There should be drivers for the integrated devices. As for how useful it would be - what do you want to do with it?

dionb wrote:

There should be drivers for the integrated devices. As for how useful it would be - what do you want to do with it?

Win9x gaming up to 1999 is what I had in mind. I don't know if the chipset has DOS compatibility (my initial research suggest that VT8235 is only AC97 compliant, so no legacy SB drivers..) but the onboard VGA seems to be a Savage4 which should be more than fine for Win9x gaming up to that era? I want to just drop it into a m-ITX VESA case and haul it around with me to play things like Quake 3, Freespace 2 etc. on the go.

I have an EPIA-CN which is a little bit newer. I can try installing Windows 98 on it if that helps?

I've never actually used it for anything myself, bought it for a project that never materialised.

phosgene wrote:

I have an EPIA-CN which is a little bit newer. I can try installing Windows 98 on it if that helps?

I've never actually used it for anything myself, bought it for a project that never materialised.

Don't go through the hassle for my sake. 😀

I'm considering putting this inside a mini-ITX case I have with an external 60W 12V Power Supply, I believe system consumption should be fine with this setup? I'll be using a 2.5" laptop hard drive with it..

appiah4 wrote:

Don't go through the hassle for my sake. 😀

If I do it it'll be tomorrow night, mainly for my own interest. 😀

appiah4 wrote:

I have with an external 60W 12V Power Supply, I believe system consumption should be fine with this setup?

In the manual they say a "90 to 120W ATX power supply is ample for even the heaviest of multimedia system applications".

But then they have a graph showing the utilisation hovering around 30W during DVD playback, so you might be able to get away with 60W? If you already have it, I'd say give it a shot.

phosgene wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Don't go through the hassle for my sake. 😀

If I do it it'll be tomorrow night, mainly for my own interest. 😀

I would be more than interested in hearing how the thing fares as a Win9x gaming rig then 😀

phosgene wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

I have with an external 60W 12V Power Supply, I believe system consumption should be fine with this setup?

In the manual they say a "90 to 120W ATX power supply is ample for even the heaviest of multimedia system applications".

But then they have a graph showing the utilisation hovering around 30W during DVD playback, so you might be able to get away with 60W? If you already have it, I'd say give it a shot.

I have the case but not the board, which would set me back some $30 to obtain with the C3 1GHz CPU on it, but no RAM.. Not a bad deal really, might as well just get it and try it out.

appiah4 wrote:

dionb wrote:

There should be drivers for the integrated devices. As for how useful it would be - what do you want to do with it?

Win9x gaming up to 1999 is what I had in mind.

Bear in mind that an Epia performs much slower than an equivalently-clocked P3. The CPU would be at best comparable to a 500MHz P3. But for gaming video is likely to be your biggest issue.

I don't know if the chipset has DOS compatibility (my initial research suggest that VT8235 is only AC97 compliant, so no legacy SB drivers..)

It's not the drivers, it's SB legacy BIOS support you need. I have a very similar Transmeta Crusoe system with that southbridge and I certainly don't have it.

but the onboard VGA seems to be a Savage4 which should be more than fine for Win9x gaming up to that era? I want to just drop it into a m-ITX VESA case and haul it around with me to play things like Quake 3, Freespace 2 etc. on the go.

Savage4 is not great but should be able to do something - but the Achilles' heel here is the UMA - that Savage4 and the CPU share - limited - memory bandwidth. Expect 30-50% performance drop vs the same CPU with a non-integrated Savage 4. So you're probably going to see performance like a P2-266 with dedicated Savage4. That doesn't sound like fun Q3A or Freespace 2 gaming...

I still own a Windows XP machine based on Via Epia M10000 and it was fine for a while. I used it for download and light browsing but it wasn't my main PC. The main problem for XP is that it only supports 1GB of RAM. It should be fine for Windows 98.

I used to have an EPIA-V with 533MHz C3 CPU. The drivers on the VIA site are marked for WinXP but also installed properly on Win98SE; might be the same situation for the EPIA-M series. It was very slow overall... SpeedSys had it performing little better than a P-II 233. The 1GHz chip on the EPIA-M should fare significantly better, but I doubt it'll stand a chance against even a 600MHz P-III.

Check the capacitors first - the original EPIA's used very good Sanyo caps, the -M's... didn't. (GSC IIRC)

Performance in the PIII-533 to PIII-733 range is exactly what I need so I will be OK with that. Sad to hear about UniChrome not being as fast as a Savage4 but I guess most games should still be playablet at 30+fps if resolution is 640x480 or 800x600? I wish I could find some decent benchmarks.

EDIT: Ok so I appear to have found a decent review here:

https://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/nehemiah/

I'm ok with this.

The board arrived yesterday, I am hoping to put it inside an mITX barebone case with a 60W external power supply this week.

I plan to install WinMe on it simply because how dependent it will be on USB2.0 support, and because it lacks any DOS audio compatibility anyway. I will give my impressions on how good a retro gaming system it is. What I hope to get out of this project is a portable system I can play Quake 2/3, Freespace 1/2, Homeworld, System Shock 2, C&C/RA/TS, Descent 3, Age of Empires 2, Might & Magic VI, Baldur's Gate, Torment, X-Wing CS, X-Wing Alliance, Thief etc.

I absolutely did NOT need this system, so I have no idea why I am doing this, but let's just do it for the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead, I guess.

Excited to see what this little fella can do. You can always drop in a replacement PCI sound card or faster video card depending on what you need.

F2bnp wrote:

Excited to see what this little fella can do. You can always drop in a replacement PCI sound card or faster video card depending on what you need.

The case I will use is super tiny and has no expansion room but maybe later I can move it to another case with an ESS Solo-1 for DOS support.. for now priority is portable Win9x gaming..

I used to use these boards a few years ago. They are very stable and work well for embedded applications.

Having said that, happycube is correct in that the -M boards used bad caps.

I also found that some EPIA models were very lacking in driver support for non-XP OSes.

Upon visual inspection I can't find any on my board that appear to be faulty, and it POSTs fine, so I won't bother with recapping just yet.. I do believe everything that comes with the board has Win9x drivers by VIA, but I will probably have to hunt them down manually. I could go with 1GB and XP I guess, but I'm thinking I could have issues with early Win9x games that way?

I have the epia 800 and it does have an option for enabling sb compatibility in the bios. I use it with a pci v3, it runs equivalent to a PII 400.

800 has the VT8231 SB which has SB Legacy Support unfortunately 10000 has the VT8235 which has no SB Legacy Support..

In other news I made an IO shield for this board. In gold color no less.

Minor update. The EPIA MB did not fit in the slim modern mITX case I had so I will have to try it in a mATX case which I was going to use for an AM3 build. That means it will be temporary but I can now use a PCI video or sound card in the build.

So.. Which do you think is the better idea? Drop in a high end PCI VGA like the Radeon 9250 or a nice PCI sound card with Legacy SB support such as a Solo-1 or an FM-801?