[geeks] Intel Atom MB - Initial Impressions

[Jonathan Groll]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 10:55:04PM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> My D945GCLF, the low-cost Atom-based MB arrived this morning, and I just threw it in a case and installed WinXP Pro on it tonight (for testing, I plan to also try Solaris, Ubuntu, and Server 2008. All 64-bit.
> 
> Anyway, so far it looks pretty nice - the MB is reasonably fast for general desktop use, and the board is dead-silent. Well, almost - with the lid off the case you can hear the chipset fan...
> 
> The IDE, 2x SATA, and power connectors are all bunched together a bit too close for my liking, and will likely cause trouble for users that try and squeeze this MB in a Very Small Case, but put it in a mATX or larger chassis, and you're good to go.

One thing that needs to be noted as well:

The onboard NIC, a Realtek RTL8102EL is too new to be supported by
many Linux installers as well as Freebsd.

Realtek have released a Linux driver [1];but some customisation will
be required if you need the driver at install time.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[1] see http://www.touslesdrivers.com/index.php?v_page=23&v_code=21089