I looked up the D2550 and interesting. It is indeed lacking Speedstep. It sounds similar to the tablet Atom Z2xx0 but with no power management and a higher power limit.

And it has the PowerVR SGX545. Try that out? I hear the PowerVR Windows drivers aren't exactly great.

Haki26 wrote on 2023-02-26, 22:30:

Sorry, I ignorantly thought that smp and hyper-threading were the same thing. Thank you for pointing it out to me. Ok, I'll do more tests!

To some extent it is, but hyper-threading is just a very minimal SMP, which apparently Quake III doesn't know how to take advantage of. This is also the reason why some stuff actually runs slower with HT enabled.

Yeah HT just fills space in the processing queue

I was always curious how the Nvidia Ion boards performed back when those were advertised as some kind of miracle HTPC product. Coupling an Atom 230\330\D525 with a Geforce 9400M IGP made it much MUCH more capable for GPU-limited gaming (and HD video playback), but I could never actually get myself to spend money on such a ridiculously slow CPU in any PC I built or owned. I think the first system I built strictly as an efficient HTPC had an AMD 780G + Athlon X2 5050e (45W 2.6Ghz Brisbane). Back in those days (~2007-2008) I definitely wasn't doing anything with high definition video (the system was hooked up to a 27" standard def tube TV), so having slightly less cutting edge video acceleration was certainly worth the massive increase in CPU performance for general use.

Uhg... now that I think about it, an earlier project PC my brother and I put together strictly as an emulation system was probably faster per-thread than the first couple generations of Atom CPUs. That project involved a full desktop Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood in an obscure and fairly inexpensive ebay-find Mini-ITX socket 478 board made by Migrus, which we crammed into an Atari 2600 chassis back in ~2006 or so. Those were the very early days of mini-PCs, before anyone was looking for enthusiast-oriented ITX boards. Most people who built project PCs then were using Via C3 or C7 based boards and dealing with massive performance limitations or were paying out the nose for Pentium-M based stuff (easily $400+ for a board and CPU). This machine was inexpensive and had plenty of power for Windows XP and some emulators.

Come to think of it... I need to pull that board out and recap it now that I know how to do that. I always wanted to give it a better video card though. I wonder if I could use a PCI riser cable to run to something like a 9400GT PCI. Would make for a very very interesting comparison against an Nvidia Ion system...

hmmmmm.... @_@

swaaye wrote on 2023-02-26, 23:23:

I looked up the D2550 and interesting. It is indeed lacking Speedstep. It sounds similar to the tablet Atom Z2xx0 but with no power management and a higher power limit.

And it has the PowerVR SGX545. Try that out? I hear the PowerVR Windows drivers aren't exactly great.

One of the reasons why I bought this Atom is because of the presence of the Powervr chip, which I really like. However, you are right, I too had read that this particular powervr model is a disaster in terms of drivers and performance and this had discouraged me from trying it. But now I'm tempted to try it. I've read that someone has made modded drivers to fix its performance issues, but people who've tried them said they don't fix it. ...I'll test with the stock and modded drivers (if I can find them)

One of my reasons I did had to kill the atom idea because of hand pointing at Intel and Imagination each other on drivers as I wanted much efficient OS like linux or windows 98SE. Didn't happen due to lack of drivers.

Cheers,

Yes, these problematic drivers which they ended support prematurely for the GMA 3600 series, no 64 bit drivers and officially Windows 7 only drivers, these things limit the use of this Atom. I don't know if there are drivers for xp. But I will try to install it on xp. Otherwise I will have to install Windows 7 in dual boot.

Haki26 wrote on 2023-02-28, 09:43:

Yes, these problematic drivers which they ended support prematurely for the GMA 3600 series, no 64 bit drivers and officially Windows 7 only drivers, these things limit the use of this Atom. I don't know if there are drivers for xp. But I will try to install it on xp. Otherwise I will have to install Windows 7 in dual boot.

"GMA 3600, This integrated graphics system was released in Intel Atom (Cedar Trail, 32 nm) and based on PowerVR SGX545"
See this topic:
https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Intel … ver/td-p/214041
Another guy at MSFN tried that Windows XP driver there and it is the usual result: It works for 2D applications / Windows GUI, but there is no Hardware 3D in that driver.

Most of my atom gaming thus far has been on DOSbox, they seem to do up to slow pentium on that. 2D graphics seem alright, but natively for 3D they are like a Rage II in a P4 2Ghz, early 98 3D speed vs late 98 CPU speed. I have a couple in netbooks and a "Johnstown" ITX board.... Just now I started wondering if a V2 would work in it's PCI slot, but feels a bit like wasting the V2 on a non-optimal platform. I am thinking that power might be an issue with the slot on mine, since there's only an amp or two available to the board as a whole, and if you run the HDD off onboard power, even less.

I would totally install 7 to be able to play with the PowerVR 3D graphics. Can it best ye olde Radeon 9700 Pro? Can it run Cry.... Far Cry? 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-27, 08:40:

Uhg... now that I think about it, an earlier project PC my brother and I put together strictly as an emulation system was probably faster per-thread than the first couple generations of Atom CPUs. That project involved a full desktop Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood in an obscure and fairly inexpensive ebay-find Mini-ITX socket 478 board made by Migrus, which we crammed into an Atari 2600 chassis back in ~2006 or so.

How hot did that pentium 4 run, in such a small case?
About a year ago I had to rethink a mini-ITX build: Everything could fit just fine, but I did not like the GPU temperature when under load (HD6450 PCI-E).

Got an ASRock ION 3D 152B (https://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/ion%203d% … =#Specification) which has NVIDIA GT218-ION graphics and an Atom D525 Dual Core Processor.

Installed a SSD and overclocked the graphics and CPU for some more speed. Running Windows 7 atm and gaming is quitte possible but I would only run older games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on it as anything more demanding would probably be a slideshow.

gerwin wrote on 2023-02-28, 16:32:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-27, 08:40:

Uhg... now that I think about it, an earlier project PC my brother and I put together strictly as an emulation system was probably faster per-thread than the first couple generations of Atom CPUs. That project involved a full desktop Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood in an obscure and fairly inexpensive ebay-find Mini-ITX socket 478 board made by Migrus, which we crammed into an Atari 2600 chassis back in ~2006 or so.

How hot did that pentium 4 run, in such a small case?
About a year ago I had to rethink a mini-ITX build: Everything could fit just fine, but I did not like the GPU temperature when under load (HD6450 PCI-E).

Northwood should only be around the watts of the C2Ds that were popular in ITX builds... they seemed hot at the time, because prev CPUs were like 30 or 40W, like how original P5 5V pentium perceived "It's a furnace" but now, 15 watts? 🤣

Passive sink HD6450s, (Oh yeah, suuuuper valuable card you need to take care of 🤣 ) are used to seeing "finger singe" 65C or so, so I'd run one of those until it artifacted, and if it got perma-damaged, maybe think about upgrading the cooling before I wasted a whole 'nother $10.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-28, 17:25:

Northwood should only be around the watts of the C2Ds that were popular in ITX builds... they seemed hot at the time, because prev CPUs were like 30 or 40W, like how original P5 5V pentium perceived "It's a furnace" but now, 15 watts? 🤣

AFAIK the nice C2D mini-ITX systems were the ones based on MODT (Mobile On DeskTop) motherboards. Facilitating mobile CPUs and SODIMMs. Gives you SpeedStep power management as well.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-28, 17:25:

Passive sink HD6450s, (Oh yeah, suuuuper valuable card you need to take care of 🤣 ) are used to seeing "finger singe" 65C or so, so I'd run one of those until it artifacted, and if it got perma-damaged, maybe think about upgrading the cooling before I wasted a whole 'nother $10.

I don't know, is there anything there that is not sarcasm? 😀 Personally; I don't care much what it costs. It just has to have Windows XP drivers, and run somewhat cool. Swapped the Radeon for a GT 710 GDDR5, all good.
(With CPUs it is often easier: When necessary or desired, You can down-configure them in the BIOS. No need for these low-power variants with T suffix.)

Yah, thinking about my DG45FC board which runs in an Apex box with steady fan whoosh but nothing insane, E8400 in that, but I thirst for power so it's getting an L5420 (It's a 15W drop too)

The GPU, I was saying maybe you were panicking too soon, you don't let grunty GPUs get very high because you can get a cascade exponential failure when it rapidly overwhelms available cooling, but the little 6450s with a few watts, that ain't really gonna happen, just let 'em cook up to tmax (case)

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-28, 20:01:

Yah, thinking about my DG45FC board which runs in an Apex box with steady fan whoosh but nothing insane, E8400 in that, but I thirst for power so it's getting an L5420 (It's a 15W drop too)

Nice board indeed. Only downside is the PCI-E slot being a 1x lane one.
I ended up with Aopen i45GMt-HR aka RM EcoQuiet 300 as a nice one for Core 2 Duo Mobile. AFAIK the very last chipset/socket for C2D-M. But I found it lagging a little, for some applications I should not even be running there (modern interwebs) and build another ITX system next to it, based on Z68 + Ivy Bridge, which is noticeably faster in that regard.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-28, 20:01:

The GPU, I was saying maybe you were panicking too soon, you don't let grunty GPUs get very high because you can get a cascade exponential failure when it rapidly overwhelms available cooling, but the little 6450s with a few watts, that ain't really gonna happen, just let 'em cook up to tmax (case)

Yeah I get you. It would probably have functioned just fine.

gerwin wrote on 2023-02-28, 16:32:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-27, 08:40:

Uhg... now that I think about it, an earlier project PC my brother and I put together strictly as an emulation system was probably faster per-thread than the first couple generations of Atom CPUs. That project involved a full desktop Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood in an obscure and fairly inexpensive ebay-find Mini-ITX socket 478 board made by Migrus, which we crammed into an Atari 2600 chassis back in ~2006 or so.

How hot did that pentium 4 run, in such a small case?
About a year ago I had to rethink a mini-ITX build: Everything could fit just fine, but I did not like the GPU temperature when under load (HD6450 PCI-E).

It was toasty but we had a really nice and compact copper cooler on it. I won't say it was quiet, but it did the job. We put a hinge on the atari so you could open it, and as a bonus this meant that you could prop it open like the hood on a car for extra ventilation. It did have some decent fresh air coming in because my brother cut an Atari logo in the ribbed part of the top, so that fresh air could be pulled in that way. I'm not going to say it had good ventilation... it was a full fledged desktop with a hard drive AND a slim DVD burner crammed into an Atari 2600... but it was adequate.

This was part of the reason we went with a 2.4Ghz Northwood though. They ran much cooler than most other options for that socket. And I believe we paid $20 for the CPU when we bought it... and maybe $75-$100 for the motherboard? It wasn't much at all, considering the cost (and performance) of alternatives at the time.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread. I just mentioned this because Intel released the Atom within a year or two of us painstakingly building this crazy ITX project PC and I remember thinking "oh great, NOW people care about mini ITX". But in the end, the old P4 was probably still faster in single threaded workloads and we didn't do anything graphically intensive that would have required the more up to date IGP that came with the Atom or with an Nvidia Ion board.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-01, 03:51:

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread. I just mentioned this because Intel released the Atom within a year or two of us painstakingly building this crazy ITX project PC and I remember thinking "oh great, NOW people care about mini ITX". But in the end, the old P4 was probably still faster in single threaded workloads and we didn't do anything graphically intensive that would have required the more up to date IGP that came with the Atom or with an Nvidia Ion board.

That's a build with some real character. 😀 Also because, as I found, it can be quite challenging to arrange the components and connections in such compact, non-standard builds.

IIRC before the Intel Atom the Mini-ITX scene was mostly VIA C3 / C7 based. I remember reading about these small VIA boxes with some interest, but not nearly enough interest to get me one.

Dell Venue 8 Pro / Atom Z3740D / Win10
runs up to 1.83 GHz. single channel ddr3 1333. Tested on battery.

(default normal settings 640x480 in window, 3 runs)
quake 3 v1.30 (from Steam)
demo4 127fps

quake 3 demo v1.11
demo1 143fps

the framerates only slightly varied between runs.

😁

swaaye wrote on 2023-02-22, 15:54:

That first gen Atom performance is going to be interesting. It's not like any old games or drivers would be tuned for one and it's a lot different than the popular CPUs.

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) 🙁

* Surprises me we didn't think of that back then, even though I alternated XP/Vista/7/Ubuntu Intrepid on the Vaio FZ21M I had at the time!