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Dual core ATOM N330 wih micro atx for 89,95 euro's

William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
Hello everybody, i am planning on buying this microATX board for doing some research hobby on a small semi autonomous device. (Yeah, i am building my own robot, never let the child inside you die or you will turn into a sour old prume 😛)

But i was wondering how well it works. And what it's power consumption is. Person a says less then 50Watt, person b says less then 10 Watt. Does anybody have some usable numbers to share ? If it is good stuff i will build a converter/powersupply powered by lithium ion cells and power it with that. Linear technology has lot's of nice intergrated circuit's for these purposes. I was wondering if anybody has some experience with the dual core atom micro atx pcb. How is the quality , power usage, drivers. How is linux support for it and windows support ?

Thank you in advance




dual core atom

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813121359
 
well the last page of that article you linked talks about power consumption.

also, how well it works.. is kind of a vague question.



 
I have seen the numbers too and was very dissapointed. It sure looks Intels is cleaning out it's inventory. It is the only reason i can think of of coupling the atom with that electricity guzzler chipset.

I hope it is possible to underclock the graphics since i will not really need it. Or put it through some driver /acpi mode in standby and let the board run without using the gpu or at least not at high power. I wonder if it possible...

 
i think you are right about the inventory thing.
as for the other.. i guess only way to find out is to try it 😀

how much processing power do you need for your project?



 
As much as possible but with low power. I know that arm is then the best solution but, in this case the x86 infrastructure makes it handy to find things to connect since drivers are ready made on a high performance platform. I have a programming tookit voor win32 windows and can get it for linux. I want to work on the basic AI and not spend to much time figuring out how it's all going to work together. And since i am busy building devices with usb connectivity it becomes all very convenient.

First i was thinking of getting a spare asus eeepc netbook motherboard. It seems to use a lot less power. The price range is about the same and i will not need to build a powersupply because it is all on board of the eee pc netbook motherboard. I mean even a battery charger is included and there is a connection for an electrical adapter. But i thought the dualcore atom might come in handy since well, it is a dual core. Are there any affordable other solutions , have not really searched yet.

 
If you want low power and x86, the industrial embedded boards are really the way to go.

something like this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/fi...advantech_PCM-5820.jpg

that one is an old geode, they were usually 300Mhz or so, but that's probably still way more processing power than your robot needs... and only requiring 5V simplifies the PSU bigtime... They can come with integrated vga, eth, CF slot for storage, as well as IDE port.. USB, 2-4 serial ports, a parallel port, lcd driver, ISA bus, and newer ones also have PCI (of course on a different connector..)
The datasheet for that particular one lists "typical" power as 5v @ 1.5A, i.e. 7.5W, and max as 20W (WFO I guess, with every peripheral in use?)
http://www.agatnet.com/product...tion7pdfs/PCM-5820.pdf

There are similar boards with faster processors... newer via chips, PIII-M's, think they got some with intel core. New boards are hideously expensive due to the whole niche market thing, but should be able to find something used for a decent price... of course they're gonna suck more power than an old slow geode as well.

and they're small! The one i linked is the same size as a 3.5" HDD.
 
Originally posted by: SickBeast
Could you pop one of these dual-core Atoms into a netbook?
Click to expand...

For as far as i know, the processor are soldered directly to the pcb, so i doubt it. However if the electrical connections of both cpu's are the same it might be possible. But i do not know this at the moment. And it is very likely that the powersupply for the single atom pcb cannot handle a dual atom even when you would have the soldering apparatus to replace them. Also, a bios upgrade might be necessary that may not exist. SO in short i would say no.

I do not know if any dualcore netbook exists at the moment. I do not see them advertised.
 
Originally posted by: Colt45
If you want low power and x86, the industrial embedded boards are really the way to go.

something like this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/fi...advantech_PCM-5820.jpg

that one is an old geode, they were usually 300Mhz or so, but that's probably still way more processing power than your robot needs... and only requiring 5V simplifies the PSU bigtime... They can come with integrated vga, eth, CF slot for storage, as well as IDE port.. USB, 2-4 serial ports, a parallel port, lcd driver, ISA bus, and newer ones also have PCI (of course on a different connector..)
The datasheet for that particular one lists "typical" power as 5v @ 1.5A, i.e. 7.5W, and max as 20W (WFO I guess, with every peripheral in use?)
http://www.agatnet.com/product...tion7pdfs/PCM-5820.pdf

There are similar boards with faster processors... newer via chips, PIII-M's, think they got some with intel core. New boards are hideously expensive due to the whole niche market thing, but should be able to find something used for a decent price... of course they're gonna suck more power than an old slow geode as well.

and they're small! The one i linked is the same size as a 3.5" HDD.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply.

Well, i want to do sound processing and image recognition. And i hope 2GB will be enough to start. To be honest, i don't think the geode board has enough memory for my needs. Yeah, it seems a lot but i will be building a dynamic database and want to keep as much as possible on the fly. On top of that, when you have lot's of memory you can sometimes cut back on processing power. Maybe i will buy it anyway and see how much i can reduce the power of the gpu. Seems to me that when lower clocked, the voltage can go down too. And we all know what that means with respect to power consumption.

 
Originally posted by: IlllI
actually that underclocking comment reminded me of something http://www.tomshardware.com/re...on-Efficient,1997.html
Click to expand...

I read the article, that is amazing :

The Athlon 64 2000+ has 122 million transistors, and the Atom 230 only 47 million. If you look at the relationship between the number of transistors and energy consumption, a single Athlon 64 transistor uses less energy than an Atom transistor, even though Intel produces it using a 45 nm process while AMD relies on 65 nm manufacturing.
Click to expand...

It seems Intel is using the most cheap production method for the atom they have. It seems that low k is not used. It might as well be that Intel uses a bulk silicon method without any of the enhancements to keep the production costs as low as possible.
Or AMD has a line of binned athlon 64 that perform in a fantastic way.

With the development of the Atom processor, Intel introduced a totally new chip design that consumes very little energy. AMD had to strike back, and did so by clocking down its Athlon 64, employing the K8 micro architecture, down to the lowest possible frequency of 1 GHz. The Athlon 64 2000+ runs with a core voltage of 0.90 volts and uses just 8 watts. As a result, the CPU easily operates without a fan. If you drop the 8 W Athlon 64 into a motherboard based on the 780G chipset, then the system hits power consumption numbers that, in our measurements, are below Intel?s Atom desktop solution.
Click to expand...

I am happy i did not buy the miniitx pcb with the dualcore atom. It's a wax nose. The chipset is hopeless. It seems the atom is not as power efficiënt as it could be. No, i think i am going to hold off until AMD comes out with there netbook solution. At least i hope they will do that. An energy efficiënt version of the G780 will lower the numbers even more. And a 45nm version of a dualcore athlon 64 might as well be possible and faster then the dualcore atom at the same power consumption. Use some C&Q as well, who knows...

Maybe then a little miniitx pcb comes out too...
 
Originally posted by: William Gaatjes
I am happy i did not buy the miniitx pcb with the dualcore atom. It's a wax nose. The chipset is hopeless. It seems the atom is not as power efficiënt as it could be. No, i think i am going to hold off until AMD comes out with there netbook solution. At least i hope they will do that. An energy efficiënt version of the G780 will lower the numbers even more. And a 45nm version of a dualcore athlon 64 might as well be possible and faster then the dualcore atom at the same power consumption. Use some C&Q as well, who knows...

Maybe then a little miniitx pcb comes out too...
Click to expand...


from what i've read they wont be coming out with something to rival an atom processor. they are however coming out with with a processor that kind of aims above the atom, somewhere between the atom and the c2d http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10096494-64.html

also found this:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden-n/


 
Originally posted by: IlllI
Originally posted by: William Gaatjes
I am happy i did not buy the miniitx pcb with the dualcore atom. It's a wax nose. The chipset is hopeless. It seems the atom is not as power efficiënt as it could be. No, i think i am going to hold off until AMD comes out with there netbook solution. At least i hope they will do that. An energy efficiënt version of the G780 will lower the numbers even more. And a 45nm version of a dualcore athlon 64 might as well be possible and faster then the dualcore atom at the same power consumption. Use some C&Q as well, who knows...

Maybe then a little miniitx pcb comes out too...
Click to expand...


from what i've read they wont be coming out with something to rival an atom processor. they are however coming out with with a processor that kind of aims above the atom, somewhere between the atom and the c2d http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10096494-64.html

also found this:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden-n/
Click to expand...

From the link :

In short, AMD is not offering an enthusiastic endorsement of the Netbook market. "The target is the slim form factor with a larger screen. Not a 10- or 11- or 12-inch screen," Taylor said. He quickly added that smaller Netbook-style designs may appear but repeated that this is not the emphasis. Why? AMD's approach is to deliver "a full PC experience," Taylor said. "That's not what you can say about some of the Netbook-type products on the market today," he said. AMD will do this by tapping into the graphics chip technology from its ATI unit, according to Taylor. "Customers are not satisfied with the experience on mini-notebooks," said Bahr Mahony, director, notebook product marketing at AMD, speaking during the analyst meeting on Thursday. AMD refers to Netbooks as mini-notebooks. Bahr said data shows that there are high return rates in Europe where many consumers have been snapping up Netbooks.
Click to expand...



Bah, that is kind of sad. The netbooks are very popular because they are small. Why does AMD not see that. They hardly make any margin anyway, so this is not really an issue either. And if anybody at the moment can deliver a low power/good performance gpu for a netbook it's AMD with the ATI. I guess they like being in debt. And what i have seen, a 45nm cpu based on a athlon 64 core with a small gpu on a 9 inch netbook would be sold for sure like hotcakes. Intel made a good move, these little netbooks are popular. USB sticks and other solid state storage can do what cd's or dvd's can do. A full pc experience , bah belony.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Originally posted by: SickBeast
Could you pop one of these dual-core Atoms into a netbook?
Click to expand...

No, they are soldered in.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but the netbook version of the single core (N270?) is different than the desktop verson (230). I think it takes different voltages.
 
looks great.... but one complaint.... VGA only / no DVI 🙁

I might have to get one of these to swap out the guts of an old P4 3.0C (Northwood) + 6800nu based Shuttle XPC that I have. I know the performance of the P4 + Geforce 6800 is better, but its kind of loud, and uses a lot of power, I'd rather cut all of the noise.

 
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