Good microATX board?

[bomax]

The primary features I require are: mATX, Gigabit ethernet, and digital audio out.

There are several Intel boards which meet these specs, but I can't find a single AMD board!! What gives?!

Oh, I would prefer socket 939. If I can't find a board soon I guess I will have to go the Intel route...

 

[o1die]

I'd go with socket 754. There's plenty of micro atx boards available, and you won't take that much of a performance hit, especially with the 3400. My 2800 is plenty fast for most apps.

 

[bomax]

Yea, I am slowly realizing that I may need to just do 754...

 

[o1die]

Newegg lists nine micro atx 939 boards under amd compatable. Using their software, just select socket type and form factor.

 

[bomax]

I saw that... however none meet my requirements of GbE and Digital audio out. Or, at least not that I saw.

 

[JeSpre]

Wait for TForce. Hopefully appearing next week. Something like this would fit the bill.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: bomax
The primary features I require are: mATX, Gigabit ethernet, and digital audio out.(

Just look for mATX with gigabit ethernet. Digital out is supported on almost all boards through headers. You can pick up the port for $10 here and there or make your own coaxial.

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Why do you need A64? Unless you need to do HDTV encoding without a card, you don't need that much power. DVD/DivX/MP3 playback doesn't even need 500MHz. Even fairly heavy video post-processing can be easily done with 2GHz. You may get more choices if you don't limit yourself to the A64 platform.

 

[bomax]

Thanks for the replies. I think I will pick up one of those Tforce boards. I am going to attempt to use the integrated graphics, which I think will probably use a lot of CPU... although I may still try and downgrade the CPU as the total so far is around $1100, which is more than I thought it'd be for a media pc.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
DVD/DivX/MP3 playback doesn't even need 500MHz.

Well... I had a VIA C3 866MHz that would choke on higher bitrate DIVX files, however my previous Pentium M (Banias) running at the lowest 600MHz seemed to play stuff fine, so YMMV depending on CPU. I think a P4 underclocked to 500MHz may not do the trick... dunno.

Originally posted by: bomax
I am going to attempt to use the integrated graphics, which I think will probably use a lot of CPU...

Why would integrated graphics use a lot of CPU? Even if it did, the slowest CPU that is current would do everything you need for an HTPC with or without integrated video.

 

[Future Shock]

Wow, that Tforce board is the ideal replacement to fit in my Aria case when I upgrade to dual-core 939 in a few months...Gbe, RAID 5, NF4..perfect.

FS

 

[L00PY]

There are boards out there now that fit the bill. For example the NF4K8MC-EKRS has an internal S/PDIF (coax out) header that will give you the digital audio out and has Gigabit ethernet. Personally, I want DVI (and the ATI solution doesn't support the 1920x1200 I need) so I'm waiting on the ASUS A8N-VM CSM that has started to appear on websites -- once they've got them in stock, I'm upgrading.