Thread: Intel D945GCLF2 Dual-Core Atom

Here's a fun fact about the Atom platform... It's the cheapest Mac you can buy.

Atom supports SSE4 and uses the ICH7 southbridge, just like some MacBooks meaning that MacOS can be made - via a special hack or two - to run on it almost natively. (Gray area, google "Hackintosh" or "OSX86" for more information. Buy a copy of MacOS first or rot in heck.)

My mom is running an Eee Box with OSX 10.5 installed. (I put Ubuntu on it, but she wanted "real Office" while I hate family tech support. Now we're both happy.)

I'm looking at the dual-core version to build my CarPC around. Supposedly they spec out a little lower than the newer Celerons, but faster than PIII's. At $90, that's hard to beat.

Originally Posted by Woofnstuff

im trying to get this running now in a dual desktop sort of thing

but ive just noticed that the drivers i have dont have a driver for the svideo out.
i get 1 unknown device, anyone else have this issue?

also trying to get an audio splitter or something so i can send the tv audio to say the rear speakers outputs and the music to the front ones, so someone can watch and listen to a movie or something on headphones and i can still have my 80's & 90's rock music going

i tried asio4all but that didnt want to work for some reason

I'm not getting anywhere with the dual display either. I have two displays showing in device manager, but it still tells me I must have two monitors installed in the monitor setup thing.

On Intel's driver page it lists a newer version of the driver but when you go to download it it is the same one that came on the CD.

Does no one know how fast these atom processors are? Speed anyone? I'm just asking out of curiosity as a means to determine if this board is for me and the setup I want to display.

1.6ghz dual core.

These are not proper benchmarks, but this morning i ran some comparisons between D201GLY2 and D945GCLF2. They are interesting, and i think reinforce the german review posted earlier.

Test descriptions:

test 0
Play dvd from optical drive and observe cpu use. Software was PowerDVD 4.

test 1
Reencode first three chapters of /the worlds fastest indian/, and measure time taken. 338M file read from optical drive, transcoded and saved to hdd. Bit rate was to be reduced by 30%, using DVDShrink.

test 2
copy 156MB 2 layer psd from usb 2.0 flash stick, open the file in Photoshop CS, resample image to 6/7 smaller, resave file and close CS. Measure time taken.

test 3
The final test comprised test 1, while simultaneously carrying out test 2, twice, and also making and saving a screenshot using CS. CS was closed and reopened between each task.


Test rig A
D201GLY2, 1GB ram, new SATA 3.5" HDD, IDE 5" optical, recent XPSP2 install
CD scratch disk on D drive.
Stable OS install in use.
Page file 512MB

Test rig B
D945GCLF2, 1GB ram, new IDE 2.5" HDD, IDE slim optical, recent XPSP2 install
Both drives on same IDE cable (!?)
CD scratch disk on D drive.
Brand new OS install with a few quirks still.
Page file 1500MB

Now note that these arent strictly identical setups. I dont have the gear to do this any better. Of particular note is the slower drives in the atom rig.

Results

Test 0

The d201 board used about 22% cpu usage. (little more than my earlier observation owing to the use on that occasion of a lower bitrate file located on harddrive)


The atom board used average of 8%, but this is actually around 25% on one core-thread and not much else. Take what you want from that--in hindsight you probably cant call that 8% cpu usage, as the application appears single core optimised.

Test 1

The D201 rig completed the transcode in 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Using about 77% CPU.

The atom board completed in 1 minute 52 seconds, a good improvement , 35% faster in fact.

Test 2

D201 completed the photoshop resample exercise in 1 minute 0 seconds.


D945 completed in 1 minute 5 seconds. It appeared to have trouble using the CPU fully, showing low CPU use figures, averaging say 10% over 4 "cpus".

Test 3


D201 completed the combined test 3 minutes and 30 seconds. As you can see CPU is pretty much maxing out. Both transcode and photoshop tasks proceeded smoothly, if slightly slower than done seperately, but it felt as they were sharing CPU evenly.


D945 completed in quite a different manner. The transcode finished early, leaving the Photoshop tasks to kind of muddle along afterwards. The Photoshop tasks appeared to quite compromised by the transcode task, even though reported CPU usage was not at all high. Photoshop just seemed to be struggling. It took an age just open photoshop, and the transcode has completed before the first of the 2 resamples had even completed.
However total time was 3 minutes and 47 seconds, not a great deal more than the D201 took. To my mind there seemed to be some problem utelising the cpus power fully, perhaps averaging 45% over 4 "cpus".

Comment

While newer more multicore optimised software may have made a better job of these tests, Im wondering how well baked the 945GC chipset and the dual core atom combo actually is. My understanding is that for the better part of the 945's life it was single core only. Dual core having been hacked on at a late stage. Then you have in order execution as opposed to the out of order used in netburst and core architecture, and im left with questions, and the sense that the atom needs an optimised chipset to match both its ability's and power profile. Id be interested in anyones ideas about why photoshop struggled as it did in these tests. Will try a sata 2.5" drive when it arrives, and a bigger PSU in case its a power issue.

Originally Posted by Woofnstuff

you may need an svideo plug plugged in to trigger the 2nd screen

I was useing an svideo to RCA converter hooked to a tv and no dice.