Bleh.

I’ve been searching for an Intel H61-based motherboard for the cost-conscious when I started planning for my first major upgrade to my media rig and so far, none fits the bill.

Because the BIOS doesn’t allow 1GB to be allocate to the Intel HD Graphics. Yes, something as trivial as that is turning me off from Intel. Even if the most energy efficient processor for media rig happens to be the Intel Core i3 2100.

So why 1GB then?

Well, I gathered some data, particularly the video memory usage of madVR when playing video at 1920×1080, and I’m thoroughly convinced that 512MB ain’t gonna cut it.

Why not adding a graphics card?

It’s redundant and increase overall system power consumption.

I doubt the AMD Fusion has BIOS option for 1GB of video memory. Even if they have, the Fusion happens to draw too much power and the energy efficient models are generally less-suited, compared to the Intel, for software-decoding of 10-bit x264 video stream.

Come to think of it, that PC which used to mine has been giving me problems since day 1 of its build (circa 2008).

First was a classic case of PEBKAC. Second was another classic case of PEBKAC and it’s the same the third time it broke down.

No.4, I fear, will continue the trend of the user (read: me) being the source of the problem.

To be honest, I should have changed that PSU a long time ago and pushed my sibling to get a better quality line extension.

Oh well. I hope this will be the last of that Intel Core 2 Duo, DDR2-based PC. It’s still decent enough for current gaming but with quads, along with DDR3 memory modules, becoming increasingly cheap, upgrading that PC has become a more cost effective option over prolonging its “life”.