Motherboard Choice

[Haggis]

Hi,

Im in the process of planning my first MAME cabinet (well, cocktail table to be precise) and Im trying to choose a motherboard for the project.  The space inside the table is tight so Im looking to get a motherboard with as much on it as possible (at least video & sound).

I was looking at the mini-itx boards (http://www.mini-itx.com).  I was hoping that one of their 800mhz+ boards would be enough for the games Im interested in running (pheonix, defender, r-type.  The most processor hungy I guess would be Metal Slug series).  Having read through this post though (http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=4522;start=0), it seems like it wont be up to running them.

Has anyone got any other motherboard suggestions?

[Rom]

I'm in the same position as you. At the moment I'm thinking about using the Asus a7n266-vm motherboard. Low in cost and has integrated geforce 2 (mx?) The only thing I'm not sure about is the built in audio.

[Chris]

I got the Epox 8KLM2 Mini-ATX board; integrated sound and video.  Most people will probably hate it, as it uses a Savage4 video chip and takes SDRAM instead of DDR.  I got it because I knew its sound would work in both DOS and Windows and because I already had plenty of SDRAM.  It also has Suspend-to-RAM and power on after power failure support, which is helpful in a cabinet environment.  I got it bundled with an Athlon XP 2000+, and so far I'm pretty happy with it.

--Chris

[eightbit]

Space in a cocktail is tight but if its all integrated into the motherboard you should be able to squeeze a normal board in.

[blangley]

The Biostar M7VKQ micro atx board has worked well for me.  It has the Trident blade3d integrated video card that works well with advancemame and my standard res monitor.

It's socket A and supports 1+ GHz AMDs.

Good Luck

[Jakobud]

I was also thinking about getting a Epia mini-itx board but even the new 933MHz model (M9000) is supposedly comparable in speed to about a 450MHz Pentium 3...

Too bad it's that slow.

[Haggis]

I hear that they have a faster board out soon with a better graphics chip on.  http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/pb.jsp  Theres claims on the via website of how much faster it is but I think I'll wait until I see an independant review of the board.  Thankfully Im in no great rush to get the machine done at the moment (RL getting in the way a bit).