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question about HDMI on HTPC for gaming

B

blackrain

Golden Member
I am looking to build an HTPC and have seen motherboards that offer HDMI onboard. I am also interested in gaming on this HTPC. Since I plan on using a discrete video card, I assume that the onboard HDMI will not work or will have to be disabled. Hence, I probably should not waste my time looking at boards with onboard HDMI?? The latest video cards come with the HDMI support anyway, right? Just wanted to make sure.

And I guess, while I am on this topic, any recommendations on an matx board and cpu? I am looking for a budget system, with a lot of punch for gaming and room for a tuner card.
 
You are correct in your assumption, onboard HDMI would mean that the board has an integrated gpu, and if you're gaming this would be ridiculously weak. However, if you do get an nForce board that supports HDMI, and you get an nVidia card, Hybrid SLI will probably leave the onboard HDMI as an option for when you're just watching something on your TV, and saves you quite a bit of power. A lot of the modern cards do offer HDMI support as well.
 
Are you planning to send the audio over HDMI or just video?

In most cases game audio over HDMI is just going to be stereo, unless you have a soundcard or motherboard that does Dolby Digital Live real-time encoding and you attach its digital out to the digital in pins on an nvidia video card.

ATI cards have an onboard basic sound chip instead of digital input pins, so you'd want an nvidia card (+ the DDL soundcard) for 5.1 game audio.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Are you planning to send the audio over HDMI or just video?

In most cases game audio over HDMI is just going to be stereo, unless you have a soundcard or motherboard that does Dolby Digital Live real-time encoding and you attach its digital out to the digital in pins on an nvidia video card.

ATI cards have an onboard basic sound chip instead of digital input pins, so you'd want an nvidia card (+ the DDL soundcard) for 5.1 game audio.
Click to expand...


Just video I think.
 
Look for the stuff onboard you need - firewire, eSATA, enough USB ports, etc.

Good chips -
Intel: e5200, e8400, q9400
AMD: X2 4850e, PhII 920

Good motherboard chipsets (mATX) -
Intel: G43/G45 or Geforce 9300/9400
AMD: 780G

Even the duals listed there can easily handle Blu-ray playback & etc. If you do a lot of video editing/encoding the quads will handle it much faster.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Are you planning to send the audio over HDMI or just video?

In most cases game audio over HDMI is just going to be stereo, unless you have a soundcard or motherboard that does Dolby Digital Live real-time encoding and you attach its digital out to the digital in pins on an nvidia video card.

ATI cards have an onboard basic sound chip instead of digital input pins, so you'd want an nvidia card (+ the DDL soundcard) for 5.1 game audio.
Click to expand...

ATI 4X00 cards support full 8 channel LPCM surround over HDMI from your onboard audio, as do nVidia cards, and nVidia 8200/8300/9300/9400 chipsets, as well as intel's G45
 
OP, since you're building a HTPC that you can, don't worry about what video ports the motherboard has, as you'll be using a dedicated card anyway. If you want to transmit audio+video over HDMI, just but a ati 4x00 something or a nvidia card with HDMI bult in and you're good to go. Other options are video out through DVI or HDMI, with the audio heading from your motherboards S/PDIF coax or optical out to your receiver/TV
 
The Nvidia/Nvidia Hybrid SLI solution will work... Good thing, too, since Nvidia's discrete cards don't do multichannel PCM over HDMI. (ATI is the reverse: integrated doesn't, discrete does.)
 
Originally posted by: s44
The Nvidia/Nvidia Hybrid SLI solution will work... Good thing, too, since Nvidia's discrete cards don't do multichannel PCM over HDMI. (ATI is the reverse: integrated doesn't, discrete does.)
Click to expand...

I'm PDS that nvidia's newer GPUs (8 series and up) support 8 channel LPCM over HDMI. At least, I haven't heard anything otherwise in the ~15 or so HTPC articles I've read lately
 
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