Any suggestions with VIA mini-ITX?

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:24 pm

it wont support the hardware mpeg, but its of no use to zm. Video card will work but not accelerated, again not needed. Gigabit lan.... on a via c3. it will work but probably only 100meg

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:04 am

just booted my c3 nehemiah
netywork works
grf work
zm works
all of 1.22.3 live cd (ross's the one that just works lol)

all fine.

slow but fine

linuxoid · Post by **linuxoid** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:58 am

James,

how many cameras and fps did you run it at? what's your cpu freq? Did you run it with the xserver as well? Thank you.

[edit]
Well, I think I wanted too much from the via board, I won't push it too hard with mpeg, I'll make a dedicated home server + video surveillance box and a separate HTPC. For the ZM I think I'll get a VIA LN10000EAG with C7 1GHz CPU.

I've downloaded all ZM live CDs (Bluecherry, Mandriva, Xubuntu, Watchdog) I could find and I will try them all + a few more distros (openSUSE, LinuxMCE).

Now I need to buy all the hardware from 20 different places. The only thing I couldn't sort out yet is a mini-ITX case. It has to have a PCI slot and preferably to be fanless. These two look good:
http://www.morexintl.com/product/itx_2677.php
http://www.morexintl.com/product/itx_2600.php
http://www.g-alantic.com.tw/g-ga610ibk.htm
http://www.g-alantic.com.tw/g-ga630ibk.htm

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 2:07 am

i ran it 5 fps on a single cam to see if it would, fine no probs
record mode 320 x 240 ip cam

1 gig with 512meg

yes ran x fine

but it was running on the cd, it was only a test for you, its back to its normal role now

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:38 am

jameswilson wrote:lee what single chip card do you use thet gives 5 fps per channel?

Actually the 4 chip 16 port card from Blue Cherry and a Chinese sourced single chip. I get as low as 2fps and as high as 5 fps depending on load.

As to the case, I have used http://www.directron.com/2699r.html many times. I have also put Ubuntu with Gnome on a 800mhx Via C3, and it was slow. The graphics were unaccelerated, but lan worked fine.

linuxoid · Post by **linuxoid** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:13 am

Building a powerful cheap fanless compact computer and with video surveillance turned out to be not as easy and straight forward as I thought. Well, it either powerful but with a fan, or it's less powerful but fanless, or it needs too much power, or it's more expensive than a mATX box.

Having researched on the internet for weeks now on mini-ITX design, VIA boards, power supplies, video capture cards and cameras, I came to a conclusion that a pretty ordinary mATX box on AMD or Intel will be not any worse than one on VIA. Well, that's basically what some suggested in the beginning of this long discussion. Of course I can build a fanless mini-ITX VIA video surveillance computer but it's going to be $200-300 more expensive mostly because I'll have to use a slim DVD drive and a laptop HDD, or it will consume similar amount of power as a mATX box if I use standard sizes of HDD and ODD (I'd need a 120-200W power supply), it will have a CPU at least half as powerful as the cheapest AMD/Intel + heaps of sleepless nights to get VIA hardware drivers to work with all the hardware. And for what? To avoid a single $10 CPU fan? Doesn't make sense.

So, now I'm thinking about the following spec:

AMD Sempron LE-1100 64-bit 1.9GHz CPU
MSI K9N6PGM-V mobo with nVidia 6100 on-board video
Elixir 1024MB 800MHz DDR2 memory
Antec NSK-1300 mATX 350W
Seagate 250GB HDD SATA2
Pioneer DVR-215 ODD SATA
ProVideo PV-143N 4-channel 1-chip video capture card
Topica TP-101BK B&W dome cameras

and I'll have a few more spare PCI slots for additional capture cards, wireless card or whatever if I want to. And I can have a lot more cameras with higher fps without a worry in the world. The only disadvantage is it has to be kept in an air-conditioned room and its fan may fail in... 3 years? maybe? But it will be reasonably cheap, around AU$600

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:56 am

its a prefence thing and you have enough power there, but i wont use anything other than intel boards now

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 3:36 am

Intel chipsets only for me as well. My time is worth more than a few bucks...

linuxoid · Post by **linuxoid** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 4:08 am

guys, what's so special about the Intel chips that AMD don't have? I've always used AMD and never had a problem. Please tell me, maybe you know something I don't. Thanks.

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:30 pm

Many analog capture cards have a fundamental incompatibility with non Intel chipsets. I had one Dell system refuse to post with the cards installed. So, if there is a chance of ever having a capture card installed, I will only go Intel. And since we buy many systems at a time for many purposes, it is just easier to get Intel if there is doubt. But I also have several miniATX Via systems, and they are not Intel. They also are not video servers.

curtishall · Post by **curtishall** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:03 pm

Not to get off topic....but here we go

Was the Dell system a 'server' motherboard?

Lee Sharp wrote:Many analog capture cards have a fundamental incompatibility with non Intel chipsets. I had one Dell system refuse to post with the cards installed. So, if there is a chance of ever having a capture card installed, I will only go Intel. And since we buy many systems at a time for many purposes, it is just easier to get Intel if there is doubt. But I also have several miniATX Via systems, and they are not Intel. They also are not video servers.

linuxoid · Post by **linuxoid** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:29 pm

sorry, can't believe it. if you take the same peripheral chip, say nvidia nforce, and use it with AMD or Intel, it should make no difference, because it's not Intel which communicates with the capture card over PCI but nVidia. Same with AMD, VIA, SIS etc. I think hardware-wise there should be no difference. But where the problems can arise is in software, because some packages, drivers, libraries and codecs may not be fully 64-bit compatible, that's where you can have a lot of compatibility issues, which I did in the past (2-3 years ago), but since then I've always been running AMD64 without any problems (Flash is an exception, but with the latest Firefox it's also been fixed).

So, if you know any other reasons why Intel is better (not to start a discussion about Intel vs AMD in general

) for this particular application, please tell me.

Post by **cordel** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:31 pm

They are discussing the chipsets, not the processor. Via, SiS, and some Nvidia chipsets are known to have issues with the BT878 and like chips, so much so that in some cases, the machine will not even post with a capture card installed so this is not a driver/Library issue.
These issues have nothing to do with the processors.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:07 am

yes im talking chipsets, but off topic sorry
i used to be amd all the way then core duo appeared. I now feel that intel are better for video use (at the moment) and the quad cores are ideal fo zm use. But on an intel mobo too lol

linuxoid · Post by **linuxoid** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 5:32 am

Ah, issues with chipsets not CPUs make sense. Obviously you can only have an Intel chipset with an Intel CPU. Could you please tell me what VIA and nVidia chipsets you had troubles with? I'll try to avoid them if possible. And I stay clear off AMD/ATI chipsets no matter what.

ZM is not written to utilize dual or quad core, is it? so I guess there will be little gain in using them if at all. Dual cores for a whole operating system - yes. Quad cores - not yet, can't think of any application which would run much faster on these than on dual cores.

so this is not a driver/Library issue

It's always a driver issue. you need a driver for any piece of hardware or chip. if nvidia chipset has problems with bt878 chips, it's either an nvidia nforce or bt878 driver issue.

ummm, I think I'm going off topic myself. Let's concentrate on ZM and CPU/chipset/bt878 compatibility. Do you have any other technical reasons against or in favor of any CPU or chipset in particular?