[plug] realplayer and via onboard audio

[John Knight]

Cheers mate!!!!!

I was thinking about going the AMD motherboard chipset route but was a 
little put off when PC Powerplay said that AMD boards have lack-lustre 
performance in comparison to VIA chipsets.

I've always been an ASUS or MSI person myself, but I hear that ABIT are good 
too. At the moment, I'm using a crappy EPOX board (THERE'S A LOT OF CAPITALS 
ABOUT, ISN'T THERE?). I've always steered clear of Gigabyte though.

Any idea what ASUS or MSI boards are like in comparison? Please note that 
I'm a bit of an audiophile, so onboard sound would NEVER be utilised! :)

seeya then! :)
anarchist tomato

>
> > All in all, I think that older VIA boards have a problem with AGP slots,
> > maybe an interrupted resource or something similar. I'm about to get an
> > upgrade soon and being an AMD person, could anyone recommend a a 'mobo'
> > that they know doesn't have sound problems?
> >
> > seeya then! :)
> > anarchist tomato
>
>I think the VIA chipsets have got a lot of flak and I'm not sure if it is
>warranted or not. I have noticed two things that would probably make me go
>to a an AMD chipset over the VIA though.
>
>1. A good hardware friend won't touch a VIA chipset board as he has had to
>many problems.
>2. ABIT's BIOS updates for its VIA based boards mention a lot about "fixed
>problem caused by VIA chipset". (I'm pretty much a fan of ABIT so I'll
>mention my bias here, up front).
>
>You will probably find that many of the problems with VIA can now be fixed
>by flashing your ROMs to the latest BIOS, but considering that this chipset
>is used for the lower end of the market it maybe worthwhile spending the
>extra $50-$100 on an AMD based one. (also benchmarking shows that the AMD
>chipset perform overall better than the VIA)
>
>A-Bit KG-7, for AMD CPUs is $299 ($359 for RAID) at
>http://www.austin.net.au/
>
>Gigabyte GA-7DX AMD761 SocketA DDR ATX Mainboard $269.50
>Gigabyte GA-7DXR AMD761 SocketA DDR ATX Mainboard $308.00 (Raid version) at
>http://www.simline.com.au/
>
>Now interestingly enough the raidless version of the Gigabyte comes with
>only two memory slots with the raid version coming with three. Both ABIT's
>come with four.
>
>On the other hand Gigabyte's mainboards come with dual bios chips and
>onboard sound chip which could/couldn't sway a decision to it. (See below
>for some info from Linux Buyers Guide #13
>http://www.thedukeofurl.org/reviews/misc/linuxguide13/printable.shtml Power
>User Rig section))
>
>"Probably the two biggest features in questions on the GA-7DXR are the
>on-board audio and IDE-RAID. The IDE-RAID is Promise's FastTrak 100 Lite
>(which supports either striping or mirroring, not both), and is also
>supported under Linux through either the kernel drivers in kernel 2.4.10+ 
>or
>Promise's closed-source drivers.
>
>The on-board audio is Creative's CT5880, otherwise known at the Sound
>Blaster 128. This chip is well-supported under Linux and has good output. 
>No
>complaints here. "
>
>The choice is up to you, but for me the ABIT is looking like the more
>promising board
>
>


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