[geeks] New Intel Atom-based barebones system

[Jonathan Groll]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 02:59:08PM +0100, Mark wrote:
> On 15 Aug 2008, at 14:35, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> 
> >>Personally I am holding off for a Dual Core Atom. I think once it  
> >>goes
> >>Duo it'll pack enough punch for decoding HD media on the fly, which
> >>will make it a much more viable possibility for a second machine on  
> >>my
> >>desk. If Intel launch a new mini-board with the Dual Core on it then
> >>I'l be there faster than a speeding Duracell bunny. I even have a

> HT is a bit of a swizz, it's just a way of dividing one CPU up into 2  
> performance units, there's no tangible gain from it for a heavy-weight  
> media task like mine. It's okay for desktop work and low-fi stuff but  
> that's not what I want my Atom PC for. I want Atom because it's  
> ruthlessly energy efficient, near-silent running, and yet isn't  
> anaemic on CPU power with that. A Dual Core version is on the cards,  
> and would do that very job perfectly. There's also every possibility a  
> future Dual Core Atom chip would be delivered on a board wit ha better  
> graphics chipset that supported more media acceleration features,  
> giving the board even more leverage as a media center.

Not sure if the current Atom motherboards can be classed as ruthlessly
efficient. There are a few sites on the net that have found that
performance per watt is not as good as for Pentium-M chips:
http://tinyurl.com/5nu83h

Don't get me wrong, I love my D945GCLF. Since it's on anyway all the
time I don't really mind if it takes twice as long to transcode. I am
just a little bit disappointed that the whole motherboard and chip
consume about 41W of power when the procesor only takes 4W of that - I
suspect it may be better with future Atom's though.

> 
> As a side note, just how cool also would a Dual Core EeePC 90x be?  
> Well it's gonna happen. Probably in the next 6 months. Same Dual Core  
> Atom chip.
> 
> >For $70 + S/H (incl. CPU) they are cheap enough to play with, and if  
> >they don't work out, the DDR2 RAM, SATA HD, and IDE optical drives  
> >can be reused on another box down the road.
> 
> Eggs-achery. It's just the current CPU included is a little on the  
> anaemic side for the application I want it for.
> 
> >The MSI system I pointed to was nice becuase it was the Atom CPU in  
> >a small case w/PS for $140, and the  case has room for a full-size  
> >(half-height) optical drive and a 3 1/2" HD...

The cost of the power supply can be quite considerable. I paid $75 for
an M2-ATX 200W DC-DC power supply for mine - so the MSI offering is
very well priced indeed.

Cheers,
Jonathan