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Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:36 am
by Spartanicus
Spartanicus wrote:there doesn't appear to be a way to add a TV card to this board.
Woot!

Found a PCIe x1 TV/Radio card that appears to be available through retail channels: http://www.vistaview.tv/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=33

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:00 pm
by floffe
Yeah, I assumed you knew there were several PCI-E tuner cards using ATI's Theatre 550 and 650 chipsets. Hmm, after looking around for these they do seem rather hard to get hold of. And yeah, there's also the Saberview for dual tuners.

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:35 pm
by frostedflakes
Wow, I can't believe Amazon is selling these so cheap, I'm thinking about picking one up for a project (maybe a behind-LCD computer system, something like that). Similar boards typically go for $300-400+.

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:01 pm
by hmsrolst
frostedflakes wrote:Wow, I can't believe Amazon is selling these so cheap, I'm thinking about picking one up for a project (maybe a behind-LCD computer system, something like that). Similar boards typically go for $300-400+.
I agree it's very tempting to get one to play around with, but the AOpen i945GTm-VHL is only about $25 more. It doesn't come with a PSU, but it does have the standard S478 mounting. I picked one up, and it's been great so far.

Some questions

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:57 am
by johncl
I have recently bought a Via Epia CN13000G board for a robotics project. The nice thing about these is exactly the low power usage where the total power for a complete system with a 2.5" drive, an optical drive and some usb devices would be around 30 watts with load. For my robot project, power use is the main concern since it will run off a 12 volt SLA battery.

But it also concerns me that the Via C7 chips, although their best at the moment really isnt very powerful. A 1,3 GHz C7 will score some 1795 Dhrystone ALU and 1551 Whetstone ALU in Sisoft Sandra. By comparison an intel Core Solo U1300 1 GHz ULV (5.5 watts) will probably be double as fast (based on that an older Intel Pentium M ULV Processor 753 (1.20 GHz) is double the speed on these benchmarks).

The AOpen card that was tested here can run these ULV processors too according to the specs from what I see so it would have been interesting to use this U1300 in this board and test what the total power usage would be under load for this system. The reason being that I suspect it to be pretty comparable in power use, maybe even less than the C7 1.3 Via system I have.

The only "mistake" they made was to limit this to a 19 volt input which really rules out a lot of hobby use for this board, including typical robotic projects unless they have a 24 volt supply that can be regulated.

Still, I think you could have a pretty decent home theathre system with a ULV processor - and most probably a very silent one too.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:04 pm
by Chris Chan
Note: the Unnnn processors are not available in a form factor that the Aopen board can take advantage of, unfortunately. They're only available in NanoBGA package, IIRC.

Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 1:40 pm
by Gowking
Did anybody ever get one of these boards from Amazon for $160?

-G

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:10 am
by mLy!
Did anybody ever get this case?
Would a scytche Shuriken fit? Maybe have the fan blowing upwards to lower the temp inside the case, cut out a hole in the case?