Atomic Powered Mini PC - the Intel D945GCLF2 Kit

The Dual-Core Atom

Taking the PC world by storm, millions of small, inexpensive notebook computers have been shipped since the ASUS Eee PC first started the trend. This has only accelerated in 2009, with research firm Abi predicting that 35 million of these netbooks will be shipped this year, with the number rising to 139 million in 2013.

Currently, most of these devices are powered by Intel's Atom, a low-power, low-cost processor highly suited for this entry-level market. While there are a few variants of the Atom, a particular model, the Atom N270, a single core processor running at 1.6GHz, has been the de facto choice for most vendors when it comes to these portable devices.

What is less known, is that Intel has had a dual-core version of the Atom (Atom 330) since June last year. It was however available in limited quantities back then, but we expect to see it being used in many more systems this year. Meant for low-power, PC desktops dubbed nettops by Intel, these devices are designed to be capable of basic computing tasks like surfing the Internet, checking email, etc. Unlike its mobile counterparts, these systems have been markedly less popular in retails among vendors and consumers, though some enthusiasts have been quietly building these systems themselves as inexpensive file or home servers. On the OEM side of the business though, these inexpensive nettops are just about right for a vast majority of systems that are potentially deployed for basic functions and are steadily gaining traction in the background.

Recently, we managed to get one of these dual-core Atom kits sold by Intel for system integrators and vendors. Consisting of the dual-core Atom 330 processor soldered onto a mini-ITX motherboard based on Intel's 945GC chipset, this is what Intel calls the D945GCLF2 desktop solution. Before we get to the details, here are the specifications:-

The Intel D945GCLF2 System

We won't say that the mini-ITX board that held the dual-core Atom 330 fits perfectly on our palm, but it was quite close. Not that we were overly impressed since the that we saw recently could do the same and with a more modern and complete feature set to say the least. For instance, there's only one DIMM slot on this Intel board compared to two on the Zotac.

While we understand that the Intel D945GCLF2 kit is catered more for the OEM business, we can't help but to compare against a somewhat equivalent retail solution. Of course both products are targeted at different price points and there's always a tradeoff with feature creep equating to higher costs. We'll discuss more on this point later in the article.

Unlike the Zotac, this Intel mini-ITX motherboard is based on the familiar 945GC chipset, with a ICH7 Southbridge that provides for its two SATA 3.0Gbps ports and an IDE interface. This combination has proved to be adequate at simple computing tasks like office productivity applications, basic photo editing, browsing the Internet and checking emails.

But as we had experienced with numerous entry level notebooks, the Intel integrated graphics on board this chipset, the GMA 950, is far from being a speed demon. That puts most games and smooth high definition video playback off the menu. Does the presence of a dual-core Intel Atom help to alleviate this issue?

That's something which we intend to find out during the course of our testing. Before that, what's so different with the dual-core Atom 330 from the more common single core N270 preferred by notebook vendors? As it turns out, it's just like having another CPU core. The L2 cache gets doubled to 1MB from 512KB, but the CPU frequency remains at 1.6GHz. The front side bus frequency too is the same, as is the HyperThreading feature found on most Atom processors. So it's effectively like sticking an Atom N270 besides another on a package and calling it a day.

For those concerned with the power draw however, the Atom 330 is rated at 8W TDP, roughly twice that of its single-core Atom 230 model (used in nettops). That's however still a bit higher than the Atom N270 (rated at 2.5W maximum TDP) used for the sub-notebook category.

Probably as a result of its older chipset, the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard kit has quite the support for older technologies like serial and parallel ports. None of the newer video output formats like HDMI or even Component are found. An S-Video output means you can connect it directly to most televisions. HD audio is present in the form of the older Realtek ALC662 chip, which only supports up to 5.1 channels.

With the exception of a slightly noisier fan, we can't say that this mini-ITX board gets anything wrong. No doubt the features may be older or less than what we would have liked but from the quantity of USB and SATA ports to the Gigabit LAN controller, this kit is exactly what it claims to be: a small, low-cost, self contained system.

Test Setup

NVIDIA has been touting its own 'self-contained' Ion platform, with the GeForce 9400 mGPU as the ideal chipset to pair with the Intel Atom processor. Naturally, it would be interesting to pit Intel's own platform against the newcomer. While we did cover the Ion previously, the configuration for that system varies quite a fair bit from the Intel D945GCLF2. Another note here is the at the Intel kit is a ready to drop-in kit for easy low-cost deployment by OEM vendors, whereas the NVIDIA Ion platform is still a prototype and there's no word of a ready to use kit, thus making the latter more expensive and relatively more difficult to integrate readily.

Now let's get into the test setup details. Firstly and most importantly, the Intel Atom 330 processor in the Ion review sample we received came with one of its two cores disabled by default. This was done by NVIDIA to facilitate testing against the Atom N270 powered devices that it was likely to be pitted against. Since we only had limited time with the Ion sample, we couldn't test the full capabilities of the Atom 330 with both cores enabled.

As a result, the Ion results that we'll be reusing in this article is on an Intel Atom 330 with only a single core running. Other factors that make this comparison less than ideal include the notebook class Seagate Momentus 7200rpm hard drive on the Ion that will surely be inferior to the desktop-class Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 that we tested with the Intel D945GCLF2 kit. Look at it this way - nobody actually knows what form factor would an Ion system eventually emerge as but the Intel kit is meant for a typical petite system and would more than likely be paired with a cheap desktop hard drive like we've used. As such we tried our best to find suitable angles of comparison.

Finally, we could only scavenge up to a single 1GB DDR2 memory stick in our lab, so we could not match the 2GB DDR3 used for the prototype Ion system. The amount of memory dedicated to the integrated graphics for the two systems also differed as the Intel GMA 950 could only be set to a128MB frame buffer at most.

In order to find out the extent of the performance gain going from a single core to dual-core Atom, we also threw in our older though relevant results taken from our review of the Gigabyte M912 mini tablet notebook which had a typical configuration for its class and used a similar Windows Vista operating system.

All three systems were installed with Windows Vista SP1, with HyperThreading turned on when applicable. The latest Intel chipset and graphics drivers were installed for the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard kit and ForceWare 179.24 for the NVIDIA Ion. The table illustrates how our test comparisons stack up and differ.

Benchmarks

We used the following benchmarks to assess the Intel D945GCLF2:-

• PCMark05 (ver. 120)
• PCMark Vantage
• 3DMark06 (ver. 110)
• Quicktime player + Windows Media Classic Homecinema (for HD video playback)
• HD Video Playback

From our prior experience, we know that the Intel Atom N270 paired with the GMA 950 can handle HD videos up to 720p quality. But 1080p has always been the stumbling block, which gave NVIDIA the opportunity to push its more capable integrated graphics solution. Hence, we'll jump right into this portion of the testing first.

In any case, we took a 1080p HD trailer and ran it through the Intel D945GCLF2. Quicktime player and Windows Media Classic Homecinema were both used as the media players, with rather similar conclusions.

The additional processor could not make the 1080p video playback smooth enough to be acceptable. The audio was not in sync with the video and though there were no artifacts, the video was too jerky and CPU utilization ranged from 60 to 75%. This system was simply not capable of proper HD video playback.

Performance Benchmarking

Since some of our comparison results were obtained through previous reviews, there may be some benchmarks below where some of the scores are missing as we did not have the opportunity to retest them.

Starting with a system suite benchmark, we tried the Intel D945GCLF2 in PCMark05. The Intel system took the overall System score, marginally ahead of the NVIDIA Ion despite the D945GCLF2's extra core. Looking at the differences between the Gigabyte M912 and the Intel system should be a more accurate gauge of how having another core helped for this platform.

This difference became clearer once we turn to the CPU score. Here, we saw the Gigabyte and the NVIDIA systems with an almost identical result, which was down to the single core active in both systems. Meanwhile, the weakness of the GMA 950 was evident in the graphics testing where it trailed the Ion by quite the margin.

In the memory testing, the DDR3 and extra 1GB memory on the NVIDIA Ion did not make a significant difference in its performance, with both systems having similar scores. The hard drive segment also confirmed our prediction that the Ion's notebook class hard drive was not going to keep up with our desktop version, even if both were 7200rpm drives.

Moving on to PCMark Vantage, we directly compared the Intel D945GCLF2 against a typical Atom powered machine like the Gigabyte M912. With the exception of the hard drive and the dual-core nature of the D945GCLF2 kit, the two systems were practically identical in hardware configuration. As expected, the results favored the Intel D945GCLF2 system, though the 14% gap between the two in the overall PCMark suite was actually not as huge as the differences in the other segments.

3DMark06 showed once again that the CPU had only minor impact on graphics performance as both the Intel kit and Gigabyte M912 systems performed similarly. NVIDIA's Ion prototype platform was the expected winner in a rather one-sided contest.

Conclusion

Going by the rapid growth of the sub-notebook category, Intel's Atom processors may well become the company's top selling CPU. Its main attraction lies with the low power consumption and it is just about adequate for less demanding, everyday computing. Yet that basic computing limitation could be surpassed, if slightly, once you pair the Atom with a more competent chipset.

That's the premise NVIDIA is relying on for its Ion platform. We have already seen how that combination works. But what about the incumbent Intel 945GC chipset that we always find with the Atom? Well, even with a dual-core Atom at its heart, Intel's aging chipset is not going to compete against the NVIDIA Ion in the performance and graphics stakes. Even for power consumption, the chipset typically draws a disproportionate amount of power compared to the low (2.5W for the Atom N270) power draw of the Atom processor. For instance the 945GC chipset version found here is rated at 22W TDP while the mobile version, the 945GSE uses just under 10W.

Instead, Intel's chipset manages to retain its cost advantage. Currently, you can get the same Intel D945GCLF2 kit from online retailers for US$82. Compare that to a similar mini-ITX motherboard using the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 mGPU, such as the Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi, which will set you back by US$140. And mind you, that's without a processor yet.

Of course, the features that you'll find on the Zotac board are more advanced than what's found on the Intel motherboard. Consumers however may not require all the computing power, especially if it's meant for a simple server at home. For these applications, the low-cost, low-power nature of the Intel D945GCLF2 will be more suitable.

So if you're still hoping to play 1080p HD videos on your bare minimal PCs for some reason, the Intel Atom with the 945GC chipset is out. What could narrow the gap between Intel and NVIDIA in this area is likely to be Intel's upcoming GN40 chipset, which apparently may use a derivate of the X4500HD graphics engine. This would then be the same class of integrated graphics that , which would give us renewed hope that playing 1080p content (barring actual Blu-ray discs) could be possible.

At the moment however, this is all speculation since Intel has not released the new chipset into the wild just yet. NVIDIA's Ion too is a rare beast, but we're expecting to get our hands on a proper retail unit very soon. It's certainly interesting times indeed in this struggle for the best low-cost integrated graphics solution.

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