mobos with intel integrated graphics dvi and resolution

[Redeeman]

Hello.

i've been looking at the different motherboards which has both intel graphics, and dvi ports, and it looks good, but when i look at the intel pdf's it says the resolution on the dvi port can only go to 1600x1200, but that the vga can do 2048x1536.

i find this very weird, nonetheless it COULD be true.

i have been told by a person that it does actually support going into higher resolutions, like 1920x1200 and 1920x1080.

what i need it for is connecting to hdtv's, currently only 1366x768p, but it will probably be upgraded to a 1920x1080p tv within a reasonable timeframe.

so... any of you that actually knows about this? will i be able to set 1366x768 and 1920x1080 with the dvi port. and will it accept going into 24hz mode? (or do any of you know if hdtv's can go into higher frequencies?)

Thanks!

[drag]

There are several options for you...

I don't know of any Intel boards that have DVI out. I think there may be some for the OEM market, but I've never seen one for sale. I could be missing something. You'd probably have better luck looking for a Intel-using laptop with DVI-out.


For DVI out and other options you'd want to purchase a ADD2 card. I am told these work well with the GMA stuff. They are dumb adapters that plug into the PCI express port the motherboard.. Doing so sacrifices that PCI-E port and sacrificies the use of the onboard VGA-out. (so no trying to do dual monitors with a single DVI out on the ADD2 card and the onboard VGA) It's a pretty much direct connection to the onboard Intel stuff.

This is not to be confused with the old-style ADD adapters that were nothing but doggie poo-poo.

IF your intersted you may want to ask for more details on the Xorg mailing list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDVO

DVI, being a digital pathway, has some serious bandwidth limitations... So that limited resolution is real. To get high resolutions cards will combine DVI channels to get the bandwidth needed for the resolutions. Most GMA stuff supports dual channels, but I don't know how all that would work. I don't know much about DVI... 1600x1200 maybe the max resolution that you can possibly get with combining channels. I just don't know.


Keep in mind that HDTV != digital. HDTV standard allows for both analog and digitial transmissions and provide high quality. So one real option is to purchase a VGA-to-Component adapter and get analog HD resolution that way.

If you purchase a high quality (expensive) adapter you can get very very good quality output. Very good. If you get a bad one then it'll be poor output and it'll not have hte adjustments that you'll find you'll need.

Also keep in mind that:
Composite = the single yellow plug = bad quality..
Componant = multiple plugs of different colors = good quality.



Now the sad part is that although the Intel hardware supports mpeg4 acceleration (XvMC) for decoding the Linux drivers do not support it as far as I know. There is XvMC support for older 'Extreme Blaster' i8xx devices, but no GMA support. This is different from just 'Xv'.. The 'MC' is for motion compensation and aids greatly in decoding media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvmc

This is something you'd definately want for larger HD resolutions. Mythtv Wiki has more information on this sort of thing.

All in all you'd probably just be better off bying a mid-range Nvidia video card with proprietary drivers. Personally I'd rather have the open source drivers, but realisticly Nvidia is the obvious choice.

[Redeeman]

i need not any special decoding help - the box is fast enough to decode 1080p h264 with just xv output..

i dont understand why it is you say that the digital pathway should have problems with bandwidth, as far as i know, and what seems to make sense, the analog output is simply the digital run through a converter, so if anything, that should be worse in terms of performance, since its an extra step?

anywho, there are quite a few motherboards on the market with gma chipsets which offers dvi, i settled on a gigabyte one, claiming full-hd(1080p) out via both dvi and hdmi.

[drag]

i need not any special decoding help - the box is fast enough to decode 1080p h264 with just xv output..

i dont understand why it is you say that the digital pathway should have problems with bandwidth, as far as i know, and what seems to make sense, the analog output is simply the digital run through a converter, so if anything, that should be worse in terms of performance, since its an extra step?

It's just DVI has bandwidth limitations. That's all. Same thing as the SATA for your harddrive or ethernet for your network. It's governed by a clock and it can only pump out so much information so fast.

Remember HDTV is _not_ digital video. HDTV can be analog _or_ digital. With the converter I described it's taking one analog format (vga d-sub connection) and turn it into another (componant video).


Like I said I didn't know much about DVI, but I found the wikipedia article is pretty informative over the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi

Digital

* Minimum clock frequency: 21.76 MHz
* Maximum clock frequency in single link mode: Capped at 165 MHz (3.7 Gbit/s)
* Minimum clock frequency in dual link mode: Limited only by cable quality (more than 7.4 Gbit/s)
* Pixels per clock cycle: 1 (single link) or 2 (dual link)
* Bits per pixel: 24

* Example display modes (single link):
o HDTV (1920 ? 1080) @ 60 Hz with 5% LCD blanking (131 MHz)
o UXGA (1600 ? 1200) @ 60 Hz with GTF blanking (161 MHz)
o WUXGA (1920 ? 1200) @ 60 Hz (154 MHz)
o SXGA (1280 ? 1024) @ 85 Hz with GTF blanking (159 MHz)
o WXGA+ (1440 x 900) @ 60 Hz (107 MHz)
o WQUXGA (3840 ? 2400) @ 17 Hz (164 MHz)

* Example display modes (dual link):
o QXGA (2048 ? 1536) @ 75 Hz with GTF blanking (2?170 MHz)
o HDTV (1920 ? 1080) @ 85 Hz with GTF blanking (2?126 MHz)
o WQXGA (2560 ? 1600) @ 60 Hz with GTF blanking (2x174 MHz) (30" Apple, Dell, HP, Quinux, and Samsung LCDs)
o WQUXGA (3840 ? 2400) @ 33 Hz with GTF blanking (2x159 MHz)

GTF (General Timing Formula) is a VESA standard which can easily be calculated with the Linux gtf utility.

So make sure the board you get supports dual-link out for best upgradability, but it looks like single link is good enough for HDTV...

anywho, there are quite a few motherboards on the market with gma chipsets which offers dvi, i settled on a gigabyte one, claiming full-hd(1080p) out via both dvi and hdmi.

Well that's very cool.

Got a link?

[Redeeman]

http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2600

i believe this was the one i had my brother order, but i cannot check right now, as its at his place.

[Cuppa-Chino]

For DVI out and other options you'd want to purchase a ADD2 card. I am told these work well with the GMA stuff. They are dumb adapters that plug into the PCI express port the motherboard.. Doing so sacrifices that PCI-E port and sacrificies the use of the onboard VGA-out. (so no trying to do dual monitors with a single DVI out on the ADD2 card and the onboard VGA) It's a pretty much direct connection to the onboard Intel stuff.

I have been pondering about a myth tv box (as you can see in the hardware forum) and so far have been strongly leaning towards a Nvidia 7050 mainboard with athlon X2 BE. One of the reason for this is that I can get the Biostar board with in built svideo and it will work with my current tv. Obviously Michael used an Intel board for his MythTV box and I think that available Intel slate is currently better than the AMD (maybe this will change with the AMD780G chipset, but who knows).
Now using an above mentioned ADD2 card like this one
PV-CH7315 ADD2 Card I am wondering if I can achieve a similar out come together with a ASUS P5E-VM HDMI mainboard.

I would setup up the MythTV box with a monitor attached and then run all output via the S-Video on the ADD2 card. Is this possible you think?

I realise that once I get an HD tv I will no longer need the ADD2 but this would postpone this expenditure for a while.