[michal]

Hi,

It seems like there are no Low Profile cards with feature set C capability available currently (at least not in Australia).

How significant is the additional acceleration of MPEG4 given that even an old Xbox can decode it? Is there any CPU that you could use that wouldn't be able to decode such video without breaking a sweat?

Ideally I'd prefer it accelerated on the video card, but if I can't have that I'd appreciate being re-assured that I'm not missing out on much

Regards,
Michal

P.S. Off-topic, but are there any good motherboards that support feature set B and have a HDMI output (with audio) AND an optical output?

EDIT: I just realised that there seem to be NO affordable feature set B Low Profile cards available in Australia either! Oh, and my signature is wrong, that hardware has moved to my parents HTPC.

[motd2k]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-AT3N...-s-ITX-VGA

Seems to be about the best bang-per-buck available at the moment.

[michal]

Looks tempting, unfortunately it does not seem to be available in Australia.

http://staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/search.c...N7A&spos=3

Regards,
Michal

[magnetism]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-AT3N...-s-ITX-VGA

Seems to be about the best bang-per-buck available at the moment.

This motherboard uses ION, it's not feature set 'C' if that is what you are after. Also, from the reviews, the fan on the board seems to be particularly nasty (loud). If you want something like this motherboard, you might be better of trying to find a (newer revision) zotac ion board.

[boyastro]

P.S. Off-topic, but are there any good motherboards that support feature set B and have a HDMI output (with audio) AND an optical output?

The Gigabyte GA-M85M-US2H is available for around $90 in Queensland, has HDMI and co-ax SPDIF out.

Hardware revision 1.0 uses an integrated Geforce 8100. Rev's 1.1 and 1.2 use Geforce 8200.

I was leaning toward replacing my aging Xbox with a tiny Ion build, but it's much cheaper here in Australia to build a system with a real CPU, so the skin is nice and responsive. Also, most of my video is currently Xvid, so the CPU will be handling it.

There's a PCI-E x16 slot, so I can upgrade to a feature set C desktop card if I decide I need to in the future.

[michal]

Unfortunately that motherboard doesn't go well with my Intel CPU :/

Regards,
Michal

[magnetism]

I've got the ASUS P5N7A-VM motherboard. It uses more or less the same chipset as the ION boards do. Works great with VDPAU etc and since I rarely use any SD material anymore I've never missed any fancy upscaling... I'd recommend it.

[michal]

The majority of my material will be SD. Movies though will be mostly HD.
I've just bought a 8400GS Low Profile card so at least that gives me VDPAU feature set B.

I wonder how much better the scaling really is in feature set C.

[darkscout]

The GT210 and GT220 are both Feature Set C according to Nvidias release.

$50+ USD.