Min-ITX boards, dual LAN/core

[Tyler Aviss]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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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Hmm, well it would be for me LAN-server. I've been trying to find
comparisons between the C7 (C7-D I think) and the atom. The VIA nano
might also be an option. Other CPU's that are light on power
consumption might also do, but I'm not aware of anything that does X86
really gets close to the current C7 other than the nano.

Other than the general CPU speed and power consumption, the other main
areas of focus was how well it does encryption (especially for
handling a steamed SSL connections) and/or audio/video encoding,
mythtv etc.

The current machine used to run on a 50-60W brick with the drives etc,
and never seemed to flinch at that. It's got a mini-PSU now with the
new case, but I wouldn't want to go too much beyond the current
consumption.
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