Asus P5N7A-VM

From MythTV Official Wiki
Revision as of 15:46, 6 July 2009 by Gold unicorn (talk | contribs) (Specs)

Jump to: navigation, search

This motherboard works well as a frontend and backend combination. Supports VDPAU. According to silentpcreview.com, this board is very power efficient.


Specs

From the Manugacturer's web page

  • Brand ASUS - Model P5N7A-VM
  • Form Factor
Micro-ATX
  • Socket
LGA 775
  • Processors Supported
Core 2 Quad
Core 2 Extreme
Core 2 Duo
Pentium D
Celeron dual-core
Celeron
Compatible with Intel 05B/05A/06 processors
  • FSB
1333/1066/800 MHz
  • Chipset
North Bridge NVIDIA nForce 730i SLI
Onboard Video NVidia GeForce 9300
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC1200 - 8 Channels
  • Ports and Slots
Memory Slots 4×240pin - DDR2 800 - Up to 16GB - Dual Channel Supported
PCI Express x16 = 1
PCI Express x1 = 1
PCI Slots = 2
PATA 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max
SATA 3Gb/s 5
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1/5 JBOD
Onboard LAN 10/100/1000Mbps
  • Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 1
USB 6 x USB 2.0
S/PDIF Out 1x Optical, 1x Coaxial
DP 1
HDMI 1
VGA 1
DVI 1
eSATA 1
LAN 1
Audio Ports 8 Channel Audio I/O
  • Internal Ports
Onboard USB 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports
S/PDIF In/Out 1

Turning on SPDIF

At the command line, run alsamixer. Go to the right and hit M when you are over iec958, then hit Esc.

Audio support

ALC1200 is supported in 2.6.28. Add the following to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.

 options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig


While ALC1200 is not supported in 2.6.20, it still works. Make the same change to alsa-base file as above.


VDPAU support

VDPAU is available.

When the front end is running, mythfrontend.real runs at about 3-7% CPU, with Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7400 @ 2.80GHz. Power consumption is about 60W when frontend is playing. This may be a bit high, compared to some of the Silent PC Review numbers below.

Mythbuntu settings 8.04 x64

/etc/asound.conf contains:

 pcm.!default {
  type hw
  card 0
  device 1
 }


  • Here are my settings for mythfrontend General Setup.
    • AUDIO OUTPUT DEVICE = ALSA:default
    • PASSTHROUGH OUTPUT DEVICE = Default
    • MAX AUDIO CHANNELS = stereo
    • UPMIX = passive
    • X=Enable AC3 to SPDIF Passthrough
    • X=Enable DTS to SPDIF Passthrough
    • _=Aggressive Sound Card Buffering
    • _=Use internal Volume Controls


The max audio channels is set to stereo, the pass through is not limited to stereo.

Other areas to examine

Reducing voltage may reduce power consumption.


References

Silent PC Review