Reviewed at TweakTown.

This would make for a very compact configuration...now lets see some innovative mini-ITX cases

I really like this board, especially for the array of connectivity options on the back. I am hoping to get this board and build a custom case to be a nice little PVR box. By far the scariest part is the price though, expect it to come in at about $300~.

Ufff. ATI chipsets give me the willies. Nice idea though.

I can't help but wonder, what market is this product targeting?

HTPC with HTPC support in a mini-itx case with bad airflow? No way, since up until now you can't run an AM2 passively with enough power to play back HD contents which is what this board is suggesting with it's HDMI output.

If the smallest case you can build an HTPC is mATX, then why pay a huge price premium for small size and notebook memory? You an probably build a mATX system at half the cost.

I think the theory is that smaller is sexier. That certainly is how stuff gets moved off the shelves and into homes in Japan.

I dunno. I rather like the idea of a decently performing mini-ITX system, though as others have said, ACK to the idea of an ATI-based chipset. Would be much better with nVidia, with or without an integrated GPU. So much more Linux-friendly!

You're right about the price premium, frank: as much as I hunger and thirst and lust after building an awesome tiny system around a Nexus Psile or similar, I could build something identical for prolly 1/4 the cost using mATX instead.

Bah, AMD 690 is a great chipset.

Bah! Your mom is a great chipset!

All joking aside, 690 sucks the watts, and ATI parts are not at all Linux-friendly, which I think should be the entire point of mini-ITX in the first place.

I did notice, however, that the article pointed out that it beats the older nVidia 6150. However, nVidia will be releasing an updated GPU soon based on something a little more modern, and in fact I think there's something a step above 6150 available even now. Still, ATI chipsets do seem to be cheaper in price sometimes.

Tell that to users of generations of Thinkpads, which mostly use ATI graphics and mysteriously work rather well in Linux...

Personal data points: X31 with Mobility Radeon 7000, Just Worked (tm); X21 with Rage Mobility M, Just Worked (tm).

A full chipset is about more than just the graphics. Personal data point: I bought an R200-based motherboard a couple of years ago to find that USB didn't work under Linux. I had to wait for the next kernel version before I could get on with my HTPC. Strangely enough the NVIDIA board I bought at the same time worked just fine.

Moreover, one of the attractions of the more recent ATI & NVIDIA chipsets is their support for video decoding. Does this work under Linux, I wonder?

Sadly no VC-1 or H264 decoding capabilities yet in either chipset (so far as I am aware). For an HTPC setup using those codecs, hardware acceleration could mean the difference between a 2GHz and 1GHz CPU... which would be very significant on a m-ITX board like the KI690.

You are correct, and this is the only beef I have with this board, although it is currently the best onboard GPU, so you have to give them credit.

I believe the first onboard solution with the HW decoding ability will be Intel's G35 with the X3500 GPU. Let's hop Albatron can do something similar with it.


Just for reference, here is some info on the 690G video decoding abilities from anandtech


And here is some info on nVidia's newest solution, the 7050PV.

has anybody successfully got this motherboard running in linux with 1080p or even 720p output through either DVI or HDMI.... and have they managed to get Digital Audio to work with Dolby Digital on the coaxial or optical audio outputs to their 5.1 or 7.1 surround receiver? all under linux.

I'd love to see that working with any linux distro and VDR or even MythTV. Also toss in a DVB card too for High Def satellite (FTA of course )

if that is possible with this motherboard I'd buy it in a heart beat and drop it in a Nexus Psile Mini-ITX case!

Getting output shouldn't be a problem, the issue would be decoding the HD signal, which is currently done in software only. I'm not sure how much CPU usage it'd take to decode HD mpeg2.

well inorder to get the digital audio to work in linux you need the right kernel audio module compiled, and the question is has anybody gotten this sound chip's digital audio out to work in linux and produce dolby digital output for their receiver? I think pretty much any dual core am2 processor can handle 1080p.

Dolby Digital is proprietary technology. Don't look for any Dolby support of any kind, for any sound chip, in the kernel or elsewhere for Linux. It just doesn't exist, and won't in the future, either. Regular digital out, sure, that can be done.

you are wrong. AC3 is dolby digital. and that is supported by many things in linux... google it!