Ryccardo wrote on 2023-03-04, 21:24:

I thought Atom (before becoming "tablet/neo-netbook CPU whose higher end models are called Celeron and Pentium") was Japanese for "Pentium 4 equivalent done right"? 😜

Granted, even in 2010(?) when we bought an Asus 1005HA, a slower "Pentium 4" with Win7 and 1 GB of memory wasn't going to be remarkable by neither ultraportable, office, or cheap-ass standards; but after installing XP on it* it seems more than decent 😀 EXCEPT for not liking very much to be used with an external VGA monitor only (boots to black screen unless you use the "VGA mode" boot option)

I had the EeePC 900 with the Celeron M 900MHz. When Intel moved to the Silvermont architecture with a Gen 7 IGP in an 8 inch tablet then I needed one.

Thanks to multithreaded programs a dual core "Bonnell" Atom 1.6 is pretty competitive with a single core P4 3.2. I think the P4 would be a better overall experience though.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d51 … top,2649-2.html

I'm still testing these Atom based configs and tried most of the old and modern o.s. combinations. I usually tested the low end version without HT with a clock of almost 1,9Ghz dual core SSSE3 SoC having the "famous" GMA36x0 (PowerVR SGX 545 based architecture integrated into it) I've tested so many times to have some opinions. Its x64 CPU was one of the last old Atoms based concept for late netbooks or industrial boards. From a CPU speed point of view we could compare these to some late Pentium4 with 10 watts of power and like 2-3 watts for its GPU.

The problems came with the iGPU situation compared to the older Atoms GPUs that at least had solid driver support and retrocompatibility. The GMA36x0 iGPU was instead based on the SGX545 mobile IC and probably more oriented to OpenGL ES low resolution mobile based config instead of any desktop-like gaming one not to mention once Win7 already released with WDDM modern driver requirements. On paper it had everything to be a Directx10.x / OpenGL 3.x notebook like GPU but maybe the idea of having a smartphone iGPU on a x86/x64 scenario needed (too) much more work into the drivers to get an acceptable compatibility not to mention speed. It's difficult to compare such different architecture; on Win7 32bit the latest driver solved many problems with a speed sometimes close to a (very) slow Radeon 9500 and not a great retrocompatibility and what felt like a very complex driver layers/heavy situation like when using an "API wrapper" to explain its speed. And the syntethic benchmark numbers were low and beside good Pixel Shaders results/speed, fill rate resulted very low, even lower in multitexturing.

Games like Doom3 or Far Cry ran at like 15-20fps at 800x600 more or less. 3DMark05 got a 700 points like result. Old games in Win7 already needed some retrocompatibility o.s. fix (like DirectDraw) to add to the already complex driver situation so it was not difficult that old games were slower than modern ones. For what I remember reading opinions around, this different architecture may have needed specific game level optimizations to get better results and the architecture design was scalable but the one integrated into the SoC wasn't even close the fastest possible option (maybe costs, SoC space, less unified shaders/clocks/power requirement).

XP had some beta drivers I think and not 3D support; Win7 x64 had early beta driver that didn't get far while the x86 one was supported until late 2013. So the only o.s. for this iGPU has been Win7 32bit. On linux the situation was really bad; few Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS proprietary drivers existed for the 2D part not 3D. Nowdays a compatible basic 2D cpu based driver still exists without accelerations. At the end using these was like the "Rage Mobility on AGP" cards where low power video ICs were used on desktop PC to get low speed waiting for newer drivers. The power required by this iGPU at least measured with a meter explain most of the questions. This iGPU serie has been probably the lowest power video chip in a desktop config ever and not much could have been expected when compared to 10x more power demanding GPUs.

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.
I think that the AMD APUs are better in the power-performace ratio for gaming against the Atom because the integrated GPU is far better than the intel ones and also better than the Nvidia ION. And also very compatible because I played NFS Porsche with an AMD A10 7300 (25W max TDP) and Win7 64 at 1600x900 with ought problems, that's a fairly old game, that's why I say that the APUs are very compatible.

I've also tested the E-350 APU too but at the end it had its problems too. The power/heat was a lot for a mini itx config SoC and the boards I've tested felt like difficult to get a good cooling solution but at least the Radeon into it has a very good linux driver. The dual core CPU instead felt like not fast enough beside on paper faster than the Atom D2xx0 serie at the end I didn't have the real world feeling difference visible. It was like the whole SoC space was designed around the probably "too large" iGPU that might have been more balanced with lower clocks / less shaders / less space, to let the SoC run better.
Instead the temperature changes very fast even using good thermal paste still need those awful chipset like fan to run at 8000 rpm or something like that. I've one of these boards almost new, I can't even use on a desktop table because it's so stressing on a noise level. Imho they integrated too much for the 40nm SoC and got too far with the GPU space into it.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 16:42:

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.

That should have the GMA3150 iGPU which should be closer to the proprietary GMA950 and while probably slower than the later Atoms iGPUs, did have better compatilbity and a more standard GPU design (and much higher power requirements I suppose) compared to the PowerVR based ones. I remember I had a netbook with it and beside being very slow it wasn't bad with very old Directx6/7 games I think. Still totally different from the GMA/SGX iGPUs. 😉

386SX wrote on 2023-03-11, 17:08:

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 16:42:

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.

That should have the GMA3150 iGPU which should be closer to the proprietary GMA950 and while probably slower than the later Atoms iGPUs, did have better compatilbity and a more standard GPU design (and much higher power requirements I suppose) compared to the PowerVR based ones. I remember I had a netbook with it and beside being very slow it wasn't bad with very old Directx6/7 games I think. Still totally different from the GMA/SGX iGPUs. 😉

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforce 256 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-256-ddr.c734), so depending on the drivers and other things I think that it could be good for games up to 2001 maybe some from 2002, but it depends on the driver compatibility, it is a shame that there aren't Win98 drivers for it.
At the time,2010, I've bought it for a low power HTPC with a Broadcom Crystal HD, but I didn't pay attention to the 3150 spec sheet, and then I've had a bad surprise because it only supports up to 1366x768 resolution, so I couldn't take full advantage of the Crystal HD with the 3150, so the low power HTPC wasn't so low power and the Crystal HD wasn't so necessary because the Graphics card I've used then was a GT220, so it already had video hardware decoding capabilities, the Crystal HD has been in a drawer for thirteen years, and I ended repurposing the board for a router/wifi-ap/firewall role for years.
I've thought that that resolution limit was stupid. It was on the spec sheet, but in the year 2010 I've thought that that limit was artificially imposed.
I still have the board, but I don't really know what to do with it, because like I said, I think that any APU is far better for retro gaming, even the first gen ones.
And now I'm using a quad-core APU for the router/wifi-ap//firewall/NAS/torrent-client-server role.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 19:49:

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforc […]
Show full quote

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforce 256 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-256-ddr.c734), so depending on the drivers and other things I think that it could be good for games up to 2001 maybe some from 2002, but it depends on the driver compatibility, it is a shame that there aren't Win98 drivers for it.
At the time,2010, I've bought it for a low power HTPC with a Broadcom Crystal HD, but I didn't pay attention to the 3150 spec sheet, and then I've had a bad surprise because it only supports up to 1366x768 resolution, so I couldn't take full advantage of the Crystal HD with the 3150, so the low power HTPC wasn't so low power and the Crystal HD wasn't so necessary because the Graphics card I've used then was a GT220, so it already had video hardware decoding capabilities, the Crystal HD has been in a drawer for thirteen years, and I ended repurposing the board for a router/wifi-ap/firewall role for years.
I've thought that that resolution limit was stupid. It was on the spec sheet, but in the year 2010 I've thought that that limit was artificially imposed.
I still have the board, but I don't really know what to do with it, because like I said, I think that any APU is far better for retro gaming, even the first gen ones.
And now I'm using a quad-core APU for the router/wifi-ap//firewall/NAS/torrent-client-server role.

I still remember that Broadcom mini PCI-E decoder and it was a great old style idea of having a specific "accelerator" for the video task the early Atoms could not decode in software mode and not really helped by those early notebook GMA series which required more power than the CPU itself.. I remember that for some time web browsers could use that card for YouTube encoded videos too and it worked really well, I suppose also not much power demanding considering more a smartphone like IC package. If we look at some similar IC package on some old Nokia smartphone I think to remember they also did some GPU package that was installed into the phone (maybe the N8) having 3D/video accelerator on a specific chip instead a single SoC. They could have used something like that while the driver/sw part, as said above, probably would have been really difficult into a Win enviroment drivers model.

The Broadcom card was fairly common for some time, Apple also used it, I don't know its power draw, but I remember that I couldn't touch the chip with my finger after some time, so I added a heatsink.
But back on topic, maybe this idea Re: Old netbook as a DOS gaming powerhouse is more realistic and very interesting for an atom CPU MSDOS doesn't need a powerful GPU. My Zotac board has one PS2 port for a keyboard or mouse.
I think that it's clear that an Atom CPU needs a dedicated GPU because the integrated ones are garbage and even then, their low IPC is a problem for some games, I think that an atom CPU would be very bad for an RTS game.

Probably they can be used as a very light office linux machine or as said some retrogaming Directx6/7 ones or even older as suggested. Imho a huge problem of the netbooks CPU/GPUs wasn't necessary their speed but the time they existed with a changing much heavier and demanding o.s./driver/game scenario and with retrocompatibility not exactly a target. The newer GMA iGPU architectures weren't designed for old style o.s. and as can be read from old discussion it could have done more if choosen in an higher end version that could be scalable up to an high amount of unified pipelines but would have needed more SoC space and more SoC power demand decreasing probably the point of netbooks to exist.

I have an Acer Aspire One Atom N270 1.6 1gb ram, and the best OS I've used on it was Android x86, Angry birds was fast on it and also another games, if you compare the Atom with a mobile phone CPU from that era, maybe even until the 2015 or so, because I think that the Android version I've tried back then was Android 5. It's weird to use the touchpad for Android, but it was very fast back then.
So, maybe Android x86 is still a good option to make an Atom CPU useful for gaming and other things.

I am not sure why , but my last post was deleted.
Witch is the best OS for a Atom 1.6 N270 w/ ssd ? (I am currently testing Win7 Aero edition 2016)

BTW , here is a started gaming list that for that should work for the GMA Intel 950-gma 945 . (I know it's not complete but it's a start).

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP.
This is not your thread, post in your own thread in the appropriate forum section.
You also posted your post in three different sections.......
Also keep your pirated OS off this forum

DosFreak wrote on 2023-08-13, 11:14:

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP. This is not your thread, pos […]
Show full quote

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP.
This is not your thread, post in your own thread in the appropriate forum section.
You also posted your post in three different sections.......
Also keep your pirated OS off this forum

lool. any good os sugestions?