Intel’s Atom D510 And NM10 Express: Down The Pine Trail With D510MO

[timbo]

[citation][nom]fortmccubble[/nom]I don't understand the nature of these pluses and minuses for rating... who hates these questions so much?[/citation]

Mostly knuckleheads exercising the limits of what they consider 'powa'... gives 'em a little dopamine rush to click that thumb down icon. =D
I've read an article's commentary & come back later to see that every comment had been given the thumbs down by somebody.

 

[rodney_ws]

I can't help but think that his product was on the drawing board long before Ion's capabilities were public. Ion exists because there is an unmet demand... a low power, low cost system that has decent multimedia capabilities... and here's Intel serving up a dish of FAIL. At least they ditched that ridiculous 945 chipset this time around... but still... this system doesn't do what (some) customers are demanding.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]blarger[/nom]Anyone else notice how often Tomshardware articles contain blatant grammar and spelling mistakes? Like they don't even spell check them before publishing.This article has been out for how long? And the graphs are still missing data for the pinetrail results. how do you click the create article button without previewing to make sure your graphs aren't the working versions?Tomshardware needs to get its quality standards together.Also while this is certainly an improvement I agree how Atom is disappointingly underpowered. if it were 1.5 times as powerful it could handle HD decoding and gaming so much better. Its appeal in the American market would double as a "hey mom here's your new computer" type gift. Or an HTPC. Or a internet station.[/citation]

Just went through the story and couldn't find any issues with the charts. Please clarify. All editorial content is thoroughly edited prior to publishing.

 

[plbyrd]

I have a system at home that started life as a CarPC but was migrated to my bedroom as a media center (which it's extremely capable of, especially using the Centrafuse software suite which is meant for mobile media). This system is a 945GSE based system with the Atom 330 processor. The ONLY and I mean ONLY thing that it doesn't do well is gaming. It plays H.264 video just fine (encoded with Nero Recorder, played back through VNC Media Player) and DVD's, etc are a no brainer. Audio is clear and crisp (when it was in my car the installer said it was the best sounding audio source he had ever heard playing through high-quality amps). The VGA output looks clear and crisp on my 32" HDTV. As I said, the only complaint is gaming.

If this new chipset is capable of everything that my 945GSE system is based on, and it's passively cooled, then it's the ultimate solution for a home media center.

 

[zelannii]

[citation][nom]dealcorn[/nom]The graphics discussion is accurate, but misses the mark. Ebay says I can buy Zotac ION-ITX-A-U with D330 for $167 versus about $70 for an Intel D945GCLF2D and I speculate that the D510NM will sell volumes at less than $80. Populate one of the PCIe lanes with a Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator (under $25) and you get ”a single-stream HD H.264/VC-1/WMV/MPEG-2 video decoder solution capable of full HD real-time decoding supporting Windows XP, Windows® 7 and the Linux® OS environments.” I will add a cheap PCIE tv capture card for analog signals so I need hardware assisted MPEG encoding for my headless HTPC server. Because I care about graphics, the Intel platform looks like a 37% savings out of pocket and daily energy cost savings to boot. Yes, the D510NM is a nothing release except that it blows away the competition in multiple market segments. Some relevant performance and energy use testing might be helpful.[/citation]

Good plan, but you forget to include the power draw of the hardware HD decoder. The chip itself may only use 2w, but other board components are going to suck up some some extra juice running it too, and you still need an HDMI port... At that point, you;re already well over the power requirements of the Ion that already does all that and leaves all your slots free.

 

[plbyrd]

[citation][nom]bounty[/nom] It can't really do flash stuff, but neither can Atom + intel chipset. [/citation]

Where do you get this from? I watch YouTube videos and Netflix (Silverlight) videos on my Atom platforms all the time (netbook and media PC).

 

[alexmx]

[citation][nom]masterasia[/nom]I don't see any big improvement. The Atom still sucks and should only be available in third world countries like how it was intended or be used just for surfing the Internet and light word processing, nothing more.[/citation]

yeah because the average people in 1st world countries do different than surfing the Internet and light word processing right?

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]rembo666[/nom]I don't understand all the negative comments. Atom has always been about the cheapest way to get "good enough" performance to run a web browser. No less, no more. If you want to do more than that, buy a platform with a proper super-scalar CPU.[/citation]

it won't be good enough for even web browsing as hardware acceleration catches on in flash and alike.

 

[falchard]

12w is a little high for a low power CPU in the Atom's capability. At 12w its in the Athlon Neo territory. Can an overpriced Atom CPU paired with an Intel GMA stand a chance against an Athlon Neo with an AMD Integrated solution?

The prices are about the same except the AMD models have a bigger screen and more muscle.

 

[vaskodogama]

the only bright side of this new pinetrail till now is the passive cooling in prototype model. no need for a fan is great.
but after all the talk, I assume ION is much better.

 

[Guest]

I'd like to not that the 945GSE hasn't been released in 2008, but before; because my Sony Vaio from 2006 (C2D 1,66Ghz) has that same chipset! It may have been less known and in 2008 had good enough driver support.

 

[Guest]

Alright,
I'm happy to hear news about this, though the tests where pretty useless to me!
Very few people going Atom actually want to compress video, audio or data on it, and even fewer want to use it as a gaming console.
It should be noted though, that this Intel D510 IS faster than a Nintendo Wii, which does NOT get that much negative response about speed...

Most people who go Atom D5x, do because they want to have a HT pc, or small server.
Careful study should be done, in to what can it run, and what not; where it's limitations are, in fields where people DO use the netbook/desktop for!

An occasional gamer, might love this chipset for the emulation of his PS2 console on PC, or playing those old sims, or DOS games.
Or perhaps those older 3D games from before 2005 (+GTA2 excluded perhaps).
Perhaps test a 3D game, and it's resolutions; I'm sure it'll run quake with pretty high FPS at it's 1366x768 resolution.

What interest me is program response. Instead of running benchmarks of 3Dmark and Vantage which don't tell us anything anyways on the graphic charts, it would have been better to run some more desktop application programs (in the likes of PC mark).

I thought the RAM test was very nice! This shows that the separate memory controller IS slower than current on die controller.

Then also, there is the Atom N, which probably will be found in nearly all upcoming netbooks.
And it has an even lower Total system power.

The only reason I'd go Atom, is with an Atome NETBOOK CPU, to run Windows XP and Windows programs, and hopefully get the low latencies both in RAM and audio, for audio playback purposes (to use the netbook as sampler).
It runs fine with an SSD and XP on a 670MHZ Celeron M cpu, so why not on a 1,66Ghz dual threaded Atom processor?

What's most speed limiting these days is not the latencies of CPU, but harddisk reads. If paired with an SSD, even an Atom system runs cool, smooth and fast!

But as it seems Intel has connected the memory controller to the GPU, which may increase 3D performance, at the cost of system response.

So next time,please no FPS on crysis on this machine, or video encoding! Noone is interested in doing that!
Give us some benchmarks that DO make sense!

(like the memory benchmark, and the CPU benchmark of 330 VS 510)

Thank you!

 

[Stardude82]

Why did you guys choose the E2200? Its obsolete and out of production! Its 65 nm!!! It doesn't support virtualization! The E3200 is better in every sense of the word! (Unless you get it free.. and only maybe!)

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]matt87_50[/nom]wow, thats pretty terrible, one wonders how much better that new cpu integrated graphics is than the old chip set integrated? as basic as the ion system is, you can do anything with it, media center decoding HD, playing a couple of games, and as a file server, all with the lowest power consumption, this new one seems like its only good for the latter, and its only 3W less power.however, a file server / NAS alternative with the lowest possible power consumption is exactly what I'm after, so maybe its perfect for me, but I'd probably still go ION just because of the flexibility it offers in the future, should I get a new file server to replace it.as for netbooks. If its a computer, I wanna be able to play games on it, and lets not forget about flash going 3D and hardware accelerated, I'd still go ION.honestly, I wonder how they could make a GPU that crap in this day and age, the one in the iPhone and droid would be more powerful...[/citation]
Then just equip it with a Radeon 4670 in the PCIe slot or so...

 

[cangelini]

Digit,
Check out the whole story ;-) There are a number of tests in there that might be indicative of desktop performance, and all of the benchmarks *are* run with an SSD!

 

[noob2222]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Digit,Check out the whole story ;-) There are a number of tests in there that might be indicative of desktop performance, and all of the benchmarks *are* run with an SSD![/citation]
Thats what made me laugh about this article, buy an atom with an ssd ... lol.

As far as I can tell, this is basically a "test product" for Intel testing thier cpu/gpu on die solution before they go to high performance models AKA fusion (not that any Intel gpu is high performance yet.)

I also see this product as another attempt to cut Nvidia off again from another potential market.

 

[cangelini]

Actually Noob, if there was one thing I'd change about my Mini 311, it'd be to have it running with an SSD. Makes a world of difference!

 

[Guest]

Could the Power Supply used be added to the test setup page? Is the PSU wattage appropriate for the product?

For example in:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-ii-propus,2414-10.html
The test system was equipped with a 750W PSU and under max load the x4 system was drawing 170W or about ~25% max load. Under the desktop the load was closer to ~12%. From what I understand many PSU's have bad efficiency when the current load drops below 20%. Also In a related article where a "C2D 7300 Nukes the Atom" article on Toms the power level were much lower.

Could the test be rerun with a PicoPSU? Would it be possible for Toms to adopt say a PicoPSU, a 220 Watt high efficiency PSU, a ~400 Watt, a ~600W, a ~800W, and 1000W a standard test setup option for PSU's? This woulead to more realistic power consumption numbers.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]noob2222[/nom]Thats what made me laugh about this article, buy an atom with an ssd ... lol.As far as I can tell, this is basically a "test product" for Intel testing thier cpu/gpu on die solution before they go to high performance models AKA fusion (not that any Intel gpu is high performance yet.)..[/citation]
Exactly, an Atom with an SSD! Don't forget that the first netbooks came with a 2, 4, or 8GB SSD!
An SSD makes perfect sense, and they are not that expensive anymore.
You don't need to purchase a 128GB SSD, a 20GB SSD works just fine to load the OS and some programs like office and perhaps a game or 3!

I would not say that this is just a test product,
The graphics that can come with an Atom CPU would probably be very limited. It would make no sense to plug a Radeon 9800-like card in an Atom system, it'd only be limited by the CPU. There's a great difference between Corei processors and Atom ones.
I think for processors as powerful as the Corei series, they will probably also plug in a more powerful graphics card.

I honestly think Corei processors are already thermally optimized. To add graphics on the processor, would most likely raise it's thermal envelope, and thus lower CPU's performance.
Intel will never be able to create a processor that could even tip a corei with separate graphics card!

 

[fjc1998]

[citation][nom]masterasia[/nom]I don't see any big improvement. The Atom still sucks and should only be available in third world countries like how it was intended or be used just for surfing the Internet and light word processing, nothing more.[/citation]

define "third world please"

 

[Konman]

I wonder if the Atom can be utilized to built a render farm. The D510 with TDP of 13 watts and a dual core and hyperthreaded architecture would make a good candidate. Certainly a single D510 is not much. . . but in system with multiple atom CPUs good rendering power could be achieved. The Tom's Hardware setup used up 26.1 watts at full load. This means that 20 systems with a similar power requirements linked up in a render farm setup would use up only 522 watts at full load. . . and that is 40 hyperthreaded cores (80 threads) with each core at 1.66 Ghz. System like that would raytrace fast and a 600 watt power supply would be more than sufficient to run it.

 

[bahr]

define "third world please"

Maybe it's the place where i live, Cilamaya, a small sub district on the northern coast of Java Island. Where 'new' computer is actually a refurbish second handed desktop with Pentium 4, 512 DDR, 80GB IDE drive and CD-ROM, enclose in new PC case for the price around $100.

So yes, the new atom system is 'good enough' to replace those socket 478 system but with much less power consumption. After all, we mostly use them for word processing, maybe a little zuma.

 

[Guest]

Can't complain with u sir, Mr.Bahar I presume? nice to meet u
Indeed, for a sub district in third world countries such as my self, a netbook would be a privilege.

IMO, if you like to chat, hanging around with ur friends whether in some cafe or anywhere outside office, get your presentation file everywhere u're going 'coz u're the market man/woman, then I'd say definitely NETBOOK is for u good sir/madam

 

[Guest]

Found this board at http://www.mini-box.com/D510MO-mini-ITX-Intel, it will be available this week, price is not bad. I am considering buying one and with a Broadcom Crystal HD miniPCI Express card it would be a nice fanless HTPC for my living

 

[jblow89577]

Broadcom Hardware Decoder BCM970012 - PCIe Mini Card
is the answer to your 1080p play back on atoms problems and the Intel D510MO has one mini pcie slot.