atom cpu/motherboard

[OBLAMA2009]

has anyone here bought this yet? i saw it in the store yesterday and am thinking about getting one

 

[Andrew1990]

I might buy one on payday but the no PCIeX16 expansion slot sure turns me down quite a bit.

 

[nerp]

Not until it's not welded to a 945 chipset.

 

[Soulkeeper]

apparently dual core versions with pcie will be next to come out,
i think read somewhere saying late this year or early next

i'm just wondering what they mean by "dual core" will they replace the HT with true dual core, or will they have 2 cores with HT yeilding 4 logical cores.
could be interesting

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
apparently dual core versions with pcie will be next to come out,
i think read somewhere saying late this year or early next

i'm just wondering what they mean by "dual core" will they replace the HT with true dual core, or will they have 2 cores with HT yeilding 4 logical cores.
could be interesting

I agree, the atom is starting to look like a good HTPC to me.

 

[RallyMaster]

Low powered computers are FTW.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

someone go buy this and tell us about it please....

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: OBLAMA2009
someone go buy this and tell us about it please....

my Nephew has one on the way. Ill report back on it once he gets it.

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: Cogman

Originally posted by: OBLAMA2009
someone go buy this and tell us about it please....

my Nephew has one on the way. Ill report back on it once he gets it.

Hopefully it has more features than the crappy celeron Intel ITX boards....That and they basically won't fit in small cases thay ITX is designed for.

 

[Cogman]

Ok, as far as Size goes, this thing is tiny, the cpu fan sit a little high, but other then that everything is just really small. it produces very little heat and with the little fan was easily able to keep 40C.

As far as speed and responsiveness goes, the BIOS, for whatever reason, was EXTREMELY slow, by that I mean that you can see the bios redraw when you move the cursor ect. The features in the bios are minimal at best (Sorry, no OCing features ) and yes, the one from newegg has hyperthreading.

I have it paired with 2G of ram and running ubuntu. I haven't installed anything extremely instense on it, but over all browsing, email, and general apps seem fairly responsive. Opening up a program doesn't feel slow it feels fairly nippy at getting things done (My Q6600 of course feels much faster, but meh, what do you expect? it was designed for speed).

The board itself is very quite. the system I built has a total of 2 fans in it making my nephew comment "thats the quietest computer I have ever heard" he just moved from a jet engine computer.

there are a few downsides. First, there is only one IDE port and only 2 sata ports. It would have been nice to have a second IDE port as I have 2 IDE devices in his computer. Second, it requires the stupid P4 CPU power cable. I was hoping to just slap an old powersupply in, but nope, it had to use one that little cable. Well, I have a molex adapter on the way so now my Nephew is using a powersupply out of one of my main rigs (for now at least). One last problem I ran into, and this really isn't intels fault, but the faceplates on the old shuttle cases and clones are all just cut into the metal. That made me so mad as the whole point of this thing was to install it into one of those tiny cases. Without doing some modifications that is impossible .

Overall, its a great cheap computer. If you have a grandma that wants to use this thing it is plenty fast. Ubuntu went on with out a hitch (Ok, all the drivers where recognized, we did have other problems unrelated to ubuntu). So it seems a good board all in all.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
I might buy one on payday but the no PCIeX16 expansion slot sure turns me down quite a bit.

MSI Fuzzy GM965
Might work with your cpu - costs $220+, though. I don't know if we will ever see a mobo with PCIex16 and a Atom pin out .

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
Low powered computers are FTW.

Maybe. But there has to be a point of diminishing return (performance) for the price that is being paid for ultra low-power tech. Give me a Jetway NC62K (or a 780g!) with a 2.4GHz dual core cpu.

I'll turn off a light to compensate for that 70w I'm pulling while watching a BluRay movie

I'm just feeling really pissy about having the green 'benefit' of paying $100 for a 2w sihgle core 1.6GHz cpu that costs $10 to manufacture. I'll keep my green, and double-up their green by turning off a light and using one less gallon of gas each week ....

(end of rant)

 

[Andrew1990]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
I might buy one on payday but the no PCIeX16 expansion slot sure turns me down quite a bit.

MSI Fuzzy GM965
Might work with your cpu - costs $220+, though. I don't know if we will ever see a mobo with PCIex16 and a Atom pin out .

Actually my current board for my pM has a PCIeX16 slot, which explains the 7800GTX on it. And that board is actually for the new core2 processors, and not the Pentium Ms.

Otherwise, the atom is at least available and not vaporware!