Hi guys,
I've been testing Intel's latest onboard video (X4500HD) the last couple of days using the following two boards from Gigabyte, and can say the results have been pretty good so far...
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2878
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2877
I tried the EG45 board briefly, but have done most of the testing on the cheaper EG43 board. Using a Intel Dual Core 2180 CPU, 2GB RAM, HVR2200 via another TV Server box, Vista SP1 and Media Portal RC2. I'm using the Arcsoft TMT h.264 codec (tested the Power DVD 8 codec briefly but was getting a bit of picture corruption).
Using the chipset drivers that came on the motherbaord CD the picture was stuttering a bit, so I download the latest drivers from Intel's website and now everything seems to be running mint. Its connected to a Sony Bravia 1080P rear projection TV. Initially the desktop area was outside the borders of the TV and I couldn't find anywhere in Intel's very basic driver to fix it (like NVidia's resize HDTV desktop), but in the end randomly changing the apsect ratio sliders seemed to make the driver output a perfect fit for the TV so all good.
CPU usage is about 10% and all channels are pretty much perfect, and not having the problem with the Media Portal interface flashing like I did with the 780G board. Only glitch seems to be on some interlaced channels, the edges of red colours seems to jitter a bit, but nothing major.
So all in all pretty promising, beats the pants off AMD and NVidia onboard solutions from what I've seen so far and audio over HDMI worked straight away with no config needed. Anyone else had a play with this board?