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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NextIntel D945GCLF: Atom For The Desktop
September 4, 2008 by Lawrence Lee
Product |
Intel D945GCLF
Intel CPU/Motherboard |
Manufacturer |
Intel |
Street Price |
US$70~80 |
The release of the original Asus
EEE PC popularized the sub-notebook market almost over night. Asus' success
spurred their competitors into making similar products, such as the MSI
Wind and Acer Aspire
One. The Asus EEE has grown into an entire line including updated, larger
portable computers, and mini-desktops systems as well. To keep power consumption,
heat, and cost at a minimum, all of these new products utilize Intel's Atom
processor. As SPCR's editor Mike
Chin reported from the Intel Developers Forum last month, Intel says there
are more than 700 projects involving the Atom.
Atom is an extremely efficient, low-power chip that Intel hopes will find its
way into not just netbooks, but any small portable device which requires a fair
amount of CPU power. In Atom, Intel has created their smallest, and in some
ways, their most technologically advanced chip using a 45nm fabrication process.
On paper, it resembles the early Pentium 4 somewhat in that it is a single core
processor with a relatively low clock speed, 512KB of L2 cache, a 533Mhz front
side bus, and hyperthreading. Unlike the Pentium 4, which turned into a hot,
inefficient beast in the middle of its life cycle, desktop versions of Atom
have a TDP of only 4W, which is very low, indeed.
Low power processors have traditionally been much valued in the mini-ITX market,
where products are often embedded and sealed in kiosks, PoS displays and other
specialized applications where cooling, access and AC power may be limited.
Atom is an excellent candidate for such applications.
Intel's Celeron-based D201GLY2 was
a milestone for the form factor when it was released a year ago. For the first
time a mini-ITX motherboard with an embedded processor was widely available
at a very affordable price. It was also Intel's first mini-ITX board. While
the D201GLY2 utilized a SiS chipset to power the board, the D945GCLF being examined
here is an all-Intel solution utilizing a 1.6Ghz Atom 230 processor and Intel's
GMA 950 integrated graphics in the 945GC chipset.

The D945GCLF box is small, not much larger than the packaging for Intel's
processors. The box is shaded in classic Intel blue.
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In keeping with the board's compact size, the accessories are kept to
a minimum.
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|
Form factor
|
Mini-ITX / micro-ATX compatible
(6.75 inches by 6.75 inches [171.45 millimeters by 171.45 millimeters]) |
Processor |
Integrated Intel® Atom
processor 230 with a 533 MHz system bus |
Memory |
* One 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM
Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets
* Support for DDR2 533 / 667 MHz DIMMs
* Support for up to 2 GBS of system memory |
Chipset |
* Intel® 945GC and ICH7 |
Audio |
Intel® High Definition Audio in the following configuration:
* Realtek ALC662 audio code (2+2 channel HD audio) |
Video |
Intel® Graphics Media
Accelerator 950 |
I/O control |
SMSC* LPC47M997 based Legacy
I/O controller for serial, parallel, and PS/2* ports |
LAN support |
10/100 Mbits/sec LAN subsystem
using the Realtek LAN adapter device |
Peripheral interfaces |
* Six USB 2.0 ports
* Two SATA ports (3.0 GB/s)
* One parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support
* One serial port
* One parallel port
* PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports |
Expansion capabilities |
One PCI Conventional* bus
connector |
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