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Tom's Hardware Reviews VIA Mini-ITX Board
SlightlyMadman writes "Tom's Hardware has finally taken notice of the popular Mini ITX form factor, in this article. Sounds like these are the way to go for a new PC, so long as you don't have a deathmatch scheduled anytime soon." While the form factor on these boards are great, one gives up a lot in the way of ability to upgrade, since many parts are now soldered onto the motherboard.
If they're not very upgradeable, why not that much more expensive and they include a screen, keyboard, and pointer.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
The review basically says they can't keep up for playing DVDs or streaming video. There goes my interest in them. At least, not without some hardware assist... I suppose one could try a video card that can offload the decoding. That's how the Tivo gets away with using such a low-end CPU, right?
The real revolution will start when the MicroATX boards start coming in consumer devices, without the customer knowing it. So your next DVD player may have one of these inside, run Linux and be able to play Ogg, DivX, Quake, Freecell and Minesweeper.
to start with, I just put a little invertor in my car, under the front passenger seat. Good for charging laptops, and anything else which craves electric power. (I hate cig-lighter adapters, besides which I have too little incentive to bother replacing my current -- broken -- one.)
...
...) A small case, the smallest LCD I can find, a little hard drive ... Seems about all that's necessary.
The basic reasons I'd like a small, low-power computer in my car:
- recording web cam output. I have a currently unused webcam I'd like to point out the front window. Ideally, I'd like to have ones in all directions
- audio playback. Changing in-flight the discs of an 8-hour audiobook on CD is annoying. Choosing a playlist (of the same discs, converted to oggs) before starting to drive is much simpler.
- GPS display. Where am I, and why aren't I where I thought I was?
Those are the top 3; there are other reasons too (keep a wireless router there, and be able to multiplex connections when there's some truly ubiquitous wireless access to speak up; play games when stopped for whatever reason, have a microphone for recording oddball thoughts while driving; use it as an audio TiVO for recording Prairie Home Companion as I listen, etc).
The VIA boards look nice for this kind of application, both because they won't strain my invertor and because they're very small. (And the built-in ports simplify things
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Hell yes, i'd race a mini-cooper against a T-bird. As long as it's not a drag race. The new T-bird isn't all *that* fast anyway. And a mini-cooper will trounce darn near anything in the twisties. BTW, I play q3 on my mini-itx box all the time. Geforce 2 MX 64MB PCI video card works wonders on those little things.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
This isn't just a comment on these boards reviewed here, but on small form factors and integrated graphics in general: why can't they make them with DVI video outputs? I mean, you're not going to be playing twitch games on these things so why not?
When a motherboard with processor, video, nic, tv-out, usb and firewire that costs $150.00, you
can just buy another in three years.
While the form factor on these boards are great, one gives up a lot in the way of ability to upgrade, since many parts are now soldered onto the motherboard.
Doesn't anyone else remember those horrible Packard Bell and Wang (haha) computers that soldered most of their parts to the motherboard? It was not something good, and we all hated it. I just hope it doesn't become a trend again, because I won't buy it (quite literally!).
Every time someone talks about mini-ITX lately, there's always the inevitable comment "don't plan on running Quake 3 on it" or some such nonsense.
:). Toss in even a 10gb hard drive and you can have thousands upon thousands of games available. Coupla USB controllers, built in TV-out.. *drool* Hell, add on the always mentioned mp3 player, and it's multifunctional.
:(
If I had the cash, I'd say one of these would make the *perfect* emulation console. You can get cases about the same size as the board, maybe 4-5 inches high (ie: smaller than an Xbox
Oh yeah, there's always that legality issue
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Too bad there aren't any affordable completely silent power supply units for this "standard". If you really want a totally silent machine, you're going to pay twice the price of board and processor for the case and PSU...
IIRC there are plans to redesign these boards to work with a single voltage which can then be supplied by a "notebook-PSU" brick. Or maybe that's just what I've been dreaming.
After doing some google-digging, I believe the system he's talking about is the u-Buddy.
Here's some info I found:
A page at ECS describing the specs
A place selling them for $279
If anyone can find a place that's confirmed selling them at $199, I'd be very interested.
"Yep that will affect your ability to upgrade"
Very true, but almost every time I've done a CPU upgrade I've ended up buying a new motherboard anyway.
--
jc
It really bothers me to see that VIA is claiming to support Linux, when this support is so poor. This review at Linuxathome.net only makes matters worse, since the reviewer tested most features on Windows, and verified Linux support by merely installing RedHat!
I really want to buy one of these boards, but I refuse to do so until VIA either releases decent drivers, or provides documentation for their hardware that would allow the open source community to build our own.
What irks me is that there's not a -march=c3 target in recent GCC releases. The C3 currently works best when you use '-m486 -m3dnow -mmmx' which is nasty. VIA needs to kick a GCC developer a few thousand and a few books so GCC can get a proper target for VIA's products. Until there's proper scheduling and cache-management for this processor (on the compiler end) everything is gonna feel REAL SLOW on it.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails