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VIA EPIA CL10000 Mini-ITX Motherboard VIA EPIA CL10000 Mini-ITX Motherboard: When building a HTPC, size and noise are two key factors. We take a look at an all-inclusive motherboard that addresses these concerns.
Date: December 16, 2003
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VirtualDub Audio Extraction

We ripped the audio of at 44 100Hz, no compression using VirtualDub 1.5.8 (Build 18068). Times are in seconds, and lower is better.


Lower times are better

I was quite surprised that the EPIA based boards were fairly efficient at extracting audio from the video clip. Considering the results from the previous benchmarks, and compared to an Athlon 64, the CL10000 is only about six seconds slower than a K8T800.

TMPGEnc 2.521

We used the same Animatrix file and the WAV created from VirtualDub, and converted it into a VCD compliant MPEG-1 file. Times are in minutes:seconds, and lower is better.


Lower times are better

The pain returns with the video encoding, but the real hurting was inflicted by the M9000, requiring over forty minutes to encode. The CL10000 shaves 15 minutes off the encoding time.

Unreal Tournament 2003: Antalus, Min Detail @ 640

Quake 3: Arena, Min Detail @ 640

Let me just say that if you intend to play any modern action game, you're better off picking up a new hobby like collecting stamps. Quake 3: Arena is barely playable, but for UT2003, you can just forget about it.

Subsystem Testing

Since your expansion options are fairly limited, it'd be a good idea to check in on the onboard peripherals to make sure they'll be up to speed.

Onboard Video Tests, UT2003, Max Detail @ 1024x768

We've already seen the unplayability at 640x480, and the framerates above just cements the fact that your gamin experience will be limited to Windows Solitaire, and maybe a 2D strategy game.

Sound Tests, UT2003, Min Detail @ 640x480

For what it's worth, the framerates drop by about 1fps when sound is enabled, or, the game goes from unplayable, to "why did I install it?".

Sound quality was quite good for music and DVD playback, but not nearly as realistic sound solutions that support more channels. I feel the quality is sufficient for those with basic sound needs.

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