Intel D945GCLF m-ITX: Atom For The Desktop

TEST METHODOLOGY

Test Setup:

• Intel D945GCLF CPU/motherboard
• Corsair XMS2 memory 1GB, DDR2-800, 128MB allocated to video memory
• Western Digital Scorpio notebook hard drive - 250 GB, 5400RPM, SATA
• Asus BC-1205PT Blu Ray drive - SATA
• Seasonic SS-300SFD SFX power supply
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 operating system
• Intel 14.32 graphics driver
• QuickTime Alternative 1.81 codec package

Measurement and Analysis Tools

• Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 to play video.
• Prime95 25.6 processor stress software.
• ATITool 0.27 Beta 4 artifact scanner to stress the integrated GPU.
• Seasonic Power Angel AC power meter, used to measure the power consumption of the system.
• PC-based spectrum analyzer: SpectraPlus with ACO Pacific mic and M-Audio digital audio interfaces.
• Anechoic chamber with ambient level of 11 dBA or lower

Our main test procedure is designed to determine the overall system power consumption at various states (measured using a Seasonic Power Angel), and to test the integrated graphics' proficiency at playing back high definition videos. Standard HD-DVD and Blu Ray discs can be encoded in three different codecs by design: MPEG-2, H.264/AVC and VC-1. MPEG-2 has been around for a number of years and is not demanding on modern system resources. H.264 and VC-1 encoded videos on the other hand, due to the amount of complexity in their compression schemes, are extremely stressful and will not play smoothly (or at all) on slower PCs, especially with antiquated video subsystems.

We use a variety of H.264/VC-1 clips encoded for playback on the PC. The clips are played with PowerDVD 7 and a CPU usage graph is created by the Windows Task Manger for analysis to determine the approximate mean and peak CPU usage. High CPU usage is indicative of poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated graphics subsystem. If the video (and/or audio) skips or freezes, we conclude the board's IGP (in conjunction with the processor) is adequate to decompress the clip properly.

Video Test Suite

720p | 25fps | ~5.7mbps

Dark Knight: Dark Knight Trailer 3 is encoded in H.264 with Apple Quicktime.

1080p | 24fps | ~10mbps

Rush Hour: Rush Hour 3 Trailer 1 is encoded in H.264 with Apple Quicktime.

1080p | 24fps | ~7.5mbps

Coral Reef: Coral Reef Adventure trailer is encoded in VC-1 using the WMV3 codec (commonly recognized by the moniker, "HD WMV").