I was wondering if any one could tell me if an Asus motherboard would be a good or bad selection for a machine to run MythTV on? I would be going with an AMD processor.

I was looking for a specific Gigabyte motherboard on tigerdirect and it is not carried by them and now I'm considering an Asus motherboard. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks.

I was wondering if any one could tell me if an Asus motherboard would be a good or bad selection for a machine to run MythTV on? I would be going with an AMD processor.

I was looking for a specific Gigabyte motherboard on tigerdirect and it is not carried by them and now I'm considering an Asus motherboard. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks.


Just ordered an ASUS MB (One of the best) with a intel celeron D 2.88 Ghz and 512MB Sdram for 141 including freight. (what a deal)

Plus the Asus comes with onboard video, 10/100/1000 Lan, 6.1 sound and also supports dual core. (actually 4 different processor types)
ASUS P5PE-VM LGA 775 Intel 865G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail 53.99
Newegg rules!

I made sure it did not have anything other than the Intel Chipsets (on both the NorthbBridge and SouthBridge). MythTV and some of the drivers for the capture/tuner cards have problems with VIA and other chipsets. Also, some AMD processors have problems (performance and lock ups), I think the 64 bit, but not sure. Go to MythTV main site and look for the documentation for supported Hardware for PC's. Also look iin the supported Capture/Tuner/Hdtv cards supported for even more information on what not to buy that has problems or is not supported. Also, try and buy cards with both mpeg 2 encoders/decoders (hardware installed) built in (not SW) if you can. Then you do not need a super dopper, High speed, 2GB sdram machine. :)

Good luck

I was wondering if any one could tell me if an Asus motherboard would be a good or bad selection for a machine to run MythTV on? I would be going with an AMD processor.
Brand doesn't really matter. Just make sure it has the features you want/need. If you are planning on running it as a backend with other frontends, gigabit lan is helpful. I went with the GA-M55Plus-S3G simply because it had all the features I wanted. Mainly it had 4 PCI slots and I had 4 ATSC tuner cards, but it also has Hi-def audio, gigabit lan, firewire, support for a PCIe video card, and also 2 PCIe x1 slots. Future plans for maybe a PCIe dual tuner card or two. I'm still using the onboard video for HDTV and it works pretty good. Can even do HD PIP with it. Oh, yeah, it also supports 4 sata, although I haven't switched to sata yet. And it has support for 4 ATA devices still. Some boards only support 2 now.

I agree with wnewell

I have an asus p5wd2-e motherboard... only problem I had was getting the marvell sata chipset to be recognized. Fedora core 6 should be fine with recognizing this. Pretty much you just want to watch out for new components that are not built into linux yet (usually very new motherboards)

I would, however, check the end user ratings of the board you are interested in. Newegg allows end user reviews. Some boards have, literally, more than a thousand reviews and there is a surprisingly wide range of results from board to board. The rating number each reviewer gives is more a measure of satisfaction but I still see it as quite valid. Reading the reviews can also help you see where the problems arise and plan for them.

I recently bought 2 DFI boards that had the highest ratings of all the AMD boards. From the review comments, it became clear that I needed to get new power supplies and pay very close attention to the ram as some brands were problematic. The result - I had zero problems building the two machines and they are performing flawlessly (though as gaming machines, not HTPCs).

Just so you know, some of the ASUS boards have moderately bad scores. I'd take it on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks for all the tips. I was looking for the GA-M55Plus on TigerDirect, but they don't have it. I believe I will be able to get this from NewEgg so I will just purchase it there.

LixSystems uses Asus boards in its HTPC's, so apparently they can work pretty well on linux.

I made sure it did not have anything other than the Intel Chipsets (on both the NorthbBridge and SouthBridge). MythTV and some of the drivers for the capture/tuner cards have problems with VIA and other chipsets. Also, some AMD processors have problems (performance and lock ups), I think the 64 bit, but not sure.

I have heard of stability problems with really old VIA chipsets, around the time of the original Athlon & P3 CPUs. But, do any of these problems still exist?

My backend is an Athlon64 with an AMD chipset, running in 64 bit mode. It works well, and is completely stable.

One of my frontends is an Athlon64 3200+ in an Asus K8V Pro board, with a VIA chipset. It has worked well for quite a long time (maybe 2 years?) with no stability problems at all. (Unfortunately my systems are socket 754, so I cannot go X2 without a full system upgrade. My other frontend is a Core Duo Mac Mini, which is great. When I upgrade my other systems, they will definitely be dual core.)


To address the original question:
I have been very happy with my Asus board. At the time I got it, when the Athlon64 was first released, only a few boards supported "Cool 'n Quiet", to control the CPU speed & save power. Now, I would expect almost any board to support this. The Asus board also has great fan control features, to slow down system fans as needed -- controlling noise levels.

You don't mention if you're building a fontend or backend, or a combined system. Your criteria may be slightly different depending on all the tasks the system will perform. Some recommendations:

- Make sure it has Integrated Gigabit Ethernet. Preferably a good chipset, not a Realtek.
- Fan Control & Cool n Quiet support. Save heat & power, less noise.
- Get a Dual Core (X2) CPU. Myth has a lot of background tasks, myth backend, mysql database, commercial flagging, transcoding, etc. Dual cores really help with all that stuff while maintaining smooth playback. Even a frontend-only system will benefit by being able to offload system tasks to another CPU & maintain smooth HD playback.

The machine that i'm building will be the myth server and I will be running directly off of this machine for now. No front end for now.

I actually purchased my mobo. I got an abit NSK-2400. And I'm planning on purchasing the following to fill it up:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Two Transcend JetRam 512MB SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Pioneer DVR-111D 16X Dual Layer DVD±RW Drive
Tuner Card: ???

I'd like to get a dual tuner ATSC tuner card with MPEG2 encoding built into it. Any suggestions? I've been hearing a lot about some cards that are $20, but are they dual tuner and if not, could I get one?

there are no dual tuner hd cards available other than the HDhomerun that is external and networked through ethernet. It does QAM and ATSC

Also, none of hardware decoding ATSC/QAM cards are currently supported in Linux. QAM/ATSC don't need any hardware encoding as it the cards just capture the stream. This process is not CPU intensive. Decoding on the other hand is... But your X2 3800 would be more than capable. If network bandwidth isn't a concern the HD Homerun is probably your best bet if you want a dual tuner with QAM and ATSC. The "$20" cards that most people refer to are the Air2PC older version cards that do ATSC only. Sometimes you can find them on Ebay for that amount. I use a few Kworld ATSC 110 (QAM/ATSC/NTSC) and Avermedia A180 (QAM/ATSC). I've gotten them all for less than $50 with rebates, on ebay, and on sale...

I have an Asus M2NPV MB and it has worked perfectly out of the box with Ubuntu Edgy. Also, the MythTV install guides on the ubuntu community site has been very easy to follow and getting it up and running with a Hauppauge PVR-500.

Also, none of hardware decoding ATSC/QAM cards are currently supported in Linux. QAM/ATSC don't need any hardware encoding as it the cards just capture the stream. This process is not CPU intensive. Decoding on the other hand is... But your X2 3800 would be more than capable. If network bandwidth isn't a concern the HD Homerun is probably your best bet if you want a dual tuner with QAM and ATSC. The "$20" cards that most people refer to are the Air2PC older version cards that do ATSC only. Sometimes you can find them on Ebay for that amount. I use a few Kworld ATSC 110 (QAM/ATSC/NTSC) and Avermedia A180 (QAM/ATSC). I've gotten them all for less than $50 with rebates, on ebay, and on sale...
have you been able to get qam to work through the Kworld ATSC 110? i just got the 115 and am having trouble, have only tried the crappy software that was bundled with it though, would like to be able to tune the unencrypted HD locals that come through my cable (yes they DO exist, i've checked w/my tv)

In mythtv I have QAM and ATSC working perfectly on my 110s. Are you using these on windows? I didn't even know they had QAM capable software for windows. Sorry, I'm completely unfamiliar with the 115.

I have an Asus M2NPV MB and it has worked perfectly out of the box with Ubuntu Edgy.

I just ordered the same MB along with an Athlon x2 64 3800+ cpu and 1 gig(2x512meg) of memory. This will be a standalone box pulling content via firewire from my Motorola HD cable box. I'm also setting up a slave back end on my AMD64 server. The slave will record shows using an Avermedia A180 capture card. The slave will house all the shows in the database. The slave is setup with a 3Ware RAID1 card and 2x500 gig SATA drives. I will install Ubuntu for both boxes.

I think a lot of people are buying the Asus due to reputation and features, but beware of features of the Mobo that require extra hardware to use such as serial ports, svideo out and digital sound out. None of these had the required bracket on my Asus A8N-VM/CSM Socket 939/GeForce 6150/A&V&L/TV-out Motherboard.

the N-force Mobo with built in Nvidia video is good for Mythtv, Nvidia proprietary Linux drivers work great with MythTV and are well documented in the Myth wiki and newsgroups. Some Asus boards with Nvida chips say they have TV out, but they do not have the "bracket" for the TV out and you have to purchase this separately. An annoyance also because you only have limited room for extra brackets on many HTPC systems.

For MythTV you usually need an IR blaster to control a Cable set top box. My Asus did not have a serial port, just the connector on the Mobo. To connect the blaster you have to buy the bracket separately, or find an alternative.

In mythtv I have QAM and ATSC working perfectly on my 110s. Are you using these on windows? I didn't even know they had QAM capable software for windows. Sorry, I'm completely unfamiliar with the 115.
The 115 seems like the same as the 110 but it specifically mentions QAM in the specs whereas on the Kworld site it doesn't mention QAM capability for the 110. QAM didn't work for me in the TotalMedia software for Windows that came with the card. I want to try my 115 card in a Myth box. I plan to build a system around the new MSI AMD 690G based MB (due to its HDMI output built-in). What are the chances that such a board would be supported by any version of Myth as soon as it launches - end of the month?.

Apparently there is NO way to make audio work in Ubuntu on an A8N-SLI. Realtek onboard audio.

Please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong.

The 115 seems like the same as the 110 but it specifically mentions QAM in the specs whereas on the Kworld site it doesn't mention QAM capability for the 110. QAM didn't work for me in the TotalMedia software for Windows that came with the card. I want to try my 115 card in a Myth box. I plan to build a system around the new MSI AMD 690G based MB (due to its HDMI output built-in). What are the chances that such a board would be supported by any version of Myth as soon as it launches - end of the month?.

The 115 requires some special sauce in the modules... see the wiki for what you have to add (it's on the 110 wiki page actually).

I've got two 115's working fine for ATSC, don't have cable to try QAM (but I'm thinking about it).

I'm running a ASUS M2NPV-VM in my frontend. Works pretty good with DVI out to my Mitsu 65732. Still haven't attempted to get SPDIF out working (need to build a bracket).

I got mine "open box" (actually an asus refurb) from newegg for $49. That's like $40 off! and it came with all the parts (component out, etc.)

Apparently there is NO way to make audio work in Ubuntu on an A8N-SLI. Realtek onboard audio.

See the other thread on MythDora 4.0. Apparently I can't post the url because I have too few posts. :(

Michele

I had a good system going with an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe with AthlonXP 3200+, now it's been replaced with an ASUS P5N32-E SLI with Core2Duo E6600.

The Asus M2NPV-VM sounds interesting, but it only has 5.1 channel audio. I was planning on getting the Asus M2N-E. It has 8 channel audio (7.1 actually) and a 3rd PCI slot, but lacks the on-board video card. It also has 6 SATA connectors vs. 4 on the M2NPV-VM card (all of my newer HDDs are SATA IIs). I just downloaded the manuals for these 2 cards (http://support.asus.com/download/). It's more expensive and requires a Video card to boot, but looks like possibly a more versatile card.

Oh, well, as a Linux noobie, I'm still playing around with my test install on an old laptop. I need to get up to speed on the ins & outs of using Linux first.