I'm going to be building my first MythTV computer as a front/backend with more front ends added later. I'd like to have a minimum of 2 HD and 1 SD encoder/decoder cards. I also don't want to waste PCI slots for other things that I could just get integrated into the board. This will leave me open to future expansion.

- sound (surround capabilities would be nice)
- video (VGA, RCA and S-Video would be nice)
- HDMI (HDMI & DVI would be nice)
- USB 2
- 1394a (a & b would be nice)
- serial port (2 would be nice)
- IDE and SATA (external and internal SATA would be nice)
- 10/100 (10/100/1000 would be nice)
- Intel preferred (AMD is OK)

I'm looking for a few suggestions from people who have found MOBO's that they are happy with. I'm just so overwhelmed with all the info. I would prefer that the motherboard could fit in an "entertainment system style" case rather than a tower. Also, I'm not a linux guru, so I need something that basically works.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Stay away from anything with a Via chip set in it, especially
if you are going to use Hauppauge PVR-XXX cards. I recall
that SIS chip sets are on the no-no list too, but check the
Hauppauge web site for the full list.

Stay away from ECS brand motherboards too. Fry's often
gives these away with a CPU for the price of the CPU alone.
You get what you pay for...

I guess I prefer Asus motherboards. Seems like one of the top
brands if you go Googling for favorite motherboard brands.
So lets say go to the Asus web page and look for a board
with your specs that does not have a Via chip set.

Cliff

_________________
R5F27 using R5F1 Nvidia drivers
HD-5500 analog from NTSC Sat Rx, with OTA DVB too
GeForce MX-440 SVideo tvout to a TV
Older dual core 3.4ghz Intel CPU
Asus P5PE-VM Motherboard
2 GB RAM
1 TB LVM2
VirtualBox
Samba

You should probably wait a while. Tis new-release season for chipsets. I've been discussing them at length in the "Recomendations for a 'green' machine" thread.

The AMD/ATI 780G is out now. The Nvidia 8200 is literally just appearing (with Windows drivers dated within the last week). Intel's equivalent, the G45, won't be out for at least another three months. All three of these have hardware decoding of VC-1, H.264, and Mpeg2. And who knows when we'll see good Linux drivers for any of them.

All three of these chipset have VGA, DVI and HDMI. Composit, Component, and S-video seem to have gone away. The 690G had them. If you NEED those, you'll probably have to go to a discrete video card.

I don't think you'll find current boards with 1394B. It was on boards a few years ago, but never caught on. The most recent boards have one serial port at most. And all the new ones have gigabit ethernet.

If Intel is preferred, you'll have to wait for the G45. Or go with a older chipset, and do all your decoding at the software level.

Cliff suggest Asus boards. I find it interesting that on their 780G board they chose to truncate the feature set. For example, they left off the firewire, and only used two phase power. You also have to use their daughter card to get SPDIF. I've seen it more expensive than the Gigabyte version with 1394, three phase power and SPDIF on the backplane.

If you're itching to buy now, as Cecil said, look in the Tier 1 threads. But I think the best advice would be to hold back for a few months to see what shakes out.

Any personal preferences on AMD vs Intel as far as heat, performance, energy consumption, overclocking, price, etc?

Thanks for the info, I may decide to wait, especially if the boards are coming out with hardware decoding.

I think the dividing line between the two chips is transcoding. If you're going to do a lot of transcoding to Xvid, Divx, or H.264, then Intel might be the way to go. If an extra 15 minutes to transcode a file doesn't matter, then I'd choose AMD.

The current gen 45 watt AMD processors are certainly cool, and don't use a lot of power. If you've got cash to burn, the mobile Intels probably fare slightly better. In the "Recomendations for a Green Machine" thread, I put a link to an AnandTech article looking at power consumption -- a worthwhile read.

Price - AMD wins hands down. The price of the processor, usually a lot less. The price of the motherboards tends to be less. Again check the Green PC thread for the reference to the Tom's Hardware processor chart. Look at the price you'd pay for different processors, from your preferred place of purchase, and the performance that would give you for various tasks.

Overclocking? Why would you want to that in the context of a PVR. The increased heat creates the need for increased cooling, thus making increased noise. All for the gain of a few minutes in transcoding a file -- something that is usually done in the background during off peak hours. If your PVR is next to your TV, that increased noise could become annoying. If your PVR is hiding in the basement, out of earshot, it probably doesn't matter if it whines like a hurricane.

Of course the AMD vs Intel thing is sort of like a religion. It's very much a personal choice that depends on which gives you a warm comfortable feeling. There's been many a flame war fought by the two camps. You have to decide what balance of "heat, performance, energy consumption, overclocking, price, etc" works best for you.