Intel Atom D945GCLF - First Results!!

swmspam · 06-24-2008, 01:34 PM

I bought an Intel Atom D945GCLF Motherboard. Here are my results:

1. The integrated 10/100 LAN is total garbage. After messing with it and discovering it has very little driver support for my various testing programs, I disabled it in BIOS. With only one PCI slot available, a dual ethernet card can be used to support multiple interfaces. A very good choice is the Intel dual 10/100 32-bit PCI card. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a power hog, taking about 7 watts. These cards are commonly on Ebay for a couple dollars.

2. Unlike the VIA C7 processor and motherboards, the Intel motherboard can take more than 1GB in the single DDR2 slot. I put 2GB in mine for testing.

3. The 1.6GHz HyperThread Atom core achieved 2.8pph total folding points per hour (pph) using notfred's bootable folding benchmark CD. The results are identical when running a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. (The benchmark includes Tinker, Amber, Gromacs, and Gromacs 3.3.)

Below is a summary of different systems benchmarked with Folding. Also included is power consumption (Watts) while folding (full CPU usage). Systems were booted from CDROM an no hard drive is attached.

Similar results were made using nbench (installation instructions in next post).

Discussion: with hyperthreading disabled, the Atom is very similar to the VIA C7 in power consumption and processing ability. With hyperthreading enabled, the Atom is twice as good. The Pentium M remains the champ in energy efficiency in my motherboard roundup, although there are probably newer offerings that can beat it. The Core Duo processor is also very good, better than the Atom's efficiency numbers. This is because the Intel Atom motherboard had the 945 chipset on it, which was the primary power consumer on the board. When Atom motherboards are launched using a better chipset, the Atom's energy efficiency will be much better. For now, the 945 chipset actually draws more power than the CPU itself!

4. Booting the board takes a long time before the BIOS splash screen appears. At first, I thought something was wrong with the board until experience showed it is normal.

5. Conclusion: equipped with an Intel dual 10/100 LAN card, along with a 2GB DDR2 memory module, the Intel Atom motherboard is twice as good and also cheaper than the nearest VIA C7 alternative. Computational processing ability is much lower than the Core processors, but better than the older AMD Athlon XP processors. This board will be used as my household's UTM box.

swmspam · 06-24-2008, 01:39 PM

I used the Folding CD Generator at http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/cd.html to create the folding benchmark boot CD. This is a very good benchmark, works in both 32 and 64 bits, and exercises CPU and memory. It does not require a hard drive to run. It requires a network interface. Warning: it can take hours to run on older or slower systems (i.e. VIA or Intel Atom).

For nbench, I used the following in Debian. Also works for UT, which is based on Debian.

Quote:

cd /tmp
apt-get install build-essential
wget http://www.tux.org/~mayer/linux/nben...e-2.2.2.tar.gz
tar -xzvf nbench-byte-2.2.2.tar.gz
cd nbench-byte-2.2.2
make
./nbench

dmorris · 06-24-2008, 02:29 PM

excellent info!

Did you try untangle on it? I've been curious to know how well it will work.

swmspam · 06-24-2008, 04:32 PM

UT Installs fine.

During the installation process:

Memory: 2GB .... Excellent
CPU: 1590MHz (detected two) .... Good
Network Interfaces: Detected the integrated RTL 10/100 LAN

This will run UT just fine for SOHO or workgroups.

dmorris · 06-24-2008, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swmspam

This will run UT just fine for SOHO or workgroups.

and probably a lot more!

Great report!

randall · 06-25-2008, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swmspam

UT Installs fine.

During the installation process:

Memory: 2GB .... Excellent
CPU: 1590MHz (detected two) .... Good
Network Interfaces: Detected the integrated RTL 10/100 LAN

This will run UT just fine for SOHO or workgroups.

Not a bad idea at all! Thanks for the info!

AMD_RULES · 06-25-2008, 09:19 AM

Thanks OP!
How will this handle with a five desktop workgroup?

swmspam · 06-25-2008, 08:42 PM

Easily. Untangle is highly threaded and works very good with hyperthreaded or dual-core processors, and thrives with more memory. The Atom with 2GB can easily serve an environment several times larger. My motherboard and memory combo cost $120 total. You can use any old case and power supply. Five seats will not cause any stress on the unit.

YeOldeStonecat · 06-26-2008, 04:57 AM

Great looking little setup, that packs a punch!

Lower power consumption..plenty of power, small form factor...

swmspam · 06-26-2008, 11:57 AM

I'm waiting for a motherboard with the Intel SCH chipset, which was designed specifically for the Atom. This should cut power consumption down by at least half (probably more), which will make an Atom-based solution one of the world's most efficient computing platforms (on the basis of computational power per watt). Unfortunately, the SCH uses PATA instead of SATA, giving it serious limitations for many uses, but has two lanes of PCI-E.

Each PCI-E can operate at 2Gbps (250MB/sec) and SATA/300 standards can operate at 300MB/s, although no drive can actually do that (also please note that SATA/300 means 3.00Gbps, but in practice, it actually operates at 300MB/s, which can be confusing. Note MB vs Mb.). So, one PCI-E lane is good for today's SATA drives. One lane of PCI-E is also good for two gigabit LANs, each one LAN demanding 1Gpbs = 128MB/s. Of course, this is a lot of stress on the PCI-E lanes (maxing both of them out), and the Atom would probably choke.

For UT, the integrated PATA interface (100MB/s, DMA 5) would suffice, and the two PCI-E lanes would have plenty of bandwidth for several channels of 10/100 LAN.

So yes, I'm looking forward to the SCH chipset! It'll be good for many appliances, with the exception of very high bandwidth applications, such as NAS.

06-24-2008, 01:34 PM	#1 (permalink)
swmspam Untangler Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 58	Intel Atom D945GCLF - First Results!! I bought an Intel Atom D945GCLF Motherboard. Here are my results: 1. The integrated 10/100 LAN is total garbage. After messing with it and discovering it has very little driver support for my various testing programs, I disabled it in BIOS. With only one PCI slot available, a dual ethernet card can be used to support multiple interfaces. A very good choice is the Intel dual 10/100 32-bit PCI card. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a power hog, taking about 7 watts. These cards are commonly on Ebay for a couple dollars. 2. Unlike the VIA C7 processor and motherboards, the Intel motherboard can take more than 1GB in the single DDR2 slot. I put 2GB in mine for testing. 3. The 1.6GHz HyperThread Atom core achieved 2.8pph total folding points per hour (pph) using notfred's bootable folding benchmark CD. The results are identical when running a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. (The benchmark includes Tinker, Amber, Gromacs, and Gromacs 3.3.) Below is a summary of different systems benchmarked with Folding. Also included is power consumption (Watts) while folding (full CPU usage). Systems were booted from CDROM an no hard drive is attached. Similar results were made using nbench (installation instructions in next post). Discussion: with hyperthreading disabled, the Atom is very similar to the VIA C7 in power consumption and processing ability. With hyperthreading enabled, the Atom is twice as good. The Pentium M remains the champ in energy efficiency in my motherboard roundup, although there are probably newer offerings that can beat it. The Core Duo processor is also very good, better than the Atom's efficiency numbers. This is because the Intel Atom motherboard had the 945 chipset on it, which was the primary power consumer on the board. When Atom motherboards are launched using a better chipset, the Atom's energy efficiency will be much better. For now, the 945 chipset actually draws more power than the CPU itself! 4. Booting the board takes a long time before the BIOS splash screen appears. At first, I thought something was wrong with the board until experience showed it is normal. 5. Conclusion: equipped with an Intel dual 10/100 LAN card, along with a 2GB DDR2 memory module, the Intel Atom motherboard is twice as good and also cheaper than the nearest VIA C7 alternative. Computational processing ability is much lower than the Core processors, but better than the older AMD Athlon XP processors. This board will be used as my household's UTM box.

06-24-2008, 02:29 PM	#3 (permalink)
dmorris Untangle Junkie Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: San Mateo, CA URLs submitted: 10 Posts: 5,166	excellent info! Did you try untangle on it? I've been curious to know how well it will work. __________________

06-24-2008, 04:32 PM	#4 (permalink)
swmspam Untangler Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 58	UT Installs fine. During the installation process: Memory: 2GB .... Excellent CPU: 1590MHz (detected two) .... Good Network Interfaces: Detected the integrated RTL 10/100 LAN This will run UT just fine for SOHO or workgroups.

06-25-2008, 09:19 AM	#7 (permalink)
AMD_RULES Untanglit Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 10	Thanks OP! How will this handle with a five desktop workgroup?

06-25-2008, 08:42 PM	#8 (permalink)
swmspam Untangler Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 58	Easily. Untangle is highly threaded and works very good with hyperthreaded or dual-core processors, and thrives with more memory. The Atom with 2GB can easily serve an environment several times larger. My motherboard and memory combo cost $120 total. You can use any old case and power supply. Five seats will not cause any stress on the unit.

06-26-2008, 04:57 AM	#9 (permalink)
YeOldeStonecat Master Untangler Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 768	Great looking little setup, that packs a punch! Lower power consumption..plenty of power, small form factor...

06-26-2008, 11:57 AM	#10 (permalink)
swmspam Untangler Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 58	I'm waiting for a motherboard with the Intel SCH chipset, which was designed specifically for the Atom. This should cut power consumption down by at least half (probably more), which will make an Atom-based solution one of the world's most efficient computing platforms (on the basis of computational power per watt). Unfortunately, the SCH uses PATA instead of SATA, giving it serious limitations for many uses, but has two lanes of PCI-E. Each PCI-E can operate at 2Gbps (250MB/sec) and SATA/300 standards can operate at 300MB/s, although no drive can actually do that (also please note that SATA/300 means 3.00Gbps, but in practice, it actually operates at 300MB/s, which can be confusing. Note MB vs Mb.). So, one PCI-E lane is good for today's SATA drives. One lane of PCI-E is also good for two gigabit LANs, each one LAN demanding 1Gpbs = 128MB/s. Of course, this is a lot of stress on the PCI-E lanes (maxing both of them out), and the Atom would probably choke. For UT, the integrated PATA interface (100MB/s, DMA 5) would suffice, and the two PCI-E lanes would have plenty of bandwidth for several channels of 10/100 LAN. So yes, I'm looking forward to the SCH chipset! It'll be good for many appliances, with the exception of very high bandwidth applications, such as NAS.