Intel Atom: Are desktop (nettop) processors kaput?

[monstercameron]

There is a fanless Gigabyte 1037U Mini-ITX coming soon:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35666606&postcount=270

why would you want that when you can get this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135363

like shivansps said, mobile celeron vs kabini in mini-itx, the choice should be clear.

 

[Vesku]

There are some mini-itx 1037U on Newegg as well as dual and quad Kabinis:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2349350&highlight=

 

[monstercameron]

There are some mini-itx 1037U on Newegg as well as dual and quad Kabinis:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2349350&highlight=

is the russian version fanless?
the http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4762#ov

 

[Carson Dyle]

There is a fanless Gigabyte 1037U Mini-ITX coming soon:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35666606&postcount=270

Looks like the US version of the board has a fan. Weird.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4762#ov

 

[Vesku]

Looks like the US version of the board has a fan. Weird.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4762#ov

Looks to me like the Russian picture just has the fan removed, could do the same thing.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Looks to me like the Russian picture just has the fan removed, could do the same thing.

Probably could, but they do have different heatsinks on both the CPU and the chipset.

 

[Homeles]

The Gigabyte Brix with this CPU is already available for around $170 (basically a NUC).

If that's actually what it sells for, then that's a no-brainer for me.

why would you want that when you can get this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135363

like shivansps said, mobile celeron vs kabini in mini-itx, the choice should be clear.

I really wish it were, but the decision doesn't seem so easy to me.

That board you've listed has a 25W part. Kabini definitely has its pros, like ISA extensions, graphics... but this comes at a pretty big hit to power, which is what I'm trying to avoid as much as possible. The lack of turbo boost really kills this architecture.

Then there's the Haswell Celerons. There's virtually no performance data available on it, which is frustrating, and there's not much to extrapolate from either. I think it's pretty safe to say it'd perform worse than Kabini by a fair margin, but it'd also draw quite a bit less power. This is the part where it would be nice to see low-end hardware making rounds in the reviews...

Finally, there's Bay Trail. Intel lists the J2850 as being a 2.4 GHz quad core. At those speeds, I'd imagine the thing would actually be faster than a 1.4 GHz Haswell Celeron, while still being rated at a lower TDP (10W vs 15W). Of course, who knows how often it runs at 2.4GHz. It's probably around the performance of the 25W Kabini, while drawing significantly less power. Probably costs more though, and the graphics story is so obvious it doesn't even need to be mentioned.

It seems like no matter what I choose, I'm having to make a pretty big compromise... there's no way to get what I'm really looking for without having to pay considerably more for it. That i3 4010 would probably give me what I'm looking for, but if $170 really is what the Celeron BRIX model goes for, I can't justify $130 more for an i3.

 

[Vesku]

Does seem hard to justify the i3, for $100+ more I'd want a quad core:

$170 for the Gigabyte 1037u barebones Brix

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856164005

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Does seem hard to justify the i3, for $100+ more I'd want a quad core:

$170 for the Gigabyte 1037u barebones Brix

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856164005

id easily rather have dual core i3 than quad core bay trail

 

[RadiclDreamer]

As far as I'm concerned, atom was a stillborn that intel insists on keeping on life support. It is horribly underpowered and painful to use even when just surfing the web.

 

[Vesku]

id easily rather have dual core i3 than quad core bay trail

Referring to IB/Haswell, the 1037U is not Bay Trail. Paying $100+ to go from dual core IB 1.8GHz 2MB L3 to dual core IB 1.8GHz HT 3MB L3 or even dual core Haswell 1.7GHz HT 3MB L3 seems a bit too much to be asking for.

The Bay Trails can fit into some nice products that the 1037U can't, though. Also, seems like Intel is selling at least the Z3470 at a very low price to OEMs given the decent pricing on launch products.

 

[Homeles]

As far as I'm concerned, atom was a stillborn that intel insists on keeping on life support. It is horribly underpowered and painful to use even when just surfing the web.

I can't wait to hear what you think of ARM, then.

 

[blckgrffn]

So are you buying a really efficient PSU? I think that's the only way you'll tell the difference on platform power usage across some of the platforms listed. Given the cost of the PSU to actually realize any savings on the TDP of the CPU, it's likely a wash and you are choosing something slower AND more expensive solution in that case.

You could put in a cheap wifi card and mess up your power differential here.

This is such a ridiculous comparison of power usage in the desktop realm. Does the user have an older LCD that eats ~100W or whatever by themselves? Do they leave the lights on when they use the computer? That will all make more of a difference than a 10W atom vs a 25W Kabini.

If we are talking about replacing an old x2 or Core 2 machine with all sorts of components that were built with no eye towards platform power usage you could probably make a case here. But when everything is new, shiny and not necessarily going into a tablet or laptop where every ounce of TDP matters... well. All of a sudden the add in cards, peripherals and efficiency of PSU all are more important considerations. I'd advocate getting the fastest "low power" solution you can get for the buck.

 

[Homeles]

If we are talking about replacing an old x2 or Core 2 machine with all sorts of components that were built with no eye towards platform power usage you could probably make a case here.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

 

[sm625]

Then there's the Haswell Celerons. There's virtually no performance data available on it, which is frustrating, and there's not much to extrapolate from either. I think it's pretty safe to say it'd perform worse than Kabini by a fair margin, but it'd also draw quite a bit less power.

Haswell based Celeron 2955U has almost exactly the same passmark score as an i3-2357M (a 1.3GHz Sandy Bridge i3). But that is not a perfect comparison since the i3 has double the threadcount. A better comparison would be a 2 core 2 thread Athlon X2-240 which only scores a couple percentage points higher in passmark. To be able to compete with a nearly 3GHz 65W chip is pretty impressive.

Another point of data can be found here: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/acer-c720-chromebook .aspx

The Acer Chromebook C720 held its own when it came to benchmark tests as well. It took the system 348.4 milliseconds to complete the Sunspider Javascript test, beating the HP Chromebook 11 (679 milliseconds) and Samsung Chromebook Series 3 (737.2 milliseconds) yet again.


The C720 also outpaced its competitors during the Peacekeeper synthetic browser benchmark. The Acer scored a solid 2,955, versus the HP Chromebook 11's 1,134 and the Samsung Chromebook Series 3's 1,214.

I'm not sure why you think it would be slower than kabini. Maybe at video encoding, but in real world daily usage it would be faster than some piledriver chips, to say nothing of kabini.

 

[blckgrffn]

That's exactly what I'm doing.

Hah, yes.

I meant if you were *only* comparing bay trail to those platforms, it would be pretty awesome. Epic. All upside. Compared to the other available options it seems like you have to really want to pick it for it to work. Haswell Celeron? Very solid, very beefy cores. AMD APU? CPU and GPU upside with still (in the whole scheme of things) very reasonable power consumption. Bay Trail makes sense for phones and tablets, but when you have headroom for that extra 10W of TDP under load, why not take advantage of it? The system is likely to be idling or sleeping most of the time anyway, right? Then what is the difference across these chips? Probably all tied to PSU and peripheral selection.

Then again, a solid deal on it and it is a slam dunk. For a while there, there were mitx IVB Celeron deals with an 8GB ram stick for an eye watering $80. That was a lot of love for the money.

But any of these platforms are going to take you down from ~100W or so down to 15-30W. Paying more to go from 20W to 10W seems like diminishing returns to me.

* I have also been burned by recommending some of those lower end AMD CPU's that were "so much better than Atom". My wife's e450 "laptop" was a big mistake. Even with a Samsung 830 SSD and plenty of ram, it is a dog.

 

[Arkaign]

Power usage isn't nearly as low as Atom.

That really doesn't matter for a web browsing box.
Atom's is somewhere around 10W. I'm looking to cut down on power and costs as much as possible. A 15W Haswell Celeron would certainly be an improvement, but it'd also be more expensive.
Atom's still significantly cheaper than Celeron. It'll basically come down to the price difference of a whole system, although I may end up having to grab the Celeron because of the better graphics.

I'd advise erring on the side of higher performance potential, then using smart power settings with the build. Say you need to bring the box up to read a couple PDFs, use google maps to plan a quick trip, and send an email with a document attached. Something like a haswell (or even ivy bridge) Celeron can get that done pretty quickly. In my experience, that is quite frustrating on Atom/Zacate/etc. So cutting the time/lag out can get your task done rapidly and then you can sleep it back to ultra low power state again (or power down completely if you have no need for the system in the near future).

Getting some good power strips to plug various wall warts/power cables into will let you hard-switch them off so they don't sap power. Applying some of these ideas can save a much greater amount of power than the difference between even 10 and 35W on a single unit.

LED displays and lightbulbs, better insulation, air dry your clothes, go fridgeless, skylights, have an exercise bike that charges a rigged up UPS to power your computer. If you go all out, you can basically invert your power usage.

 

[monstercameron]

Haswell based Celeron 2955U has almost exactly the same passmark score as an i3-2357M (a 1.3GHz Sandy Bridge i3). But that is not a perfect comparison since the i3 has double the threadcount. A better comparison would be a 2 core 2 thread Athlon X2-240 which only scores a couple percentage points higher in passmark. To be able to compete with a nearly 3GHz 65W chip is pretty impressive.

Another point of data can be found here: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/acer-c720-chromebook .aspx



I'm not sure why you think it would be slower than kabini. Maybe at video encoding, but in real world daily usage it would be faster than some piledriver chips, to say nothing of kabini.

the hsw celeron 2955u might have higher single threaded performance over the kabini a6-5200, but the kabini pulls ahead in multithreaded. it also outperforms intel atom in single and multi cpu, and I haven't mentioned gpu/graphics perf yet. also i dont expect it to use much more power than haswell underload, and probably identical under moderate load.

 

[ultimatebob]

A lot of you guys always seem to forget that Atom processors are now mainly used for things like Point Of Sale systems, Kiosk computers, and video display systems. You know... the kind of low power embedded systems that you see at the mall or in a restaurant.

The installers who use those systems don't give a rats ass how they perform in 3DMark. They just want something cheap and reliable that doesn't run hot or use a lot of power.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

why would you want that when you can get this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135363

Ummm... it costs twice what my plenty-fast-enough 1037U board cost, and uses ~50% more power.

Also, the 1037U still has better single-threaded performance. (788 CPU Marks vs. 944.) So there may be a use case.

 

[monstercameron]

Ummm... it costs twice what my plenty-fast-enough 1037U board cost, and uses ~50% more power.

Also, the 1037U still has better single-threaded performance. (788 CPU Marks vs. 944.) So there may be a use case.

can you show/explain ~50% more power?
maybe a 50% lead in single threaded perf according to cinebench r11.5
but loses 25% in multithreaded perf...
and the gpu on kabini is miles better.

 

[Homeles]

I'd advise erring on the side of higher performance potential, then using smart power settings with the build. Say you need to bring the box up to read a couple PDFs, use google maps to plan a quick trip, and send an email with a document attached. Something like a haswell (or even ivy bridge) Celeron can get that done pretty quickly. In my experience, that is quite frustrating on Atom/Zacate/etc. So cutting the time/lag out can get your task done rapidly and then you can sleep it back to ultra low power state again (or power down completely if you have no need for the system in the near future).

The Bay Trail Atoms are such an enormous improvement over their predecessors that I'm skeptical that one would run into the issues you're describing. In fact, the line between a Haswell Celeron and top-SKU Atom is quite blurred.

Getting some good power strips to plug various wall warts/power cables into will let you hard-switch them off so they don't sap power. Applying some of these ideas can save a much greater amount of power than the difference between even 10 and 35W on a single unit.

LED displays and lightbulbs, better insulation, air dry your clothes, go fridgeless, skylights, have an exercise bike that charges a rigged up UPS to power your computer. If you go all out, you can basically invert your power usage.

Yeah, we're definitely tackling quite a few of those inefficiencies you've listed there.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

can you show/explain ~50% more power?

25w vs. 17w. Slightly fuzzy math from my head - 47% if you want to be more precise.

but loses 25% in multithreaded perf...

Which is irrelevant if your workloads are single-threaded. Moreover, almost 2x the price ($75 vs $140) for a 25% boost in multithreaded performance is a crappy deal, imo.

and the gpu on kabini is miles better.

Which may not matter, depending on the application.

For HTPC, the GPU just has to be good enough. (Although I was doing a lot of media encoding, I'd probably want something beefier like a -S series ULV i5.)

For small servers, it's completely irrelevant. (You'd either want better multithreaded performance or better single-threaded depending on your intended workload, but wouldn't even have a monitor attached.)

For gaming, either CPU is pretty weak, regardless of GPU. But I guess if I wanted a laptop to play Minecraft at 720p, I'd go with the A6.

 

[monstercameron]

25w vs. 17w. Slightly fuzzy math from my head - 47% if you want to be more precise.



Which is irrelevant if your workloads are single-threaded. Moreover, almost 2x the price ($75 vs $140) for a 25% boost in multithreaded performance is a crappy deal, imo.



Which may not matter, depending on the application.

For HTPC, the GPU just has to be good enough. (Although I was doing a lot of media encoding, I'd probably want something beefier like a -S series ULV i5.)

For small servers, it's completely irrelevant. (You'd either want better multithreaded performance or better single-threaded depending on your intended workload, but wouldn't even have a monitor attached.)

For gaming, either CPU is pretty weak, regardless of GPU. But I guess if I wanted a laptop to play Minecraft at 720p, I'd go with the A6.

dont conflate tdp with power draw. also what if you need multihtreaded performance and a slightly better gpu? so please stop generalizing ppls needs.

 

[Homeles]

dont conflate tdp with power draw. also what if you need multihtreaded performance and a slightly better gpu? so please stop generalizing ppls needs.

TDP is closely related to maximum power draw. Seeing "TDP != power consumption; your argument is invalid!" is really getting old, and it's nothing more than a cop-out at this point.

I'm also rather confused why you're allowed to generalize people's needs (you did exactly this by suggesting a Kabini board over a Celeron one, without any information as to what their needs were), but you won't allow others to do the same.