Link on the final page of review, to this discussion thread, doesn't work

fixed. so go ahead, comment/discuss away!

This is one good idea done completely wrong. The Atom needs to be paired with a specially developed northbridge in order to have any advantage. AMD BE-processor + 780G offers probably ten times the performance with roughly equal power consumption.

It doesn't help to match a tiny 45nm cpu with a 180nm(?) chipset-oven.

Hmm... this makes me wary of using this board in my soon-to-be new system. It makes me want to wait until the Atom 330 based systems are released...

Whether this board is suitable really depends on the application. Obvious, a modern media center it's not, and the IGP pulls too much power when it's working. For lots of casual PC users, it would be perfectly good. As someone in a lineup for the Asus EEE BOX + free 22" Asus monitor at NCIX said to me, "The people who would benefit most from this Atom-based PC aren't in the lineup, which is full of geeks who already have lots of computers." His point is that the average casual PC user doesn't need the power of even a budget desktop PC; almost any Atom-based PC would be enough. I think the same can be said of this board. And remember, other than its predecessor, this $70 board is about the cheapest mitx board you can buy. (And no, I didn't stay in the lineup, as I was too late to be among the first 10 that morn.)

It always seems like Intel either purposely or subconsciously doesn't want these integrated boards to be as good as they could be. Why didn't they use the US15W chipset that they are putting in UMPC? That would idle < 10W. I suppose they want to use the 945G since they have to keep making it for Mac-minis anyway, but isn't Apple ready to switch those over to G45, yet? Also, why do they think the price point is $70? If they charged $100 they could probably give a much better product and it would still be far less expensive than other vendors' alternatives.

Somehow I doubt the DIY market is Intel's main focus with these boards. They're more for special app system integrators who used similarly equipped embedded CPU mITX boards from VIA for years -- but paid at least double.

My project is centered around media applications, but I'm wondering if I'll even need 1080p support for what I'm doing. I doubt that I'll ever be playing that kind of media on the system, and BluRay playback can be handled by the nearby PS3.

The main question is get the $75-80 D945GCLF now, or wait a few weeks until the dual-core version comes out... My impatience is killing me, mostly because I want to finish this project. I've got everything except for the board and I want to start tinkering with software soon.

I think you're right. Still, all the more reason to make a more energy efficient product. All those 10W savings add up over the hundreds of thousands if not millions of units sold and they'd still be half the price of Via. Not only that but lower draw means less heat and easier integration for those embedded folks. Again, something tells me that once the Mac-mini finally moves off it, no more 945G. Whether something better or just different, we'll see.

Picturing this made me lol.

Have any one else had any problems with the chipset fan ?

Im getting kind of crazy on mine i have made an adaptor cable
3pin male to 3pin female with an 100ohm resistor on it
it is slowing the fan down from annoying 6400rpm (sounds like an jet engine as original) so with this resistor i get the fan speed close to 4000 rpm
3700-3900 to be exactly.

But i noticed that the fan starts to malfunction for a few days ago
even sometimes it does not want to start until you help it to begin
i have even tried to put some oil in the bronze bearing it keeps the
fan running fine for a few hours then it starts to loose speed again...

Is the fan speed maintained by the bios or something as far as i know
the only fan header which have pwm control should be "sys_fan"

I got so mad today so i did order an new fan from fractal design
40x40x10mm rated at 22dBa...

Happy for any answers =)

On pages 1 and 2, the review says it has 10/100 Mbps ethernet. Intel says it's 10/100/1000.

D945GCLF has a 100Mbps network connection.
D945GCLF2 has a 1Gbps network connection.

The review was for the D945GCLF.

-D

Doh! Sorry about that.

Has anyone tested power with integrated graphics disabled? Maybe you could forget the integrated graphics and run WHS?