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Thread: Multimedia Shuttle

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    Multimedia Shuttle

    I am planning on building a shuttle using the MSI barebone located HERE and would like to know your views on this. Its uses will be a hi-fi, DVD Player, possibly some gaming, surfing the net when i am in lazy mode/ill in bed, and also, i've decided to store my music on it too. As it is multimedia based, and will be using a 28" or bigger TV as a monitor, i thought i could use a GF Ti4600/ATi 9800Pro. Then my mate said he was trading his 9800 Pro for a 9800 AIW. So i thought it would be better for me to use am AIW. However, i have a few questions:-

    Will the shuttles PSU handle a 9800se AIW, hard drive, plus mobo, CPU etc? I don't know if these extra AIW features use a lot more juice or not.

    Does the AIW have TV out? What about the graphics capabilities?

    What are your views on that barebone? I have decided upon that, as i want a replacement for my hi-fi.

    How is this for a spec?

    MSI Mega 651 P4 Barebone System
    2.2Ghz Pentium 4
    512 2700 DRR RAM
    40GB IBM Hard Drive (to start with)
    DVD-rom
    Radeon 9800se AIW
    Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

    Any views/comments/recommendations welcome. Thanks in advance

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    hey, don't know about whether the psu is up to the job, but all ATI A-I-W cards feature tv-out to my knowledge, but I'm sure you'd be better off feeding your tv with an s-vhs signal, which is available from A-I-W Radeons and later....(generally speaking)

    Hope that helps!
    Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!

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    The MSI MEGA isn't all that great from what i've heard. It's got way to much gimmecky stuff onboard that is quite useless. Why don't you just get a Shuttle or Mini-ITX and get some good speakers for it. Thats what I do, I have a quiet little shuttle in my lounge and it sits on for most of the day. Not very powerful (no gaming or anything) but is linked up to an external amp and speakers and that is far more versatile that a hi-fi and its also on my network to provide music to all my other machines.
    AIW cards are ok, IIRC they are designed for telly oriented viewing. AIW arn't too hot for gaming though as they only have 4 pixel pipelines compared to the 9800 Pros 8. If you are gonna use the TV out and all that then i'd say go for it. I'd stay away from the MEGA if I was you though, heard some bad things about it.
    That spec is good (appart from the MEGA). It'd start with a bigger hard drive though as they don't really cost much more. You can get a Western Digital 120gb IDE for £60 odd. You'd keep alot of music on that and you wouldn't need to upgrade later.

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    Most standard cards (eg. my FX 5200) has TV out. Im looking for TV/arial in, VI/TV out, VO would be nice too. But do the AIW's suffer a big graphics performance decrease for there capabilities as TV card etc? Like, where would a 9800 Pro AIW fair up against a standard 9800 Pro?

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    r1zeek, just seen your post. I chose this as i like the idea of not having to switch the PC to listen to music. I'll be disabling the onboard VGA (if it has any, im ill and my heads feeling a bit funny) but the sound and LAN will be used. I cant do that (music without booting) with a standard shuttle. I looked at the AMD MSI offering, but that was £230 for the barebone, add a CPU and for the first time i've ever seen it, an AMD setup would cost more than an Intel. This is a budget system, ram, hdd are both what i have left over from when i've upgraded etc. Buying a different shuttle means i cant get rid of my hi-fi (which i want to do, as i dont use it much), and have no DVD player with 5.1 surround sound.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Clstrphbc_donut
    r1zeek, just seen your post. I chose this as i like the idea of not having to switch the PC to listen to music. I'll be disabling the onboard VGA (if it has any, im ill and my heads feeling a bit funny) but the sound and LAN will be used. I cant do that (music without booting) with a standard shuttle. I looked at the AMD MSI offering, but that was £230 for the barebone, add a CPU and for the first time i've ever seen it, an AMD setup would cost more than an Intel. This is a budget system, ram, hdd are both what i have left over from when i've upgraded etc. Buying a different shuttle means i cant get rid of my hi-fi (which i want to do, as i dont use it much), and have no DVD player with 5.1 surround sound.
    Well, its a matter of preferance really, i mean, i got rid of my hi-fi in my room ages ago because I got some nice 6.1 speakers. I don't really care about waiting for it to boot because i'm never really that eager to listen to music
    And you can get a nice AMD shuttle for around £130 and then you just stick a DVD drive in it and hey preston, a 5.1 dvd readin machine!
    I think the MEGA has got onboard VGA but it can be easily disabled in the BIOS as you say.
    The bypass boot thing is an ok idea for playing music if you really want it.
    AIW arnt that bad, i mean the 4 less pixel pipelines does give a performance hit, you wont be playing Far Cry at High with it but it's not bad on CS or ut'03

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    Well the graphics hit isnt gonna bother me as such, as i have a GF6800 Ultra (2600) or X800 XT planned for this(machine im on now) machine. Im just after a general idea how good the card is. Seen as its going into a TV, (No monitor) the card isnt gonna be expected to pump out 1600x1200 resolutions. i think its 800x600 for a TV, so it should be fine. So it has 4 less pipelines? Learn something new everyday! . I dont fancy overclocking as i've had mATX and know they run warm. So as long as it boots, works how i want it to, i'll be happy. Thanks for your help

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    Quote Originally Posted by Clstrphbc_donut
    i have a GF6800 Ultra (2600) or X800 XT planned for this(machine im on now) machine.
    You lucky devil!
    Yeah, it should run fine.
    The 9800 Pro has 8 pixel pipelines, and as it always is with AIW, they have disabled 4 of the pipelines, leaving with you with only another 4 with which to pump your graphics through. IIRC thats the same amount as a Gf4 Ti4800
    They don't perform at all badly though, but you need to know its limitations.
    That system sounds pretty good if you actually use the MEGA functions. Tell me how it goes and I may (just might) change my mind on the MEGA

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