# Should I buy a VIA EPIA ?

## Troggy

DAMN ! The harddisk-controller on my main pc has gone haywire. One of my HDs already fell victim to his fiendish I/O failures.

So I decided to buy a new mobo including new processor. My first thought was a P4 3Ghz on a Gigabyte Ga-8IPE1000pro . But now I somehow feel attracted to VIAs EPIA M10000 . It's fast enough for work, tand some basic games  :Wink:  and it's small, quiet and a lot cheaper than an Intel but I don't know much about it's linux-support. Would you recommend one or should I stay with Intel ?

Greetz

 Troggy

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## lazarusrat

It largely depends on what you'd want to use it for. Hardware support is pretty solid, except for sound and video.

The sound is getting there, and can be made to work (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=62555). I've heard that the latest 2.4.21-ac sources take care of sound issues altogether, though as far as I know you'll still have to run esound or something to get more than one app making noise at once.

Video can also be made to work, mostly. The 2D video drivers are in XFree CVS, and Seemant has worked them into Gentoo's xfree-4.3.0-r3. Unfortunately, that breaks mplayer, at least in full screen mode. There's no 3D accel yet, or anything more interesting than straight-up 2D. Via has released sources for their binary drivers, but it's going to take a while still to get them in shape. Supposedly this will include support for the hardware MPEG2 decoding, but currently there's nothing for linux that uses it.

If you can stand to wait for a while (a few months?) until the drivers get to a more usable point, and don't mind all the issues that will still be there even with killer drivers (no upgrades possible, finicky about power supply, only one PCI slot, etc.), an Epia's not bad.

Just make sure if you do get an M10000 that you get the Nehemiah core, not the Ezra-T. The board was released with both cores, with no difference in model numbers.

You might want to read the forums at http://linitx.org and http://forums.viaarena.com to get a sense of where the support is at for specific stuff you're concerned about (TV-out, sound, etc).

Those forums also have good info about power supplies that do and don't work with these boards. Knowing the total wattage isn't enough. If you're going to use a standard ATX PSU of any significant wattage you'll probably be okay. But the fanless DC-DC power supplies popular for the slower Epias have been known to choke on M9000s and M10000s.

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## Troggy

Sounds like a plan after all. But due to the still present problems with the graphics drivers, do you think I will be able to run a BT848/878 based TV-card on it ?

Greetz

 Troggy

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## lazarusrat

I honestly don't know anything about TV cards. I'm using my M9K as my desktop, and don't have anything in the PCI slot at all right now.

If you're talking about using it as a replacement for the onboard video, I don't see why that wouldn't work. I know some people are using TV cards with these boards, but that's about all I can tell you. Sorry.   :Smile: 

If nobody with real information answers here, you might want to ask at linitx.org.

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## Troggy

I would just like to use the pc as a desktop replacement as well as a Stereo/TV because it's so silent. Having this and my 17 inch TFT monitor in my living room is much cooler and cheaper than those >6000$ plasma TVs  :Very Happy: 

Oh, I nearly forgot: Can I distinguish the M1000 Nehemiahs from the Ezra-Ts by anything (Serial numbers, board layout etc.) ?

Greetz

 Troggy

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## lazarusrat

As far as telling beforehand, there's no real difference in model number or anything. Many vendors explicitly state that they only sell Nehemiah, or have them split up into M10000 Nehemiah or M10000 Ezra, but that's all in the vendor. See http://linitx.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=825 for some info on identifying it afterwards.

I'd say if you can find a TV card that does everything you want without relying on the onboard video at all, you should be good to go. AFAIK, the Epias have no video-in capabilities at all, so if you're planning to use it as a PVR or watch cable through it or something, you'd need a TV card anyway.

The sound is nice and clear if you do the right fixes, though I also don't know anything about the surround sound situation.

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## rinnan

Bought one and love it, for what it's worth.  I got a hush (http://www.hushtechnologies.net) for added coolness.  Still working on getting the XFree drivers to work -- is there a way of getting them to work without breaking full-screen mplayer?  Where is the xfree cvs server?   Will that do it (not using the ebuild, but rather, getting the source from CVS and building it from there?)

Also I need to change the region code on my DVD to region 1, but don't know how to do that in Linux, or if it is necessary.  My mplayer is failing (on the ordinary xfree) and I suspect that's the cause but am not sure, since I am not sure that it matters in Linux what region you are playing?

Erik

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## lazarusrat

The Xfree CVS for the driver is at http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/via/.

If you use the 1.1 versions of the CVS drivers, mplayer should still work fullscreen. I haven't tried the latest CVS versions, so the mplayer problem might still be there. The xfree-4.3.0-r3 ebuild appears to use something between 1.1 and the latest.

My directions for setting it up with the xfree-4.3.0-r2 ebuild are here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=47796. I did all that stuff, made a backup of the via_drv.o created with the first set of source available, installed xfree-4.3.0-r3, and restored my backup. Mplayer works fine in fullscreen.

For the DVD, sorry, no idea at all.  :Smile: 

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## rinnan

Tried to build r3 but it the build failed.  I suspect that it's my compiler version but am not sure.  I'll rebuild and capture the output if you have got any ideas.  Which version of gcc did you use to build r3?

Erik

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## lazarusrat

3.2.2 I think.

If it's not a C3/Epia-specific problem, I stand a much lower chance of being able to tell you anything useful.

If you can't get it narrowed down on your own, a new topic somewhere would probably get more attention

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## rinnan

Well I gave up and used Ogle, which works fine!  Except that it drops some frames now and then -- need more info on how to optimize a VIA (M10000 Nehemiah) under Gentoo Linux.  On the other hand, I did follow your instructions and got the via_drv.o being used, under r2 anyway, and it only supports 2D, but getting there.

Erik

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## lazarusrat

Yeah. Full sources have been released for all the video stuff on this board except the hardware MPEG2 decoder. I believe they're working on releasing that, too.

The source is all outdated, though, so it's going to take a while to work its way into the kernel and xfree. ac-sources already has some extra video stuff in it.

I haven't seen very many reports of 100% smooth playback, especially not under X. There is http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=28&threadid=40981 which talks about getting smooth performance out of mplayer using the VESA framebuffer (outside of X).

I've got an Ezra-T core (for another week or two anyway), so I don't have experience with Nehemiah myself. Check your /proc/cpuinfo, but I think you can use -march=i686 -msse -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer. It's hard to optimize because VIA hasn't provided full specs for it.

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## rinnan

Oh, cool, I can live with that (VESA) though I'm having huge trouble getting MPlayer to work (for example, to decrypt DVD's -- it's got some custom library that doesn't activate even with gentoo's "dvd" USE flag).  How does one get it to use the hardware 3D stuff?  I got the software decoder to work but of course that's not enough.

Erik

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## lazarusrat

I think one waits until the 3-D parts of the driver are in a decent state and fully available.  :Smile:  I don't do anything 3-D myself, so I don't know much about it.

ac-sources-2.4.21-r3 and above have DRM and AGP for the CLE266 in them. I don't know how that effects the 2-D driver, if at all.

I also don't have a DVD drive.  :Smile: 

Sorry I can't be of more help here. The linitx.org and/or viaarena.com forums might be of more use.

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## Kento

[20:51:05] <seemant> actually if someone in here can do me a favour and mention on that thread that spyderous put xfree-4.3.99 into portage and people with via-epia stuffs in it, which will be removed from 4.3.0-r3

That's me...the sad little IRC-to-forums relayer...too bad I'm not automated  :Very Happy: 

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## bcowan

afaik the -march and chost on via's is still i586

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## lazarusrat

It depends on the core. If you've got an Ezra-T or a Samuel core, yes, you absolutely need to stick with i586.

I've seen people posting that they're using i686 with the Nehemiahs with no problems, though. "cmov" is listed in the /proc/cpuinfo for Nehemiah chips, and that was the only instruction keeping the Ezra-T cores from being able to use i686.

i586 is probably still safer anyway, and it's entirely possible you'll get better performance from i486.

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