On 08/05/2009 11:58 AM, Adam Sweet wrote:
>
>> Brief summaries:
>>
>> John Wesley, Hardware + Mythbuntu: £425
>> processor: Via C7
>> memory: 1 Gb
>> Hard Drive: 1.5 Tb
>> Optical drive: None
>> Graphics: VIA UniChromeTM Pro II 3D/2D AGP
>>
>
> *snip*
>
> Without some research beforehand, I'd be very reluctant to use any Via
> graphics chips in what is essentially a video specific application. I'd
> be interested to hear others' experience of Via Chrome graphics chips if
> I'm wrong.
>
> Ad
>
I would 100% agree from my previous experience of Via motherboards and
graphics chipsets. I used to have a Via SP13000 running my media PC
performance was sluggish and horrible even from the supposedly 1.2ghz
processor. The chipset drivers used to be a complete nightmare (even
worse than now), but now openchrome drivers are included in a number of
distros so you shouldn't have to worry about it, Fedora, Debian and
Ubuntu all ship openchrome which should be fine.
MPEG2 playback on my system was with the openchrome driver and xvmc, but
again hard to get working and playback quality wasn't great (my nvidia
6200 gives better xvmc playback by miles, and that isn't even a current
card VDPAU on a Ion platform or similar is better still) but it did
achieve the goal of smooth framerate and only 20% CPU usage for
broadcast SD tv.
No MPEG4 support without using the via drivers, and I would agree that
most people would tell you to avoid it if at all possible.
I think that a via system would be viable for SD content, but HD is
probably beyond the hardware mentioned above. If you want HD an Nvidia
ION system is probably the way to go.
