[twizzle]

I have built a media PC based around a Gigabyte GA MA74GM S2H motherboard which has integrated ATI Radeon 2100 graphics. They system also has 2GB Ram and an Athlon X2 4200 cpu.

So far I have been using Windows but want to move everything to Ubuntu (all my other PC's are there ), so I have tried a fresh Ubuntu 9.04 desktop install with XBMC on it. It all seems to work but in XBMC, the graphics are very slow and video does not go much above 14 fps which is getting pretty frustrating!

From reading here and elsewhere, it would appear that the Radeon 2100 does not support anything more that OpenGL 1.3 and will only use the Mesa DRI R300 drivers. I tried using EnvyRG but it says that nothing is compatible and if I try and force the ATI drivers, I just get garbage on the screen.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to upgrade and am considering a new motherboard with better graphics. I would consider a separate card but it might be tricky getting it into a case as I am using a very slim Hiper case so will need a riser card.

So far I have been looking at this:

Biostar

or this:

Asus

I don't, however, want to make the same mistake again so was wondering what peoples views / opinions are on this.

I will only use the PC as a HTPC and it is connected to the TV. It will not be used for games but might be used to play DVD's or HD video in the future so it needs to be able to cope with a reasonable amount of work.

[pakojones]

So far I have been looking at this:

Biostar

or this:

Asus

I don't, however, want to make the same mistake again so was wondering what peoples views / opinions are on this.

I will only use the PC as a HTPC and it is connected to the TV. It will not be used for games but might be used to play DVD's or HD video in the future so it needs to be able to cope with a reasonable amount of work.

Hi,

As I see, the Biostar one has a GeForce 8100 and the Asus one has a GeForce 8200, if you will use VDPAU (and probably do) I sugest to buy the Asus because the grafic card, on the link below you can see the list of Nvidia cards that support VDPAU, and wich level of support, VP1, VP2, or VP3, VP3 is the best, the GPU make almost all the decoding job.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

I hope this helps.

J.

[twizzle]

Thanks for that. I was not aware of VDPAU, but now I am that board makes even more sense.

Looks like I will have a back up board for my server now!