What do you think of Intel Mobos?

[rory 0]

Specifically MATX such as these

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/dg965ss/index.htm

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/dq965gf/index.htm

 

for a DVR ofcourse

 

Basiclaly looking for MicroAtx (uAtx?) form factor for MATX case sizes ..

with the 965 chipset ...

 

Intel has a few of them ... Asus also has this one ..

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1312&l1=3&l2=11&l3=332

 

They are all around the same price .. not exactly cheap but ..

you get what you pay for ..

 

Has anyone used them yet, any ideas, comments?

Right now its for Geo cards, maybe the combos .. also home systems ..

 

 

Thanks

Rory

[CSG 0]

I was looking at microATX's to upgrade my home PC. I wanted as small a PC as possible to save space. It seems all these mobo's have onboard VGA, which I didnt want. (at least all the ASUS boards). Also, micro ATX have fewer PCI slots.

 

If your building a DVR as you sure your gonna be happy with onboard VGA?

[rory 0]

True, but you can disable the Onboard video, i have a MATX for 4 years now .. with an AGP card ..

 

The new ones come with PCI express Slots also ..

However, i didnt notice any difference in quality or speed between an ATI X300 PCIe and the onboard Intel 950 video. In fact GeoVision also uses onboard video in a couple of their ready built systems, i have one in the field with no issues, and I tested the 1120 with onboard video for 3 days straight .. no issues. I only changed that one in that case becuase I figured the 128MB X300 Video card would make a difference, but it didnt.

 

The 965's come with Intel 1300 video .. but also you can add a PCIe card if wanted. These have the X16 and the X1 slots .. as well as the 2 PCI. Will have to live with only 1 or perhaps 2 DVR cards/hardware max though, but in my case it would only be 1 card.

 

Im just wondering if Intel is worth looking at, they seem to have the latest stuff, well since they make the chipsets .. in this case. Asus is also supposed to be good so was looking at that route also.

 

Also, is it worth going with the 965 or just sticking with the 945 ..

looking for any opinions on that .. good or bad

 

thanks

Rory

[CollinR 0]

I'll take the Intel MGA 950 over NVIDIA or ATI on my CCTV servers anyday.

 

I like Intel but I actually use Asus more currently.

 

For gaming the GMA isn't it but CCTV has no need for a high end video card. I even have some theater servers using the GMA just fine, it results in more CPU load as the GMA does not have native hardware support for MPEG but on a modern P4 it's not a big deal.

 

 

IMHO the bigger issue is pick one, get to know it fully and build a good disk image.

[rory 0]

im leaning towards the Asus P5B-VM .. been going through hardware reviews etc all night and it seems like a good choice ... will keep you posted ..

also would be building a vista pc from it .. with just dual core 3.2 though .. alls i can afford as also building a new XP PC ..

 

Rory

[CollinR 0]

I've never tried that model Rory, I wouldn't be opposed to it.

 

 

Right now you need to be usre you get an IDE port (that model does), I order something in Nov that was all SATA. I didn't think that was a problem until I went looking for a SATA DVDRW. I'm sure there is more available now but you'll pay a premium for jack. IDE can transfer faster then the fastest drives can read so SATA is totally not needed.

[rory 0]

Yeah p checked that already .. i like the layout of the IDE slots, and the Power Slots also .. been all over that board and others last night ..

[501 0]

We moved to only Intel boards about 6 months ago. Not one problem or failure. Our supplier tells us they are his most relaible boards too which is great for CCTV. The on board video is usually enough now for Geo too.

[Oxide.Blu 0]

I went with a D945GNT specifically for the embedded video capability (has overlay function) and matrix-RAID for the HDDs. The onboard video is just fine for CCTV with capture boards I am using.

 

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d945gnt/

 

See my bragging at the end of this RAID thread:

 

http://www.cctvforum.com/about6857-15.html

[rory 0]

not micro ATX though ?

Im going 965 chipsets now .. i think im stuck on the Asus at this point ..

will look at the Intel mAtx 965 boards a little more though.

[Oxide.Blu 0]

I image you are washing your sock, getting ready for the A.N. Smith funeral, but if there is only a few dollars diff I would opt for the Intel board. They have a rep for being a more robust platform. The DVR board manfr recommended I stick with Intel.

 

Fwiw, I started out looking at the ATX boards but decided I want to keep the heat down inside of the chassis to reduce the fan noise. Makes for an overall quieter system.

 

Any chance you could toss up a few cameras and stream the festivities for us?

[kensplace 0]

Not used those boards, but I did finally get around to building a second pc to put my geo card in, its using a intel d945pvs board, 2gig ram (overkill, but I got it with 2 gig, and it was a good price) and ati radeon x300, processor is p4 3.00 Ghz. Main drive is a seagate baracudda 10 sata 250gig, second is my old 160 gig ide drive.

 

Works great, getting about 20 to 24 fps with 10 cameras on motion detect, much better recording quality than before (but thats probably due to the higher frame rate, less changes in between frames mean the codec can work better).

 

Course geo itself still seems a little 'sluggish' in its user interface, but the recording is fine, much faster than on my old ecs amd system.

 

The board itself is nice, no problems with it yet (but then again only had it a couple of weeks or so) despite being second hand, it looks well built, and works great. Plus it came in a nice box. Shame the software that came with it is a big con, as its mainly demo software thats crippled - so a waste of time installing that....

 

Its my first sata drive, and once I got past installation difficulties (due to it being the first time, and having a bust floppy drive resulting into having to crawl around in the attic looking for a spare) its great.

 

SATA for me from now on (apart from ide only devices, like dvrs etc) where I have the choice. Sata is faster than IDE, well its a sata 2 drive, but its giving me around 80 meg transfers whereas the ides are around 30 or so. Course, that could be because my ide is also on the same channel as a cd burner, will have to take that off and retest...

[rory 0]

Why were you loading drivers from a floppy? Was it Raid?

[kensplace 0]

Sort of, I wanted to have the drive in ahci mode so it fully supported the sata features like command queing (whatever that is) etc, so had to load the driver for it, which happens to be the same as the raid one by the looks of things from intel.

 

Has the positive side effect that I can switch over to raid without re-installing windows or messing around with hacks should I decide to move to raid in the future.

 

The drive did work normally at first, but I decided to reinstall and get the most out of it by using the ahci bios setting (still dont feel too sure about raid yet so sticking with single drives)

[rory 0]

I was asking cause ive never used any other drivers for Sata Drives ive installed .. was wondering if there was something I was missing .. i figure you must only get that Raid Floppy if the Mobo supports raid right?

 

In the bios i just set it to "IDE mode" and "Sata (HDD), Pata (CD)" ..

 

 

They dont seem to be faster to me, nor queter, but less cables in any case means more air in the case. Though you can buy round IDE cables .. actually the Seagate seems much quieter than the Western Digital ones .. i have a WD 250 here that was making so much noise I had to replace it with a Seagate 160GB

[kensplace 0]

I wish my mobo had come with the raid floppy I had to spend ages looking for a download on intels site, thats the perils of ebay

 

 

It did come with a manual that mentioned it, thats why I went looking for it though..

 

Pretty much depends on the board as far as how they support sata goes, all I know is at the moment the benchmarks are much faster on the sata than the ide - BUT like I say, that could be due to the ide sharing the channel with the dvd burner. If I recall ide drives go at the rate of the slowest controller, but never tested that, so will give it a shot in the next day or so to see if having the ide on its own (nothing else on the cable) gets the speed close to the sata.

 

The seagate drive I have is nice and silent, I went for seagate due to the warranty (5 years) - the shop actually gave me a another make (forget which one now) without telling me, but when I got home I noticed, and checked its warranty, only 3 years, so I went back and complained. They gave me a seagate as I originally ordered, but they didnt have the one I wanted in stock so ended up with a one with 16meg cache instead of 8

 

Same shop just told me that it probably was not a old ide cable causing errors on the burner I just bought from them - but stuck in a new ide cable and the errors stopped

[rory 0]

We dont get any warranties on hard drives down here

 

How old is the mobo? That might explain not having the option to set it as IDE and or define the SATA, PATA section. I used 2 945 Mobos (MSI and GigaByte) and they both had those options, but that was just the end of last year, plus I updated both of their Bios.

 

I reloaded an older mobo last year and i had to download the drivers from the mobo's site and load them on start of XP installation, as the mobo did not recognise the Sata Drive.

[kensplace 0]

No warranties????

 

Whats going on, why is that?

 

as for the mobo its about a year old at least (at least the previous owner had it for a year)

 

It will work as a ide sata, but that does not give you the full features of sata such as hot plug or native command queing (ahci mode), I figured if i am going to use it, I may as well use all its features - even if it means hassle installing it

Edited February 25, 2007 by Guest

[rory 0]

Due to our impeccable power here

They will not warranty them, as most people will not spend the extra $$ on voltage Regulators and in that case any time they are damaged is a 99% chance due to power problems.

[kensplace 0]

Is that the supplier that wont warrenty them or the manu?

[rory 0]

the supplier .. it would cost more to send it back to the manufacturer than it costs to buy a new one ..

[kensplace 0]

yikes, your postal service must be expensive!

 

If I was in power in the bahamas, I would pay you a fortune just to not tell people what its really like