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Intel Hardware

Pentium-M In Mini-ITX Format 241

Posted by timothy from the oh-be-passive dept.
Hektor_Troy writes "A German outfit is going to introduce a Pentium-M based mini-ITX board. Finally good performance in a small size. The manufacturer claims it can be cooled pasively, but I'd like to see it first." "Good performance in a small size" is relative, of course -- I like the quiet little EPIA system in front of me pretty well ;)
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Pentium-M In Mini-ITX Format More

Pentium-M In Mini-ITX Format

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  • Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SargeZT ( 609463 ) <pshanahan@mn.rr.com> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:24PM (#6889394) Homepage
    I love making very small computers to bring along to lan parties. It makes me salivate to think that one day, very soon, I'll bring a 3 GHZ P4 to a lan party, in a package I can carry in one hand! Very smart move.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by El_Ge_Ex ( 218107 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:30PM (#6889427) Journal
      I love making very small computers to bring along to lan parties.

      I'll see your LAN party and raise you this:

      mini-ITX board + cheap 3d processor + Linux = ???

      Give up? Here's a hint. It makes Microsoft's Xbox Development team shake in their boots.

      -B

      PS What would be more interesting? An Apple Game Console, or an IBM Game Console???


      • PS What would be more interesting? An Apple Game Console, or an IBM Game Console???

        It's been done.
        See the Apple/Bandai Pippin [roarvgm.com]
        • The Pippin was underpowered and undermarketed, though. If Apple tried again using the hardware they have now, they might have a decent shot at doing it; they're having too much fun with the iPod though.
      • mini-ITX board + cheap 3d processor + Linux = ???

        Oooh ooh! OOoooh! Could it be... vaporware [phantom.net]?

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      A couple of the guys I know already have Shuttle systems they bring to LAN parties, those are one handed deals. They aren't low end either, usually they have some of the best hardware of all the attendees.

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        The Shuttle mini-box systems look good on paper but I don't understand how they can claim their CPU heat pipe system makes things any quieter. Of the two such systems I've seen in real live, it seems to me that they've put the loudest fans they can find onto the radiator to more than offset any accoustical savings they might have had. Oh well.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)

      by cscx ( 541332 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:43PM (#6889496) Homepage
      Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you said, "It makes me salivate to think that one day, very soon, I'll bring a girl to a lan party."
      • Ever notice how geek guys don't get any, but geek girls are almost legendary for being extremely kinky? All the "geek" girls I knew never seemed to have guy trouble, execept to many, and too desperate. That's probably why there are so few girl posters on slashdot

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)

      by FrostByte03 ( 704874 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:57PM (#6889562)
      the Pentium M is not a Pentium 4M, its a Pentium 3 enhanced, P3 core, larger L1 64kilobyte cache L2 1megabyte with the P4 host bus interface, longer pipeline at 12 stages. Intel added an extra pin on the chip to prevent it from being plugged into existing motherboards and hence a new license agreement. What I like about the chip is that the 1.7Ghz Pentium M is faster than the Pentium M 2.2ghz and consumes (about) 27watt only... Radisys has a microATX board with AGP http://www.radisys.com the E7501 chipset can be used with the Pentium M chip its a matter of time till someone makes a mboard with the chipset with AGP http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/pentiumm/penti umm.htm FrostByte

      • Pentium-M is P4-based, not P3 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Alereon ( 660683 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @08:58PM (#6890431)
        Pentium-M IS a Netburst-based CPU, just like the P4. What Intel did was to shorten the pipeline, thus increasing the IPC, making the CPU do more work per clock cycle. Thus, the Pentium-M is what the P4 SHOULD have been, had Intel not implemented a long pipeline to get higher clockspeeds for marketing purposes. It is a "P3-like" P4, but it's still a P4.
        • it is it lacks netburst hence its shorter pipeline it does have SSE2

          http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/03 08 .3/0086.html

          http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8368
          • So does the new Via core which also runs at 1GHz. It is about as fast a a PIV-M.

            I have one on my desk.

            Works a treat if you are OK to accept the idiocies of the S3 Savage on board like not having a working 1152x870 mode for example.

            So in fact you do not need a PIV-M to have a passively cooled ITX which works and has performance.

        • Re:Pentium-M is P4-based, not P3 (Score:5, Informative)

          by connorbd ( 151811 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @12:22AM (#6891279) Homepage
          This is not true. The Pentium-M/Banias is a P6, and it was designed by the same Israeli design team that produced the ill-fated Timna chip. I think Banias was given to them because Intel knew that an overclocked P6 (a Tualatin at least) could spank a Pentium 4, and the Israeli team knew more about the P6 architecture than anyone else in the company. Banias borrows some ideas from the P4, but it's essentially a Pentium Pro milked as far as it can possibly go, which puts it as the direct successor to the Pentium III.
    • It's called a Shuttle [shuttle.com] and I have one. Or at least will, when I have the money, but several of my friends have them already, and they're just flawless. Silent, pretty efficient cooling, etc. etc.

      Of course you have to give up the extra hard drive bay and do with a combo drive to replace your DVD & CDRW but it's still a neat package. The (optional and expensive) bag looks cool enough. That in one hand and a 17" Prophet LCD bag in the other and you'll be the King of any LAN parties.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Informative)

      by quisquil ( 687095 )
      I have good news for you the "day" you are waiting for... has passed already.
      Buy one of this [casetronic.com] and one of this [commell.com.tw]
      then add your preferite socket 478 processor, some RAM, HD, DVD and you are done...
      You could use it as a stove if needed (you never know, you may get hungry playing).
    • You don't want a 3 ghz p4 in a package you can carry in one hand- it would burn your hand. The Pentium M is a lot more efficient- energy, heat, space, instructions per clock. A 2.2 ghz Pentium M would outperform your 3 ghz p4 anyway. I think the main reason the amazingly well designed Pentium M hasn't become Intel's mainstream desktop processor (replacing the current batch of Celery processors) is because its mhz is lower though its performance is a good bit higher, and so it is less marketable (OMG!!!! MY
      • Not really. From benchmarks, a 2.2 GHz Pentium M is still a good bit slower than a 3 GHz P4. And the P4 is primed for a big speed boost soon (4GHz+) and its questionable if the Pentium M will scale that far.
    • Yes, that's a great idea... except... WHY DONT they put decent video chipsets on it?

      Dammit get a decent Geforce in there (A 4 will do... actually a 2 will do!) or ATI radeon!

      Why do they use the "super non 3d" VIA or intel video all the time? is it free?

      these little boards would be absolute killer if you could get godd/decent video performance from them.

  • 'finally good performance'? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) * on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:25PM (#6889395)
    The shuttle sff range have been up with the big boys [hexus.net] since they got an AGP slot.

  • yay for me (Score:5, Funny)

    by fuckfuck101 ( 699067 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:27PM (#6889407)
    "Good performance in a small size"

    That's what I keep telling my girlfriend!

  • too small (Score:2, Funny)

    by jr87 ( 653146 )
    this thing is gonna get lost by my piles and piles of beer cans and dirty cloths

    and for purposes of karma whoring Kill M$ KILL KILL

  • Performance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:29PM (#6889421) Journal
    Pentium M is quite a bit faster than any EPIA board. Interestingly enough Pentium M MHz per MHz is faster than the Pentium 4.

    • Re:Performance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by foonf ( 447461 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:35PM (#6889458) Homepage
      Interestingly enough Pentium M MHz per MHz is faster than the Pentium 4.

      Not that interesting. The regular P3, which the Pentium-M is based on, was also faster, clock for clock. The Athlon certainly is. But the very things that cause this (a really long pipeline and some other stuff I've forgotten) are what allow it to scale to the high clock speeds it can. For a while after the P4 came out it was widely thought to be a failure because of those trade-offs, but then they ramped it up to faster clock speeds and more software came out taking advantage of SSE2.
      • > For a while after the P4 came out it was widely thought to be a failure because of those trade-offs, but then they ramped it up to faster clock speeds and more software came out taking advantage of SSE2.

        Well, the Pentium M also has SSE2, FYI. :)
        • Well, the Pentium M also has SSE2, FYI.

          Which is going to make for one damned nice DSP platform.
          • I'm _really_ wanting someone to make a miniITX version with TV-out. That'll make for some great HTPC action.

            Also a microATX or even ATX desktop mobo would be very nice. I think Intel needs to up their IPC in future processors - they're getting just TOO damned hot. Prescott is expected to pump out 105W! That's insane. Within a couple years, they're going to require water cooling if they don't get the heat dissipation under control.
      • The main benefit that the pentium m brings to the table is less heat. As the pentium 4 was being ramped up for hi mhz levels it also increased greatly in heat and power consumption. Increased heat ='s noisier fans which is bad for systems like these which are probably going to be located in places like the living room.

    • Performance or Utility? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shturmovik ( 632314 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:38PM (#6889766)
      Just because they aren't 10GHz Pentium IX's is pretty meaningless for many. The mini-itx thing is a Godsend to some of us.

      I use the EPIA EDEN 533MHz system for the two weather stations on my mountaintop observatory site. They are plenty fast enough, considering all they do is run the weather app and Opera/Eudora/network-clock/antivirus/firewall.

      I don't have AC up here yet, so low power consumption is way more important than beating somebody in a pissing competition over UT2k fps or Photoshop rendering speeds! :-)
    • Alright, but what GCC flags output for the Pentium-M? Is the *-M a PIII or a P4 at heart (or something different altogether)?

      I know it Looks like a PIII and the specs all point to a modified PIII, but intel says it's 'fresh' in origin, and it seems to be quite different from the P4 offerings (in terms of caching and performance).

      I'm just wondering if I should compile with -march=pentium3 or -march=pentium4 for this beast.
      • -march=pentium4 should work but if it doesn't you can still -march=pentium3 and manually add the sse2 flag. According to some developer docs that I've read, it is supposed to be instruction set compatable with p4.

  • I'd love to build a new PC... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Boone^ ( 151057 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:29PM (#6889423)
    I think at the age of 27 I'm finally starting to outgrow gaming, so the concept of a "lightweight" PC that can be used for digital imaging and video storage interests me. My thirst for FLOPS isn't totally gone, so the Athlon64 has my attention as well. It's like trying to choose between a Civic and a monster truck. :(
    • In various books and movies you see scenarios where there are computers everywhere, rather than just a special computer somewhere in the house/building/spaceship/whatever. One of the key things you have to do to reach that point is to get computers with decent performance (I'd say Pentium-M adequately fills that description), that run quietly. That's important: if you can't have it run passively cooled, the noise is going to be terrible. Now, just think of the uses of something like this if we can put it to

  • Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MoronGames ( 632186 ) <cam@henlin.gmail@com> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:34PM (#6889451) Journal
    That's all well and good, but for it to be really nifty, it needs an AGP slot. I mean, a PCI or integrated video card might be "good enough" for most things, but what if I want to game with it?

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Informative)

      by FrostByte03 ( 704874 )
      http://www.radisys.com MicroATX board fro Pentium M with AGP FrostByte
  • For once, I think we need some benchmarks comparing laptop processors to desktop processors. Just so we get an idea of how laptops actually perform rather than depending on the specs alone.
    Like right now, how does the Pentium-M compare to the Pentium 4/Athlon XP?
    Atleast we're sure that HTPCs can be faster now. . .

  • page hits (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eyston ( 462981 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:51PM (#6889534)
    Why would you link to a secondary site talking about the companies announcement and not the actual announcement?

    http://www.lippert-at.com/miniitx.html [lippert-at.com]

    -Eyston

  • Passive laptop coolers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:51PM (#6889535)
    "Good performance in a small size" is relative, of course -- I like the quiet little EPIA system in front of me pretty well ;)

    Most of the new Pentium M laptops are mostly passive cooled. I can barely hear the fan on my friends laptop when it does kick in.

    Why doesn't someone make a Mini-ITX case for this board, that comes with a laptop style cooler and has a small slit on the side of the case as an exhaust, just like a laptops?

    • That's a fine idea, I think I'll patent it. Ha, you're too late.
    • Look at mini-itx.com for what an epia can do. Particularly the HushPC. 100% fanless, they use a custom extra large heatsink/case side. With no hard drive, it becomes possible to make a current model PC [not striped version of 486] with zero moving parts perfect for terminals, employee workstations, ect.

      What could you do with a PC if you didn't have to worry about airflow at all?

      • it becomes possible to make a current model PC with zero moving parts perfect for terminals, employee workstations

        Yep. Those keyboards and mice with zero moving parts are really nice.

        Ok, I guess they could all use button-less touchpads, but I've yet to see a usable keyboard without any moving parts.
        • Fair enough but swapping in a new USB peripheral is alot different than opening the box. In particular, a techie visit is not required.
        • tell me what moving part a mouse has? The photons from its LED? or the electrons in its ICs?
          • tell me what moving part a mouse has? The photons from its LED? or the electrons in its ICs?

            I was thinking of the mouse buttons, personally. Apple may still opt for one-button mice, but I haven't seen any zero-button mice recently.
  • The SBC was implemented using Intel's 855GME chipset, and supports the next generation of Pentium M -- the Dothan CPU in 90 nm technology.

    So am I to assume that current notebooks like the Dell D800 and M60 using the Pentium-M 1.6Ghz are upgradable to the Dothan CPU too? If so, looks like I have an upgrade path!!!

  • XBox 2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pimpinmonk ( 238443 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:03PM (#6889592)
    I think this would make an excellent platform for the next XBox or any sort of PC-hardware-based game console. It runs cool and fast as the dickens! (I'd say it'd be a much better option than a very hot and power-hungry AMD or Pentium 4 solution).

    I have a Pentium M notebook and I absolutely love it :-)

  • heat issues (Score:3, Informative)

    by JDizzy ( 85499 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:07PM (#6889604) Homepage Journal
    If they can make a better product than the soekris boards [soekris.com] I might get interested. It is generally accepted that Intel chips have not been capable of being passivly cooled since the early Pentium days. I'd say the pentium 166(??) was the last passivly coolable design before active cooling became mandintory. A router doesn't need that much processor to operate unless its some sort of ultra-utilized mega router.
    • that's the point of those new pentium-M 'banias' : it is possible to cool them passively !

      the lowest voltage version output something like 6W, which is equivalent to via's c3 thermal output. While the 'high powered' ones, equivalent in performance to 2.4 GHz P4, are in the low 20W (at full speed). Something which can be easily cooled.

      This ITX solution presented has same advantages as the soekris : compact flash board, mini-pci slot, pci slot, gigabit ethernet, normal ethernet. and the performances are

  • My computer can be passively cooled too... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:07PM (#6889606)
    All I have to do is hit that little power switch thingy, and there... it cools itself down without a sound.
    • Actually, I wonder if this will stay true. As long as the fan is going, air is circulating over the processor, which keeps it fairly cool. But as soon as the fan stops, air nearly stops moving. In fact, the fan blades tend to block the air from moving about, which means you get a pocket of extremely hot air between the heat sink and the fan blades. If the CPU gets hot enough, it can warp and crack as it tries to expand in the constraints of the mounting system. It doesn't seem like this is a concern no
      • It's not just sports cars - most cars that I've seen with electric fans will continue to run them for some time after the ignition is turned off.
      • I have noticed that in sports cars too. But I fail to understand the logic in that. The CPU ceases emitting heat as soon as it stops functioning. All things being equal, there is no way the CPU could continue heating up after it's been turned off since there is no energy input... it might only take longer to cool down.

        I don't know why cars have that feature.

      • As soon as you hit the power switch, the fans stops. But the CPU also stops. As soon as the CPU stops working it will also stop generating heat. So even though the cooling fan has stopped it won't be getting any hotter, it wil just cool down slower.
        This might actually be even better for the CPU, as cooling it down too fast may cause extra stress in the material of the die and its mounting on the CPU package.

  • Processor, Schmosessor... ;) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:16PM (#6889654) Journal
    Although the VIA/Centaur isn't exactly the fastest thing around, to me that isn't the most limiting factor of the EPIA line.

    The abysmally slow onboard 3D graphics are what just really disappoint. I mean, I've built 8 EPIA-based systems but they've always been for use as workstations (Internet browsing), or simply mom and pop kind of computing usage.

    Now, take a look at the article. Are those graphics memory slots I see? I know Intel Extreme 2 isn't exactly winning any awards but it's certainly better than the horrid S3 EPIA 3D. That, more than the processor, is what really interests me about this board.

    • The via processors have performed worse then celerons of the same mhz level based on most of the benchmarks i've seen. These processors fit on the old p3 line of motherboards (on the newer socket type insert and not the cartridges). The benchmark tested the p3, the celerons of that time, and the epia. On most performance tests the epia at the same mhz level performed at around half or a lot less speed of the p3 and also signinficantly less then the celeron.
    • True, they are downright snails, but where else can you get something PC compatible for $150 that will run for hours off of a standard 12V drycell. These things draw power compariable to car headlights or radios...not space heaters. That allows you to unplug the unit from the wall and do really useful cool things with it. Also, you can use stock external "brick" power supplies and that reduces complexity/increses reliability. Sure, you could get a laptop, but again, did I mention EPIAs are in the $150 r

  • Standard Components (Score:3, Informative)

    by Eamon C ( 575973 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:18PM (#6889665) Homepage
    I like the quiet little EPIA system in front of me pretty well.

    Then you must not be using Linux. Some cool folks [viaarena.com] like this guy [slashdot.org] (not to mention this guy [linux.org.uk]) are working hard at making Linux work on the EPIA -- but it doesn't have to be this hard. I've been keeping my eye on these MiniITX boards for some time now, but I'm waiting until I can do everything I want (play DVDs and DivX files, maybe run a couple emulators) without reverse-engineering drivers. Maybe this new board will make it happen.

    • Re:Standard Components (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rob Simpson ( 533360 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:35PM (#6889749)
      Huh. I've got a VIA C3 on a PC Chips M787 board (yeah, I know, but it was $260 Canadian [genericcomputer.bc.ca]) and it works fine on linux. The only problem I've had is getting the sound to work on Mandrake 9.1, but Knoppix/Morphix KDE work fine. (I installed the latter, since I couldn't figure out how to get Knoppix to install.)
    • I think you are confusing some features useful for DVD playback, with the ability to run linux. RH9 installed on my new nehemiah without a hitch just two weeks ago and it works great for net and email. One thing I noticed after I finished assembling it - I used the dining room table - my fridge is louder than that computer. And if I get a brick PS, it will be heavenly.

      As for speed, I think it is slightly faster than my Duron 700 ... but the duron is easily 3x as loud.

  • is this news? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rewdy ( 162027 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:39PM (#6889770)
    has anyone been paying attention to the mini-itx community? Commell Systems [commell-sys.com] has had mini-itx pentium4 based boards out for months in both mobile [commell-sys.com] and desktop [commell-sys.com] processor versions.
    • Yes it is news. Reason: Those are Pentium 4 boards. We are talking about the Pentium M.
    • The main reason is because these you a lot less power and give off a lot less heat. A lot of mini-itx systems are used in places like living rooms for pvr's and lots of other reasons and because this gives off less heat you can even have passive coolers with no fans.

      P4's on the other hand require a pretty powerful hsf setup, especially your beloved 3.0 ghz versions. Which i believe gives off an excess of 90 watts at peak and around 70 watts normally.
  • as far as i know, this [commell-sys.com] has been around for a while and now there is a mobile [commell-sys.com] version too
    • This is where intel went wrong..

      There are two different processors right now in Intel's Mobile fleet. One is called the Pentium 4-M, the other is simply Pentium M. The one we are discussing is the Pentium M. The boards you linked to are the Pentium 4-M. The difference is that they took technology from the Pentium 4 and applied it to a chopped down version of the Pentium 3's core. Things such as the 400MHz processor bus, the Micro ops L1, and other chip level micro enhancements were copied back to th

  • Am I the only one (Score:5, Funny)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:44PM (#6889796)
    who is bored by hardware comparisons such as these? The technology could be anything, the thread always plays out something like this:

    The article says Left-handed Sprugel-Fipp MX545454-X shows very good performance next to the Loop-handed Rifkind-Muppet QX345454-D.

    Then someone says "Kewl! I bought a Sprugel-Fipp last week! I knew those Loop-handed Rifkind-Muppet models were duff!"

    Then someone says "No, you can't make a simple comparison like that without looking at how each model caches - you're comparing apples an oranges! (insert words 'insensitive clod' if necessary)"

    Then there's a brief but heartfelt flamewar culminating in the fans of Loop-handed models to say "Yeah but just you wait until the NEW Rifkind-Muppet model!"

    And finally the Sprigel-Fipp fan says "Huh. Yeah well I will (see you next time) .... "

    ad infinitum. Yawn.

  • fastest fanless? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    passively cooled hmmm...

    I've been looking for a silent computer for a while and only found the hushtechnologies and the tranquil pc. Both run on via eden 1ghz mainboards customised to be fanless (the 1ghz would normally have a fan), that's not much horsepower but as fanless computers go that's cutting edge.

    I'm actually seriously considering buying one, they cost more, but for home recording (computer in same room as instruments) it will make a huge difference especially when recording queit sources.

    So if

  • Perfect for Linux home gateway (Score:4, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @08:08PM (#6890187) Journal
    The Pentium-M will be a nice boost over the performance of the VIA C3 based EPIA boards.

    The other great things about this board:

    - Two ethernet ports on board - for Gateway usage. Internal port is the Gigabit port, for fast file serving. The external 100Mbps port is plenty of bandwidth for any reasonable Internet connection.
    - It appears to have a CompactFlash interface on the bottom. For the ultra quiet system, a 512MB or 1GB CF card provides a lot of space.
    - Pentium-M based - Low power consumption.. My server sits idle most of the time, and it lightly loaded for a good portion of its actual usage. The Pentium-M can be downshifted to a lower clock speed when not under load, to save even more power.
    - Wireless LAN on board - nice for the all-in-one Linux server.

    I could even see using one of these for a quiet workstation.. It supports dual head displays ( which I can't live without now).

    The only questions are Availability and Price.. The product announcement says it's intended for OEM's producing gaming, entertainment, and other high performance embedded applications. That does not sound promising for end-user availability.

  • LVDS output for LCD?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @08:13PM (#6890212) Journal
    The spec's say that there are dual LVDS outputs for Dual Head LCD displays.

    This seems odd, since the industry has gone to DVI for digital LCD connections. I wonder if LVDS is used in laptops (since the Centrino technology is intended for laptops).

    So, the questions are:
    - Will the LVDS output work with the few LVDS capable monitors, such as the amazing widescreen LCD from SGI, the 1600SW?
    - Are there converters available to go to DVI? The only one I could find is intended for the 1600SW, and it's very expensive and hard to find.
  • This thing, mini-ITX board, still has "Floppy connector" - what a waste of space and energy! Today I expect it to see least in mini-factor boards. How many decades will take more to finally kill the floppy controller on motherboards?

    • Re:floppy? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by toddestan ( 632714 )
      On the other hand, what if you want to hook up a floppy? I don't use my floppy much either, but it's like the jumper cables in my car. I don't need them very much either, but when I need them - I really need them.
  • What's with those giant parallel connectors. I don't even have a parallel printer cable any more. I threw it out. And they should be using SATA, not PATA. In a super tiny case even rounded PATA cable are going to substantially block air flow.
  • I've noticed that NewEgg [newegg.com] sells the mobile Athlon XP at quite reasonable prices. Has anyone used one of these in a desktop motherboard? Most boards support the required voltage, but they may not set the correct multiplier if the BIOS doesn't recognize the chip.

    I want performance, but I don't want the monster HSF that a 60 - 70 W processor requires.

  • When did Intel get around to releasing Pentium 1000 and why didn't I see the commercials? I thought that Pentium 4 was still their top-of-the-line model.

    Anyways, is Pentium 1000 marketingese for yet another 686 processor or have they gotten to 786 by now?:P

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