As everyone says, Gigabit and 4 Sata ports would be a lot more useful but you can't complain for the price What other Atom based Mini-ITX boards are coming out this year?
Nope, the £15 part is the riser. They don't have any of the case in stock at the mo ("Long lead time")
ah thanks, that is quite misleading... Think I will go for http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=3#venus instead then, which will allow me greater upgrade flexibility in the future.
Not Atom sorry - there will be lots at Computex. Intel makes very uninspiring motherboards in general so we'll nose around to find some from other vendors with better features. I'm still a bit lost as to why so many people want Atoms, when they are just Intel VIA's - slow and basic. The AMD mini-itx is far more user friendly imo. Atoms are great for being inexpensive and for stuff like MIDs.
Out of interest how does it compare to the older VIA Epia M. I have a 1ghz one and tbh its a little slow, but its passively cooled so i live with it, but if i could get a speed boost from this i'd consider it, i'd just need to work on the cooling front.
Both of them lack out of order execution which has been the staple diet of every CPU since the Pentium Pro, but I'm not sure how they compare yet - time will tell.
What advantage does out of order execution give? It sounds a bit like queue jumping to me...! edit: ah, wikipedia helps a bit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution It seems to suggest that out of order execution makes the tasks wait until they have got all the data they need to continue before processing them, so that it doesn't waste time waitng around. Like a checkout that serves people who already have their wallets out before those who can't find theirs.
I think of it more like a deli counter, rather than serving number 1 then 2 etc each of whom wants three different things, it serves everyone who wants salami followed by everyone who wants cheese followed by everyone who wants fish thereby saving time washing hands and moving between counters... I may have put too much thought into that... Moriquendi
Concerning Ethernet and hard drive options, check out the PCI map on page 59 of the datasheet. There is no Ethernet and the only disk interface is PATA. There are two PCIe 1x ports. Remember, this is supposed to be for closed box PDA-ish devices, not desktop computers. Also remember that all this extra stuff adds to power consumption, something Intel is trying to minimize in the platform so it can make a half decent hand held computer.
If I have read that correctly then no. That is a data sheet for an SCH which is for use in the scenarios you mentioned. This motherboard makes use of the ICH7 chipset (southbridge) which provides a lot of the add on features. That is this: http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/30701303.pdf which provides a lot more features like eethernet and SATA. This motherboard is also based on the 945G northbridge which also provides a lot of the other features. I hope I haven't hugely misunderstood everything! edit: a rather helpful picture (at least for me) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Motherboard_diagram.png
I seem to have formed a mental block that if I'm seeing something using the Atom, it's based on the Intel reference board with the SCH.
@tulatin: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=27439 might use a few more watts than the atom, but i think it qualifies as "something like that". i'm just looking for an excuse to buy one.
Now that we are so near the launch date for the atom powered board, doesn't it seem odd that there appears to be only one retailer offering it for sale?
Yes I like the look of that. It will use a few watts more but how does is compare for speed with the atom? It seems to me that the emphasis is on power consumption rather than speed, could this 'old' celeron 220 outperform the new atom? BTW the celeron 200 series CPUs are due to be discontinued from Setp 5th 2008.
Tranquil-pc have said I should have my atom diamondville mobo/cpu by friday. I'll post up some benchmarks once I have it all up and running.
