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Dual Core Atom: Intel D945GCLF2 & Atom 330 Review - PAGE 1
William Henning - Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 Like ShareToday, we are doing something different.
Last week, when going through the "what's new" list of a local supplier, I found a gem: an inexpensive mini-ITX motherboard with a dual core Atom processor. This little marvel, the Intel D945GCLF2, does not even show up on the Intel web site - other than being noted as announced during IDF. Interested in what it was capable of, I bought one on the spot.
The idea of very low power processors that are "fast enough" for many applications is starting to catch on. It would be fair to say that Asus took the world by fire with their original Eee PC, and followed it up with the highly successful Eee PC 901 - spawning a whole new "netbook" category of sub-notebook computers with enough processing power for Internet access and every day tasks. Mind you, Asus dropped the ball by not hitting its initially announced $199 Eee PC price tag, however there are now very capable netbooks around $300, like some models of the Acer AspireOne.
Asus then followed by releasing the Eee Box, bringing low powered tiny desktops to the public - sure they won't run Crysis, but they will do office apps and internet browsing, for less money, and while only sipping power compared to gaming boxes, and they can save even more money by avoiding the Microsoft Tax, by shipping a friendly Linux distribution pre-installed on the computer.
Low power computers are in fact enough for most people's use, and make excellent second, third or fourth computers in a family home. After all, how much power do you need to run Open Office and FireFox? Not much.
Here is the specifications for the D945GCLF2, taken from its manual on the supplied CD:
- Mini-ITX form factor 6.75"x6.75"
- Dual Core Intel Atom processor
- one 240 pin DIMM socket supporting 533/667MHz single channel DDR2 up to 2GB in size
- Intel 945GC chipset: 82945GC Northbridge with integrated graphics, 82801GB ICH7 Southbridge
- GMA 950 integrated graphics
- S-Video output via Chrontel CH7021A SDTV/HDTV encoder
- RealTek ALC662 codec with HDA and 6 channel audio
- SPDIFF header on motherboard
- one PCI slot
- 8 USB2.0 ports (4 on back panel, 4 on two headers)
- one IDE interface
- two SATA2 interfaces
- one VGA connector
- one S-Video port
- one parallel port
- one serial port
- PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports
- Intel BIOS with SMBIOS support, Rapid BIOS boot, Express BIOS Update
- Gigabit Ethernet
- ACPI support, Wake on USB, PCI, PS/2, Lan
- supports Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows XP Home and Pro, 32 bit and 64 bit
For a small board, it is certainly not short of features!
I'm sure a lot of people are still running mobile chips in their systems to scrape by with performance and lower power compared to full on desktop parts. I have a 35w mobile 2500+ xp running -.150v on a media center right now as an example.
From what I hear though the Atom is a good performer if you don't plan to do a lot, the demonstrations seemed to highlight that quite a bit, it would be interesting to see how it would have all panned out had it been out of order execution instead.
M.A.M.E.?
Autocad 2002?
Aspen Engineering Suite?
SimSci Pro-II?
Thanks
Be calm, be polite, be enlightened.
it sure does have Gigabit Ethernet. how could someone solve the redundancy problem, using RAID??? is there any PCI card to do the job???
thanks
HD playback in XP using CoreAVC & MPC-HC works brilliantly (Screen resolution is 1280x1024 at the moment, so its not full HD), but Im playing a 1080p Sample of Transformers.
Tried using XBMC but its horrible and drops frames left, right & center. Apparently it'd be better using the newer ffmpeg builds which better support dual-core CPU's etc, but Im not sure, havent looked into it enough. Was Googl'ing for answers hoping somebody else had when I found this thread.
Have yet to try the XBMC LiveCD to see how it goes, will do soon-ish
Anyway, xp runs a lil faster than Ubuntu, and this beta build of Vista 2 or windows 7(call it what you will) seems to be a lil faster than xp.
Have only had one program that wouldn't install right and it was an old dvd ripping program i bought at wal-mart 5 years ago for $3.95usd.
Other than that everything seems to work correctly but its hard to tell since I've never used Vista, so only comparing to xp.
Theoretically, you could pull a D945GCLF2 out of the box and other than case assembly, you could be up and running in about 20-25 minutes
I have to say this board is a cracker for the cash, overall I liked your review but trying it to run various games, its not what this board is about. I agree if they had used a better chipset the power requirements would have even been better, but for me using an older GPU has meant most of the os's work with it right out of the box.
P.
Thanks!
I've checked in control panel and the drivers appear to have been installed correctly.
Can anyone help me here please - I don't know where to go next.
Thanks
Mike
Sorry for any time wasted by anyone - found the problem. I didn't realise that not only did I have to play with the bios setting but also disable the onboard graphics from within Windows control panel.
Mike