


Transmeta Mini-ITX Board Reviewed 128
NobodyButMe writes "Transmetazone.com has posted a link to a 'world-exclusive' IBASE MB860 review on EpiaCenter.com. This appears to be the first review of a Mini-ITX board built around Transmeta's efficeon technology. Transmeta has also approved this board to be the official reference platform for the TM8600 processor and if you take a look at the benchmark results in the review (page 4) then you'll understand why as VIA's EPIA-M10K board looks quite pale in comparison. The review also adresses issues such as power consumption, temperatures and thermal throttling - three very interesting points when looking at the Efficeon processors. If the MB860 weren't so expensive (~500$ or something as it's aimed at the 'industrial market') then this could easily beat the EPIA boards (IMHO)."
Meh. Transmeta Schmansmeta (Score:3, Interesting)
ARM has the bottom end (watches) and in the x86 space Via controls the low and AMD and Intel battle it out for middle and high (laptops and desktops). Transmeta processoes only seem to win in the palmtop arena, and even then Via is a strong contender.
Anyone here considering using Transmeta in a hobby or production box? And why them and not someone else?
Crunched (Score:4, Interesting)
Do those M10K-paling numbers include AES-crypto? How about MPEG-2/4 encoding/decoding? The VIA boards have dedicated hardware for this stuff that offloads from the CPU and really ramps up nicely.
Or are they comparing such useful measures as SPECmarks, GFlops, and other meaningless drivel?
-Charles
Don't just look at the price. (Score:3, Interesting)
Better to pay twice as much to get something that works right in the first place than to go through the above (where you'll be buying a second board to use during the RMA anyway). Even if you had to run GNU/Linux on it, you'd still be ahead of the game for office applications.
Cheap EPIA boards? (Score:2, Interesting)
What gives?
Question.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe im wrong but don't industrial type market businesses usually purchase big powerful industrial type computers to process their work?
What exactly are industrial businesses doing with these boards?
I can only see this item being sold on the consumer market.
Re:Transmeta has no direction. (Score:3, Interesting)
Desktop does not only mean super fast 3d gaming system.
Thermal throttle-Efficeon's slower than you think (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.vanshardware.com/articles/2004/05/0405
Re:Crunched (Score:2, Interesting)
The video stuff could be useful for watching DVDs without overloading the cpu? Well in any case there's not much room in mini-itx cases to put fat-ass video cards, so it's nice to have stuff like that on the mobo. Not to mention those fat-ass video cards suck mucho power and one of the things about mini-itx is trying avoid that. That and less noise too (some of those boards don't even have a cpu fan).
Industrial market? (Score:5, Interesting)
We looked at transmeta as a platform in-house for a product, but there don't seem to be enough (any?) advantages to the product to justify the additional cost or technical risk over a more traditional and proven processor line.
I'm not sure what transmeta's strategy is go-forward, but they need to come up with something. Seen many transmeta powered PDAs out there? Cell phones?