[Eugwat]

Hi,


I had a HTPC newbie question... I've been spending hours gleaning all the great info here. I'm in the process of building a very lowcost HTPC but want to get quality as well.


I was wondering if anyone here has used the Asus A7N266-VM motherboard? It has the built in graphics and sound, and is being sold for $73 at newegg.com. Any comments?


Thanks!


Eugene

 

[Namlemez]

I've got an NV7m which uses the nForce standard GF2MX + special sound so it is probably pretty similar. I ended up using a Radeon LE because I had it from my old HTPC.


As for my thoughts on it:

It isn't as fast as the KT266a boards but it isn't slow. It is also quite stable. As I said above, I'm using the onboard sound which works well. No need to switch back and forth between AC3 pass-through and normal Windows sound and the multichannel encoding is really cool for using with WinDVD 4s DPLII encoding. I can play an MP3 and have a a single digital link to my receiver which will play 5.1 channel DPLII music.