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So VIA is out with the Micro ITX Mobos and their own rocessors in them, pretty much with onboard anything.
Im assuming they are low powered, slower systems with little expandability but their size is tempting me to turn them into Media Centers....
...whats your take? General info is nice too ;)
the boards with onboard everything are great to travel with and use as a media center if all your doing is outputting video to a TV. but it should NOT be used in place of a full fledged HTPC, you oftem are forced (if your lucky) to use a half height PCI card for a TV tuner and most don't have AGP. If your goal is a small HTPC system I would look into a Micro ATX board with an AGP slot and some PCI slots then look for a nice looking case or build your own. another popular thing is to take an old or broken A\V unit (cd player, dvd player hell even a VCR) strip it and mod it to accomodate the parts you want to install. Good luck in whatever route you decide to take.
i agree with ZeD. an all in one motherboard is good for people who only serf the web and play solitare.
well I didnt say that, an all in one setup is fine for watching movies and even playing some games albeit not at the highest level's its just that the mini itx cases rarely offer the space for a PCI card which one would want if they wanted a TV capture card for their HTPC setup. I personally use a Shuttle SN41 and rely on its onboard graphics, I have played Doom 3, Far Cry and Half-Life 2 very nicely with very decent frame rates and my settings werent turned down "that" much. I simply turned off features I didnt care about like shadows, reflections, mark times, bodies e.t.c.
Well, an mITX system is for places where size matters more than performance. It's like if you wanted to build a car system, mITX would be nice.
I may plan something with it, we'll see.
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aye. one o' these would be good for an atari 2600 htpc mod, or similar itx mod.