D201gly2: product and SPCR review discussion

[jaganath]

I was really interested in this board until I heard about the temperatures it gets to. Hell, I could risk 70c on a sempron without a cooling fan and it would probably be a lot faster.

the max junction temp on the D201GLY2 CPU is 100C, so 70C is no problem. I also doubt a sempron would be faster by a large margin, or indeed any margin at all.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/process ... 854602.pdf

[klankymen]

check out this post in a german forum I frequent.
3watts when the board is turned off, 23 watts when turned on (however turned on means in bios I think, but he has no ram yet - if so bios is usually pretty close to full load).

From that picture I can tell that he's not measuring from the wall, but somewhere between a PicoPSU and an AC/DC adapter. Would that make any difference?

yes, that's true. however even the combination of pico and acdc should be about 90% efficient, so each one should be around 95ish, and in that case 24-26 watts would be a off-the-wall figure, depending on where exactly that measurement is.

[MikeC]

Not sure if anyone has seen this performance comparison between the Intel D201GLY (original) and a VIA EPIA-EX15000G (1.5gb) by mini-box.com -- the guys that do the picoPSU -- but it confirms what I've been suspecting about the C2 solo core of the Intel CPU. It simply blows the doors off the VIA, achieving about double the performance on every benchmark. Power difference is maybe +5W at the wall -- 25W vs 20W (including a 6W HDD).

And the price difference between the 2 boards at mini-box is $267 vs $70. You know which is which.

[jaganath]

I'm glad Intel has decided to enter this niche. Let's be honest, VIA have been content to sell overpriced, underperforming solutions for many years, lots of vaporware but very little innovation, relying on the lack of competition to sell mediocre products. Now the 800lb gorilla of the computer industry can use its economies of scale to produce a cheap, low-power, high performance per watt solution, consumers can only gain from this.

[pfft]

OK, I have to ask. Earlier in this thread it was postulated that this board is not capable of pushing gigabit ethernet. I know an added controller will be on the pci bus so will be somewhat limited, but what other reasons are there for this statement?

The tech docs say something along the lines of 4 gigabytes/s internal bus. Is the SATA on the pci bus or directly on the internal bus?

I have high hopes for this board. I intend to have it capture up to 2 HDTV streams from an HDhomerun, stream files (VLC), and run azureus while using both the onboard controller and a pci gbE card. This would be headless in the basement. Is this totally unrealistic?

[merlin]

OK, I have to ask. Earlier in this thread it was postulated that this board is not capable of pushing gigabit ethernet. I know an added controller will be on the pci bus so will be somewhat limited, but what other reasons are there for this statement?

The tech docs say something along the lines of 4 gigabytes/s internal bus. Is the SATA on the pci bus or directly on the internal bus?

I have high hopes for this board. I intend to have it capture up to 2 HDTV streams from an HDhomerun, stream files (VLC), and run azureus while using both the onboard controller and a pci gbE card. This would be headless in the basement. Is this totally unrealistic?

The issue is really the sis chipsets don't have gigabit ethernet onboard and putting an extra gigabit chip doesn't make sense on such a tiny board.

Personally I'd like to see intel put out a lower end version of like their G33 chipset, scaled back in voltage/fsb speed to handle such a small factor. That can handle gigabit ethernet and 4 sata ports Also I think at this point, pata should just be removed, it takes too much board space in this case.
This board would be perfect for a file server if a) pci-e expansion slot for SATA Raid-5 and b) Gigabyte Ethernet. I hope that comes true sometime..that would be a fun project.

[frank2003]

I think this is a great hobbyist board or for building a PVR server. But for many other practical uses, I see it's lacking certain features:

1. For HTPC it's missing TV out. This could have been remedied with a video add-in card. Furthermore, a fanless video card with HD capabilities could turn this board into an awesome HD media extender. But unfortunately this board is missing a PCI-e slot.
2. For headless file server/NAS it's missing GbE.
3. For router it's missing another NIC.

Oh BTW, for those who can't wait, logicsupply.com is shipping this board: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/d201gly2

[MikeC]

There's no question the onboard features of the Intel board are minimal. But for a cheap minimalist windows/linux box, it's perfectly good. I know some folks here feel 1gb networking is important, but for my needs with digital audio on the network, 10/100 works fine, and I suspect this is true for lots of folks. A PCI network card isn't expensive, and for a file server, the VGA output is adequate...

I dunno, for $77, it looks to me like a great starting point for all kinds of projects. The very cheapest VIA mitx board at logicsupply is a 5+ year old 800mhz C3 design for $99.

Let's hope Intel does well enough with these boards that they add more features on other mitx models w/o increasing the price much.

[jessekopelman]

There's no question the onboard features of the Intel board are minimal. But for a cheap minimalist windows/linux box, it's perfectly good. I know some folks here feel 1gb networking is important, but for my needs with digital audio on the network, 10/100 works fine, and I suspect this is true for lots of folks. A PCI network card isn't expensive, and for a file server, the VGA output is adequate...

I think the reason for the bitching is that Intel has their own 3-year old chipsets that have all the missing features + better driver support. From an outsider's perspective, it seems inconceivable that they wouldn't just have used something like their own 915 chipset. As I've said before, even if this made the board $20 more expensive it would sell even even better thanks to the additional functionality.

[SleepyBum]

I think this is a great hobbyist board or for building a PVR server. But for many other practical uses, I see it's lacking certain features:

1. For HTPC it's missing TV out. This could have been remedied with a video add-in card. Furthermore, a fanless video card with HD capabilities could turn this board into an awesome HD media extender. But unfortunately this board is missing a PCI-e slot.
2. For headless file server/NAS it's missing GbE.
3. For router it's missing another NIC.

No one should be using TV-out these day for HTPC, but wish it had a DVI connector, so you could use either DVI, VGA, or HDMI for HTPC. But this SiS chipset is horrible for HTPC. I have a computer using similar chipset and the Mirage 1 graphics can't do hardware acceleration/resizing above like 960p. Also I doubt this CPU has the power to decode anything above 720p h264 material. The only plus for this Mirage 1 is that it can output 1366x768 via VGA, which is the native res for a lot of LCDs/plasmas.

I would like to see Gigabit Ethernet on it, and the extra cost of Gigabit would probably be under a dollar. But unfortunately the SiS southbridge can't do Gigabit.

Anyways, this mb is also good for my use as a 24/7 download server/VPN. I wished it has speedstep/EIST so I can undervolt and throttle it down to like 600Mhz, but I think Celerons don't offer that feature.

I'm glad this is passive, but kind of put off by the high temperatures people have been reporting. I plan to stick this into one of the tiny Morex cases, and run it totally fanless. I'll wait for some more reviews to roll in.

But if these mini motherboards keep selling well, I'm sure Intel will improve the techonlogy. I'm just glad Intel is offering this at a low price point vs the VIA mb which are much more expensive.

[jaganath]

inconceivable that they wouldn't just have used something like their own 915 chipset.

I thought Conroe-L Celerons are not compatible w/ 915 chipset?

[frank2003]

No one should be using TV-out these day for HTPC, but wish it had a DVI connector, so you could use either DVI, VGA, or HDMI for HTPC.

TV-out should be very useful for driving traditional analog TVs which don't have the DVI/VGA/HDMI inputs. I don't expect this $70 board to have the capabilities to drive a DTV, enhance my wish for a PCIe slot for external fanless card.

With an ATI 690G board running Brisbane 4000 underclocked to 1GHz, I was able to play back 1080i HDTV recordings at 800x600 output resolution using TV-out. I was hoping this board would have enough power to do the same (or even at 600x400 resolution which still good enough for analog TV) so I could replace the noisy and more power hungry modded XBox running XBMC.

[pfft]

I have decided to try this board.

The tech docs I skimmed through yesterday mentioned a choice of 10/100 and gigabit ethernet for the southbridge depending upon interface chip used. I think the lack of gigabit may be a blessing in disguise. The option of a better quality interface card on pci may deliver just as much speed with less cpu usage.

I'm going to attempt to put this board in the istar case hacking two full drives and an intel pci gigabit card on the riser.

Does anyone who has this board know if the board supports staggered drive spinup? That's a feature that I feel this board needs. The istar case has an 80 watt brick. People are talking mid 20 watts for the board. The WD terabyte drives use about 32 watts peak for each during spinup. The nic will eat a few watts as well. I'm over the 80 watt budget. Can bricks handle a bit over rating for a short period of time?

[vincentfox]

My point about gigabit was this:

What kind of drives are you attaching and in what configuration?

I mean think about it the most likely configuration is 1 drive or maybe 2 that are mirrored.

What's the real throughput of these drives doing something obvious like large sequential reads or writes with SiS chipset and various protocol overheads?

I just find it a bit difficult to believe the 100-megabit ethernet would be the bottleneck, I would bet it to be somewhere else. But if you build your box with gigabit I'd be interested to see some network file-copy throughput numbers.

[jessekopelman]

inconceivable that they wouldn't just have used something like their own 915 chipset.

I thought Conroe-L Celerons are not compatible w/ 915 chipset?

I said something like Anyway, I think such things can be handled in BIOS. My Asrock motherboard uses the 945G chipset yet supports C2D (definitely Conroe and probably others). The 945G predates the whole Core architectures.

[Bluefront]

IMHO.....I think some of you are expecting way too much out of this cheap MB/CPU combo. For the market for which it is intended, it should do just fine. The fact that it has become available at all, at this price in the USA, amazes me.

Intel and everyone else selling products such as this, makes more money selling mid/high end devices. After-all......who would buy their expensive stuff if the low-end models performed just as well? As it stands, anybody selling this board along side of the VIA boards, can expect their VIA sales to hit rock bottom.

To expect your cheap Chevy to have everything your Cadillac does.....is a stretch.

[frank2003]

I just find it a bit difficult to believe the 100-megabit ethernet would be the bottleneck, I would bet it to be somewhere else. But if you build your box with gigabit I'd be interested to see some network file-copy throughput numbers.

On my modest VIA EN12000 equipped with GbE, I was getting 250mbps throughput when copying large HDTV video files (from 3GB to 17GB). On a much more power PC with 100mbps I could only get 75mbps. Both systems had the same model 7200rpm 3.5" drives (Seagate 750GB). So the performance gain of a GbE is very real. Once you've gotten used to GbE you would not want to go back to 100mbps.

[frank2003]

Regarding TV-out: It appears to be a manufacturing option and is absent in the US model. From the Tech Specs manual:

"The D201GLY2 board suports S-Video output via 7-pin S-Video connector using SiS307DV supporting both 4-pin S-Video and Composite output signals."

I'd like to see another OEM picking up this board and adding TV-out.

[mikesm]

Has anyone tried to mount this in a 1U or 2U case? Is the PCI slot in the right position for a riser card that is exposed properly in the case?

This seems like a nice system to run as a firewall with a 2nd NIC in the PCI slot?

Thx
Mike

[pfft]

Assuming that intel properly makes this board, there is no doubt in my mind that this board can drive a gbE card at significantly faster speed than a 10/100. I'm pretty sure it can drive a gbE and the onboard lan at the same time while still providing faster than 100mbit through a pci gbE. Whether it can do this while running azureus and accepting an OTA HD video stream is another matter. Guess I'll find out and live with the limitations. I really only want to use the gbE for transferring large video files from upstairs to this box.

Expecting staggered drive spin up may indeed be too much. This is unfortunate. One would hope that staggered drive spin up could become a standard feature of any board with multiple drive controllers akin to the way that any board with parallel ports has speed options for those ports. Staggered drive spin up allows for a power supply that is smaller when multiple drives are used. This way the computer will operate in a better range of the supply's efficiency curve. Staggered drive spin up isn't a number we can compare while shopping but it can provide the opportunity for quieter and more efficient computing.

If StorageReview is correct then an obvious drive for using with this board, the WD 1TB GP, has a ridiculously high peak power during spin up compared to its normal seek consumption(32.5watts vs 7.5). If drives like this catch on (and I hope they do) then staggered drive spin up will become important for small file servers.

[jessekopelman]

IMHO.....I think some of you are expecting way too much out of this cheap MB/CPU combo. For the market for which it is intended, it should do just fine. The fact that it has become available at all, at this price in the USA, amazes me.

Agreed. I think this board is good value for the price. That's not the problem. The problem is that for people who need more/better in mini-ITX form factor, moving up even just a little means tripling the price. It's not that I want Intel to give me more for $70, it's that I want them to give me something for $100-150 that is better. Like you said, it's about intended market. It seems to me that they went a little too niche on their opening salvo. They would have made people happier if they came in with a more loaded offering at $150 and then followed it up with the stripped down variation at half the price. I think they were worried about cannibalizing their existing product lines by offering something more suitable for desktop use. In the end, this reminds me of the Apple TV and the way Apple claims they view that as a hobby rather than a serious product offering. I wish these companies would actually research what people want to do with their products (Marketing 101) rather than just throwing stuff out there and seeing if it sticks.

[linux247]

I think this is a great hobbyist board or for building a PVR server. But for many other practical uses, I see it's lacking certain features:

1. For HTPC it's missing TV out...

TV-out should be very useful for driving traditional analog TVs which don't have the DVI/VGA/HDMI inputs. I don't expect this $70 board to have the capabilities to drive a DTV...

frank2003:

there is in fact an intel piece that includes tv out - part no. D201GLY2T - notice the "T" on the end of the part no. check the "view available configurations" under product information on intel's site. *edit* here is the link: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboa ... onfigs.htm

[neon joe]

I wish these companies would actually research what people want to do with their products (Marketing 101) rather than just throwing stuff out there and seeing if it sticks.

I agree. I thought about getting this board, but decided against it. I still think it's a great bargain, but like you said, I would rather have a board with some better features, and a slightly higher price ($250-300 is too much for a mb).

But maybe this motherboard will be really successful for intel, and they'll expand their selection of mini, nano, and pico-itx boards.

[MikeC]

I'm excited to report that the D201GLY2 sample arrived an hour ago. No time for anything serious, as I'm drowning in work, but I did manage to boot it into the BIOS menu.

The BIOS menu is nothing special. HW monitoring reported after 20 minutes in the BIOS that the system was at 45C and the fanless HS cooled CPU was at 85C. Not sure which sensor this is -- there are usually 2 in Intel CPUs, one to approximate the casing temp (which we take to be "CPU core") and another more true measurement that allows emergency internal shutdown when the core hits 120~125C. My remote IR thermometer got ~55C at the based of the HS.

Stuck an 80mm Nexus on the HS -- fed off the fan header on the board, which seems like 12V -- and the temp dropped to 35C in about 2-3 minutes. System temp now at 27C.

Power measurement looks really promising -- it's drawing around 22~24W DC. In BIOS, there usually some kind of load on the CPU, not max, but not idle either, somewhere around 50% as a rough estimate.

Will know more soon enough.

[derekva]

Mine should be arriving on Monday 11/19 (using it as a Windows Home Server - will add a 2-slot riser card later so I can have both my 3Ware PCI RAID card and GigE). I'll let you know how it does.

[sea2stars]

derekva - Which 2-slot riser card? I was under the impression that, without a active signaling PCI-PCI bridge, these Intel boards won't support a 2-slot PCI riser card.

[pfft]

The datasheet for this board says 10w max through the pci. Another consideration.

[frank2003]

here is the link: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboa ... onfigs.htm

Thanks for the link. But it appears no one is selling the D201GLY2T model.

BTW, I found some test results from this German site. If these numbers are to be believed, then I find the temperature and power consumption numbers less than impressive. I think complete passive operation is out of the question.

Can't wait to see SPCR's test results.

[frank2003]

The German site also mentioned that there's no S3 support. This is probably not a big deal if you are running your system 24/7, but might be a turn off for adherents of green computing.

Looks like Intel really skim on features on this budget board.

[dougz]

The Register quotes HKEPC on future Intel low-cost, low-heat poducts:

Intel's platform is codenamed 'Shelton' and is set to centre on a 45nm processors dubbed 'Diamondville', described by company presentation slides posted by Chinese-language site HKEPC as a "purpose-built low-cost processor".

Diamondville can operate without a fan - a cost-cutting measure as much as an attempt to get Shelton into small form-factor PCs - and will be soldered to the motherboard. Boards will be based on either Intel's own 945GC integrated chipset or SiS' SiS671.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/13 ... mondville/

The Intel slide reproduced in the linked HKEPC article says "Follow on to 2007 integrated board solution" and "2-4 Gb NV RAM support". Mini-ITX sized measurements.

As a Linux user, I'd be delighted to pay a premium to get a board like this with an Intel chipset, rather than SiS. Looks like Intel is really serious about this segment of the market.