser extent.

All the best

Andrew

Sweet...  Looks like I may be buying a new MD sooner than I thought.  My poor old laptop we use as a bedroom MD seems to be dying. 

Any chance of 810 supporting vdpau out of the box?

[b4rney]

Sweet...  Looks like I may be buying a new MD sooner than I thought.

Same here! Couldn't resist the Acer Revo for 149 GBP. Pre-ordered from play.com yesterday.

Off topic but ... is there any point testing the acer revo under 710?
Barney

[totallymaxed]

BTW, what all is required for h.264 gpu playback?  Does it have to conform to very specific standards or is pretty much any h.264 video ok?  I transcode all my DVDs to h.264/ac3/avi format because mkv has a problem with green garbage and this format gives great results on screen and is compatible with my Archos.

As far as I know any h.264 encoded content will benefit from the vdpau enabled hardware acceleration...as will mpeg2 content to a lesser extent.

All the best

Andrew

Sweet...  Looks like I may be buying a new MD sooner than I thought.  My poor old laptop we use as a bedroom MD seems to be dying. 

Any chance of 810 supporting vdpau out of the box?

Supporting vdpau in 0810 is not currently part of the initial feature set. That could change though.

Andrew

[totallymaxed]

Sweet...  Looks like I may be buying a new MD sooner than I thought.

Same here! Couldn't resist the Acer Revo for 149 GBP. Pre-ordered from play.com yesterday.

Off topic but ... is there any point testing the acer revo under 710?
Barney

The Revo will not work under 0710 without upgraded nVidia & Nic drivers...if your happy to fix that then go for it.

Andrew

[b4rney]

The Revo will not work under 0710 without upgraded nVidia & Nic drivers...if your happy to fix that then go for it.

Thanks Andrew. I might give it a go. If I succeed I'll do a wiki.
Barney