We managed to get a hands-on look at J&W's Mini-ITX AMD 780G board at COMPUTEX last month, and our resident tech-guru, Mr Sandhu, dubbed the board as quite possibly the world's best HTPC mainboard.
Back then, J&W (China's second biggest mainboard manufacturer in terms of sales) was pushing the board as the ultimate base for a HTPC. It's all gone a bit quiet since COMPUTEX, but the board has now re-appeared on J&W's official website and looks set to launch in the very near future.
Unfortunately, the official product page tells us little more than we already know. The board has an integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics core, supports DirectX 10 and AMD Phenom processors (up to 95W), and there's the performance-boosting 128MiB SidePort framebuffer.
The built-in Universal Video Decoder provides hardware-assisted high-definition decoding, and there's HDMI, DVI and VGA ports, as well as 7.1 HD audio. There's a PCI-E expansion slot should you want to throw in a TV tuner, or a dedicated graphics card if you really feel the need, and the rear I/O also provides six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit LAN, and eSATA.
Early last month, we were told by J&W to expect the board to land with a lofty $180 price-tag, the one major drawback, we felt. Nearly a month and a half later, we're hoping the board will launch at a much lower price. That, then, would ultimately make it a very tidy Mini-ITX solution.
Related reading: The world's best HTPC mainboard? Quite possibly
Official product page: jwele.com
