Guide to Building a HTPC, Workstation and Server - Page 165

The motherboard (or any other motherboard with GeForce 8200/8300/9300/9400 chipset) has:

- One PATA controller for two PATA ports; IDE mode only
- Three SATA controllers for six SATA ports; two of them support IDE, AHCI and RAID mode for four SATA ports and one of them supports AHCI and RAID mode for two SATA ports.

Therefore

- If you select IDE mode, two PATA devices and four SATA devices, all in IDE mode, are available.

- If you selelct AHCI mode, two PATA devices in IDE mode and six SATA devices in AHCI mode are available.

- If you selelct RAID mode, two PATA devices in IDE mode and six SATA devices in RAID mode are available.

The difference between IDE and AHCI is that AHCI supports hot-plug/hot-swap and NCQ. If you need only four SATA devices and don't need hot-plug or NCQ, you can select IDE mode. But if Vista was installed in IDE mode and if you want to switch to SATA mode later (for example, to use the disabled two SATA ports), you have to change the registry to load the AHCI driver (not so difficult unlike XP; search in MS KB). Switching from AHCI to IDE is easy: just change BIOS setup.

Thanks for the links. IMO Athlon X2 7750 BE is a good choice if you want HT 3.0 but don't want to spend $102 on Phenom X3 8450 (so far the cheapest HT 3.0 processor; HT 3.0 is essential for advanced deinterlacing with HD 3200/3300). So which is better in performance/price ratio, Athlon X2 7750 BE or Phenom X3 8450? bit-tech.net did a good comparison between

- Athlon X2 5200 2.7GHz, HT 2.0, $66
- Athlon X2 7750 BE 2.7GHz, HT 3.0, $79
- Phenom X3 8450 2.1GHz, HT 3.0, $102
- Pentium DC E5200 2.5GHz, $84

Power consumption at idle

- Pentium DC E5200: 101W
- Athlon X2 5200: 103W
- Athlon X2 7750 BE: 148W
- Phenom X3 8450: 152W

(The difference between 5200 and 7750/8450 is much smaller ~25W than this at most other reviews and in my own test.)

x264 Encoding

- Phenom X3 8450: 1029 sec
- Athlon X2 7750 BE: 1095 sec
- Pentium DC E5200: 1220 sec
- Athlon X2 5200: 1290 sec

In some other tests, 7750 is better than 8450 perhaps because of the higher clock. Overall 7750 is of good value (if the retail price is the same as MSRP).

A couple of recommended combinations in the low-end AMD platform would be:

- GA-MA78GM-S2HP 780G chipset + Athlon X2 7750 BE ($159): good HD/SD post-processing, but no multichannel LPCM
- GA-MA78GM-S2HP 780G chipset + Athlon X2 5050e + Radeon HD 4550 ($191): good HD/SD post-processing, multichannel LPCM, the lowest power consumption at idle.
- M3N78-EM GeForce 8300 chipset + Athlon X2 7750 BE ($169): good HD/SD post-processing, multichannel LPCM

Update

I checked the current prices.

- Phenom X3 8450: $89 (free shipping!)
- Athlon X2 7750 BE: $84 (+ shipping).

The price of 7750 need to go down < $80 (shipped)!

GA-MA78G-DS2H is of better value (unless you need three PCI slots).

Look at the mATX low-end Intel/NVIDIA system (you won't need an ATX mb because of the limited expandability with the case; IIRC, the case accepts only two expansion cards, 1 x PCIe x16 and 1 x PCI).

You can watch/record only basic cable channels with a TV tuner. You still need a STB and a capture device such as Hauppauge HD PVR to record premium channels (see the TV section at page 1).

Power consumption: check this post.

Phenom+HD 3200/3300 is more or less equivalent to GeForce 9300/9400 in video playback. The former does not support multichannel LPCM, while the latter supports it. Therefore I recommended Athlon+780G+HD 4550 at page 85 instead. I prefer HD 4550 to GeForce 9300/9400 (and Phenom+HD 3200/3300) in picture quality. CPU plays little role in video playback, every process is done by GPU (unless you go with a software solution). Phenom is good just because of HT 3.0, which is essential for good communication between IGP and system memory in the AMD platform. If you use a discrete card, Athlon (HT 2.0) is enough. Nowadays playing back BD is very easy for any recent system (one of the easiest among all video formats). Please read sneals2000's great summary.

AverTV Combo PCIe card has its own thread in this forum.

j_the_alchemist

You can't use an ATI GPU and an NVIDIA GPU simultaneously (read this article). Vista uses only the GPU which was first initialized by BIOS and automatically disables the other GPU and hence you can't use a remote to switch between the GPUs. The best scenario is the following. Select Onboard GPU > Always Enable in BIOS (so both GPUs are available to OS). However you have to select either Onboard VGA or PEG in Init Display First in BIOS (the default is PEG). If you select Onboard VGA, then Vista is booting only into Onboard VGA and Vista automatically disables PEG. If you select PEG, then Vista is booting into PEG and Vista disables Onboard VGA. So in order to switch between the two GPUs, you have to restart the system, enter the BIOS setup and select the GPU you want to use in Init Display First.

Yes, HDMI from the onboard video carries both video and audio, but audio is limited to stereo LPCM, DD and DTS. If you are not goint to play BD, this is not a problem, of course. A problem of the onboard video is weak post-processing. Adding HD 4550 will fix both of them. I recommed one of:

- GA-MA78GM-S2HP
- GA-MA78G-DS3H (ATX version; more expansion slots)

GA-MA790GP-DS4H has more features such as slightly better onboard video for 3D, CrossFire, RAID 5 and better overclocking. MSI-7411 has (pre-)amplifier for analog sound better than the onboard audio (useless if you use HDMI), but its onboard video is the same weak GPU. Perhaps you'd better spend money on a discrete graphics card instead.