New HTPC Motherboard???

[crazyfool]

hey guys,
I'm looking to get a new motherboard for my htpc as my current 780g board has given me nothing but problems. I'm looking at the 8200/8300 nvidia boards right now as I already have a 4850e which I want to keep and the 9300/9400 boards are all intel. Basically what I would like to know is anyone has any experience with these boards as there isn't much in the way of reviews and unless there are any major problems with them, such as the 24p issue I had with the 780g, I need some recommendations. Right now I'm looking at this board but after going through a 3450, 4550 and an 8400gs before finally realizing a new mb would be best I dont really trust my judgement right now. So any help would be appreciated...thanks

[BobF64]

I have the Asus M3N78-EM board, using an AMD 5050e CPU.

It works quite well for blu-ray and recording TV, connected to my TV via HDMI.

One thing I have noticed, sometimes when the PC starts, theres no audio, some sort of HDMI problem I believe, if I reboot or make it go to sleep and wake it, it works fine.

I did add an 8400GS after a while, running in hybrid boost mode so it still uses the motherboards HDMI connector, to give the blu-ray decoding a bit more power as it seemed to lag a little at rare times, usually long panning shots, and appared to miss 1 or 2 frames. Could be a TV thing I suppose, but its only running at 720p.

[format]

I'd sell what you have and get an ASROCK ION 330BD

[crazyfool]

I'd sell what you have and get an ASROCK ION 330BD

I was considering that but theres no room for expansion ie my pci tv tuner

[format]

I was considering that but theres no room for expansion ie my pci tv tuner

Fair enough. Just a thought - can't you get an external/USB tuner?

[crazyfool]

yeh I could do but they usually take longer to wake up from standby which causes problems with mediaportal... although the more I look at it the more interesting it seems... gonna do a bit more research and see how it looks...thanks for the suggestion tho

[crazyfool]

ok I've had a bit of a look and I'm thinking it would be kinda stupid for me to spend 50 quid on an old board (8200) when I could go for a much more powerful, although much more expensive one in the 9400... So I'm thinking I'm may save a bit more and go for a 9400 board + cpu. What I need help on though is which intel cpu to go for? I currently have a 45w 4850e and the cheapest intel I can find is a E1200/E1600 so what I need to know is how much hotter do you think these will run then my current cpu and would there be a major performance hit between my current cpu and one of these celerons... anyone got any ideas...

[format]

ok I've had a bit of a look and I'm thinking it would be kinda stupid for me to spend 50 quid on an old board (8200) when I could go for a much more powerful, although much more expensive one in the 9400... So I'm thinking I'm may save a bit more and go for a 9400 board + cpu. What I need help on though is which intel cpu to go for? I currently have a 45w 4850e and the cheapest intel I can find is a E1200/E1600 so what I need to know is how much hotter do you think these will run then my current cpu and would there be a major performance hit between my current cpu and one of these celerons... anyone got any ideas...

Get an e5200 - they are basically a crippled version of the e8400 - one of the best Intel dual cores there are. 45nm too so it should be low power consumption.

[llololloy]

re: the m3n78-vm
I have that running in my mediaPC with a 5000+ (borrowed the cpu long term)
no problems getting dxva working, everything is fine now, but I had loads of issues getting the sound working the way I wanted.
have hdmi going to tv carrying video and sound and have spdif going to amp for when I watch films.
It works now, but took a lot of faffing with different drivers. must have reinstalled w7 and vista at least 5 times during getting all working.
Not sure I'd recommend it based on those problems, but like I say it works fine now (apart from a weird screen resynch issue when using hdmi audio that I can't figure out).
But the fact it was cheap(ish) and exactly the onboard stuff I wanted is why I got it.

[crazyfool]

ok I've decided to go for an E5200 and either the Asus P5N7A-VM or the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H
I'm leaning towards the Asus because its cheaper and I usually buy asus boards... what do you guys think