Via Now Shipping Dual-Processor Mini-ITX Board 304
An anonymous reader writes "Via is now shipping its first dual-processor mini-ITX board. The DP-310 features two 1GHz processors, gigabit Ethernet, support for SATA drives, and a media-processing graphics chipset. It targets high-density applications -- according to Via, a 42-U rack with 168 processors would draw about 2.5 kilowatts, or about as much power as two hair dryers." This also looks like the basis for a nice car computer. Also on the small-computing front, an anonymous reader submits "General Micro, meanwhile, last week released what it calls the world's fastest mini-ITX board, powered by a Pentium M clocked up to 2.3GHz. "
Cool mini-ITX stuff... (Score:5, Informative)
Heat sinks (Score:2, Informative)
They want how much? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Car computer? (Score:3, Informative)
Benchmark review of a single 933 Via processor [overclockers.com.au]
Granted, this is the C3, which is slightly inferior to the Eden-N being used here. Can you see the second processor in the arithmetic benchmarks, the one running about equally? That's a 333mhz PII. Even being generous and saying this newer series chip has significantly sped up, we're still talking performance equal to maybe a dual 500 Mhz PIII.
Useable? Yes. Acceptable for generic web browsing and word processing? Maybe. An excellent-performing midrange desktop replacement? No way. The Mhz myth is definitely in effect here, just not like you might initially think. These things are fine and dandy as a generic file server where speed is not a supreme priority, and they work fine as a router/gateway or simple firewall, but please don't try to use them for much else.
Re:Why both SATA and ATA-133 (Score:3, Informative)
Plextor 716SA [plextor.com]
Now, if you say "give me a link to a second SATA optical drive", I might have a harder time.
Now shipping? Where? (Score:3, Informative)
Dont forget (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Um... (Score:2, Informative)
most hair dryers are around 1800 watts, 1.25 watts per hair dryer won't dry anything.
Re:Again with the PR (Score:3, Informative)
I had a via mini-ITX board 2 years ago. It was 800mhz. I put a tv tuner card in the box and captured cable tv to divx in real time. That took about 35-40% CPU. That means I was able to watch other divx movies (via the Composite TV-OUT) at the same time it was encoding. Oh, and mp3blaster worked great too!
and no I didn't RTFA
or anything else for that matter, eh?
Watt the ..? (Score:4, Informative)
A typical light bulb is 60 Watts.
An electric heater is 2000 Watts typical.
And I just went downstairs to check, a hairdryer is 1500 Watts (my mother is a hairdresser, so it's a "professional" version).
Re:Again with the PR (Score:2, Informative)
strike that. it was a pci geforce2 MX400 card with tv-out. so, most the graphics processing was offloaded onto it.
Re:Car computer? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm not an apple whore (Score:3, Informative)
My previous primary computer was a first-generation Alienware laptop that I'm still paying for. I assume I'll use it more once I clear out some space for it. It has an amazing screen. For now, though, the Mini is doing most everything I need it to (except Half-Life 2), and I'm easing myself into Unix while I'm at it.
Re:What board are those photos of? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia_dp_spec
Go to VIA directly and you shall see...
Peter.
Wrong pictures? (Score:4, Informative)
EPIA DP [viaembedded.com]
Note the orientation of the processors, and the lack of PS2 ports on the (official?) pictures.
Re:Amps in your pants (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How much speed is enough? works good for PVR (Score:3, Informative)
Noise I agree with, but power? What do I care if the system in my bedroom corner is sucking down 200w or 90w? Not like that's $50 more a month, or even $10 for that matter. You're talking a couple bucks at most.
Check out the electricity calculator [cactus2000.de]. Enter the watts and your kw/hr and it'll tell u you how you're spending.
At 8 cents a kWh this is what I got:
200w = 38 cents a day... $11.52/mo, $140/yr.
90w = 17 cents/day... $5.18/mo, 63.07/yr
Sorry, that $6 more per month is nothing to cry about, although after seeing that $80 yearly difference I think I will keep downloads going on the laptop from now on and only fire up the desktop when I have serious work to do, especially since my PSU is closer to double that rating so double that cost. Still, doesn't justify buying a laptop for downloading or paying extra for a power-saving system with no processing power.
Re:UniChrome Pro onboard GPU... (Score:3, Informative)
Some motherboard chipsets are better-supported than the others. I have a motherboard based on the VIA PM800 chipset [paraz.com], but at the time I tried, I couldn't get it to work with the driver since PM800 support was experimental. While the VESA driver works, I had to install a cheap AGP card [paraz.com] since I needed gamma correction to compensate for my (cheap) overbright LCD panel.
I just checked again and someone got the PM800 working [sourceforge.net]. I'll try that when I reinstall my box (soon).