nutmeg's blog

To stop myself from endlessly wasting time browsing computer hardware I have actually bought a new computer.

• Giga-byte GA-G33M-S2H mainboard. (G33 chipset with DVI on board. Thanks Björn for the pointer!)
• Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66 GHz, 4MB 2nd level cache)
• 2 GB RAM
• some other stuff, including an absurdely large heatsink. (Thermaltake SI-128 SE). Unless you are using a huge case you must mount this heatsink on the mainboard before installing it in the case. Otherwise you'll need to rip out all cables and start from scratch as I did. ;-)

Contrary to my initial plans I have gone for G33 instead of G965, since according to all benchmarks I could find the latter is not a lot faster (just a little bit, both are dog slow compared to almost any separate card). This allowed me to use a board with DVI on board and use one of the cheaper E6x50 CPUs (FSB 1333).

I am still running mainly etch, just with a newer kernel from backports.org and Holger's Xorg backport. Everything sees to work.

Hardware is painful. I am currently pondering a hardware upgrade, hugin and qtpfsgui are running rather slow on my machine.

However it looks like my wishes are too exotic. ;-) I would like a rather quiet machine with Intel onboard graphics and digital video-out (DVI-D or DVI-I connector), 2GB RAM and some 2.something GHz Core2. Only nobody seems to build this kind of computers. "Business computers" like HP's DC5700 machines or Dell's Optiplex are not equipped with DVI out, or if they are the manufacturers try very hard to hide this fact.

I then thought about assembling a system myself, but oh my - mainboard producers play the same game. No G965 board wih DVI-out. (I thought if I went through the pain of assembling I should at least be able to get GMA X3000 graphics.)

I do know that I could add DVI out by means of a ADD2 card but they are hard to get and absurdely priced (EUR 25). This is just strange, everybody is buying LC displays nowadays and almost all of them have got DVI-in, even the cheapest EUR 30 graphic card features DVI-out.

[Update 2007-10-10] Mainboard producers indeed seem to take great pains to hide information. (Did I angrily note that the product picture never includes the rear panel with the external connectors? Yes I did. Aaaaaargh.) Intel did produce G965 mainboards with DVI on board, although only in BTX format they just hide the documentation very well. Sadly the only available intel G965 board left with DVI is DG965PZ (already a legacy product). It is a stripped down board without either a classic PCI slot or PATA.