Min-ITX boards, dual LAN/core

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 01:06:32PM -0800, Tyler Aviss wrote:
> The multi-core would mostly be for when I have a bunch of video
> encoding or other stuff going on in the background, or when I'm using
> the box with mythtv and it's doing otf transmission to one of the
> other connected clients.

Just remember that an atom's actual speed is pretty close to half of
the expected speed for an x86 cpu at its clock speed.

So 1.6GHz atom is about the speed of an 800MHz Core2 core or Pentium 3
or similar.  The 50% drop is pretty standard for in order execution
chips like the atom.

Similarly the PS3's powerpc core is also in order execution and hence
rather slow compared to a modern out of order execution powerpc core.

In order execution cores are much much simpler and use a lot less
transistors and hence less power.  If the compiler does a good job, you
can gain back a good chunk of the lost speed, but in most cases you
won't be able to.

The netbooks with the atom 1.6GHz chip is not really much faster than
the first EEEpc devices with the 700MHz celeron chips.  The atom uses
less power though giving better battary life.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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