AMD HDMI Motherboards

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PabloTeK

Active Member
Well I may be getting my hands on a free Athlon64 3500+ AM2 and my family is planning to get a media centre, not for HD video yet but for viewing photos and music. It's going to have things like 2GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD from Samsung etc. However our TV doesn't like 'PC Signals' for some odd reason but this may be down to the HDCP and HDMI issues wth many cards. I've chosen the AMD 960G chipset because it's cheaper than the equivalent nVidia boards.

I've come down to these two motherboards but I don't know which one to go for; they are:

Asus M2A-VM HDMI
MSI K9AGM3-FIH

I'm leaning towareds the MSI as it has HDMI on the board as opposed to being on a riser (Asus). I'm not bothered about the £3 difference.
 
I would advise a WD or Seagate drive before Samsuang or especially Hitachi to see a quality brand used. As far as using a tv for a monitor consider a video card with S-Video out or a vga to tv type signal converter. DVI out is another option to consider later.

Before jumping on any model first take a close look at what each one offers overall. The product information and specifications for the Asus model are seen at http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=496&l4=0&model=1585&modelmenu=1

For the MSI model go to http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K9AGM3-FIH&class=mb

The manufacturer is always the best place for information since the vendor there lacked the things you may want a closer look at.
 
Yeah but HDMI carries audio as well as video plus it can handle HDCP without having to use a GFX card. Thing is that I've tried plonking my Dell and it's X1300 on the S-Video and it wasn't brilliant though that may have been Knoppix. I'm thinking of Hitachi as the drive should really be quiet.

I've lookedon the manufacturers site's but I still can't tell much of a difference.
 
S-Video does lack for clarity. I ran an X1300 Pro on the last build. The current MSI Radeon HD 2600XT also sees an audio driver installed not that I will that here. DVI was the idea for a better picture in Windows. Linux lacks in that area quite a bit with Knoppix also being a smaller sized distro with less options and support.
 
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