Via Launches New Line of Mini-ITX Boards 197
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has the skinny on Via's next-generation Epia EN mini-ITX boards, which feature its relatively new C7 processors based on the Esther C5J core. The boards will be able to run passively cooled at 1.2GHz, and will clock up to 2GHz, with 800MHz FSBs." From the article: "They target thin clients, car PCs, robotics, medical equipment, kiosks, and server appliances."
What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
It even overheated when it wasn't in the box.
What does hot product really mean? (Score:2, Funny)
Wow! Did it burst into flames on the store shelf?
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
My 2.2GHz P4-M can get up to 100C and idles at 65C at 1.2GHz, while my 2.2GHz Athlon 64 4200+ can get up to only 65-70C and idles at about 26-27C (a couple of degrees above room temp.)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
My Athlon64 3200 idles at 32C/89F. Then again, it's watercooled, but even with the old heatsink it never got very hot.
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
I wish it were easy to underclock the CPU, because I really need nowhere near that much CPU and would definitely prefer lower temperatures. Unfortunately you have to physically unlock it, which carries a bit too h
Re:What does passively cooled really mean? (Score:2)
proper passive cooling (Score:3, Interesting)
Guide the air. There should be a smooth tube running from the bottom of the PC to the top of the PC, with the heat sink embedded in the middle. The heat sink
Re:proper passive cooling (Score:2)
Great, but will it support Virtualization? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great, but will it support Virtualization? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yes, and it doesnt overheat, either, in spite of me taking all the included fans out. It has a Morex Cubid 2677 case standing on its left side, thus having convection cooling.
Re:Great, but will it support Virtualization? (Score:2)
I wish they could work with Nvidia to come up with a built-in GPU that had enough kick to play decent 3D games on. My 6800 card is almost as big as, and certainly louder, than my mini-itx mobos and is definately bigger than the nano-itx boards I'm waiting for. I really want a powerf
I'm also sorry (Score:2)
You seem to have mistaken VMware as a server only application.
Cool but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Looks like a very cool home server, but it lacks a second network card, like the MacMini.
--
Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac mini and networking (Score:2)
It works with a Firewire cable, peer-to-peer, between two Macs and
at 400 Mbit/sec it's sometimes an improvement on crossover-cable-Ethernet."
This isn't very useful for what many of us will use a VIA machine for, and that is firewalling. To provide firewall service to a LAN, a second ethernet port is required. That's fine for a home LAN or small office, but larger networks will require multiple APs even if they're wireless, and that'
Re:Cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
and all epias have a pci slot (two with a riser card) which you can use to get more ports though you have to choose your case correctly.
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
PCI add-in (Score:2)
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
People often like to have small machines with at least two NIC's for firewalls. External interface and Internal interface as a bare minimum. I have 5 NIC's in my Sun Ultra 10 firewall, all being used for seperate segments.
PVR (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:PVR (Score:2)
Re:PVR (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PVR (Score:5, Funny)
Here's to you, Mr. "I have a kid old enough to post intelligently on Slashdot, yet I'm still geeky enough to build out my own multi-head MythTV setup."
Re:PVR (Score:3)
Re:PVR (Score:2)
Re:PVR (Score:2)
It's the MPEG4 part that doesn't have opensource drivers, but my SP8000E plays divx on the plain old CPU with 60-70% idle. (mplayer and Xv output)
A prototype Epia EN board (Click to enlarge) (Score:5, Funny)
Hardware Specs (Score:4, Informative)
So is the new line any better? If so I'd buy as I'm in the market for 2 or 3 machines like this. Question is, does VIA even care about the Linux user? Until now the answer has been no.
Re:Hardware Specs (Score:2)
IAWTP! (Score:2)
VIA released source (Score:5, Informative)
(If you know of a motherboard with SATA that'll take a CPU that can be passively cooled and has open source drivers for everything, I'd like to hear about it, as I plan to build a bigger server this year.)
Re:VIA released source (Score:2)
In the enlarged picture [linuxdevices.com] of the board, you can clearly see two SATA ports at the bottom right.
Re:VIA released source (Score:2)
Got two departamental servers running on that. The onboard + 2 Silicon Image Adaptecs (6 disks total) using these enclosures: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?Web ProductID=84948 [scan.co.uk]
One caveat - the enclosure does not work with newer Maxtor drives because the idiots redefined the power up SATA spec and the meaning of the LED indicator on the power pinout.
Re:Hardware Specs (Score:2)
I have Debian running on 30+ of them. All varieties from V onwards. In fact it has been the primary small server platform for all of my projects for 2+ years now.
Ubuntu and Knoppix also run fine.
I have heard about some problems with RHEL on the lowe end C3 which is not surprising because AFAIK RHEL nowdays by default comes with a 686 kernel which requires SSE. All you need to do is force it to use a 586 or lower kernel (if it ships with one). It should be OK with C7 and all higher end C3s (nehemia
...and no (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, there were Epia drivers. They also tended towards bugginess and being a royal pain in the ass to install. Not to mention that the installer was specific for various distributions but nothing debian-based... much to my annoyance.
How about homemade routers? (Score:2)
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:3, Informative)
1.2ghz ought to be fine for that, which is what they claim it will run while being passively cooled.
Minus the vpn tunnels, I ran a web/mail/storage/router/firewall server, under linux, on a P3550mhz. I'm sure the VPN tunnels wouldn't require THAT much CPU time...
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly correct: 2G is excessive for a router. However, if it can be passively cooled at 2G (well, the article states passively cooled at 1.2G), then it should be very cool when it is underclocked to run at a speed adequate to handle router-specific tasks. Just because the power is there doesn't mean you need to utilize it all; underclocking* is great in situations where cooling is
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:3, Informative)
Release yourself from the grip of the Linksys fanboys.
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm [soekris.com]
It runs off of a 586-class processor and with all of the fixins, would only draw around 20-25W. Not bad for something that can run Linux or *BSD. I haven't messed with one yet, but they do look pretty good even for a small server that can provide: SSH, FTP, web, NTP, DNS, DHCP, etc. Heck, it may replace my Sun Blade 100 one of these days
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd have bought several Epia boards by now if they had just put a useful number of Ethernet ports on board. Their 2-port boards look like one-offs and do not inspire. I want a board with 3 ports. If you're going to talk about "server appliance" you need 2+ network ports... Yet, from the photos I see here their latest stuff has
wait for it
1 port.
Sigh.
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:2)
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:2)
The newer 2Ghz parts may give you more oomph but for a router/nat/dhcp/bind box they're not required.
Tom
Re:How about homemade routers? (Score:2)
Not too exciting (Score:3, Insightful)
it's wicked fast at crypto (Score:2)
You can do a round of AES crypto in 1 or 2 clock cycles. This chip does AES about 8x faster than the fastest Intel and AMD CPUs, and much much faster clock-for-clock.
So if you run a web server or ssh server that gets bogged down by crypto, get this CPU.
Re:it's wicked fast at crypto (Score:2)
Re:it's wicked fast at crypto (Score:2)
Whens it shipping?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No drivers for CarPC stuff (Score:2)
Probably because this would significantly increase the price of the parts, (being that they would need to be of much higher quality), and/or require them to incorporate a voltage-regulating power supply, which would (a) increase the size, and (b) increase the heat output. You can probably do the second part on your own, anyway...
Re:No drivers for CarPC stuff (Score:5, Informative)
I know I'll get moderated as a troll again because I suggest using Linux over Windows, but
Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509 +hsync
Will do the trick for X. No drivers necessary.
Re:No drivers for CarPC stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Aaaah, good ole XF86Config. 'Miss that. :-) (Score:2)
Setting Color, V-Frequency and Resolution to a non-sucking condition on Suse 6.4. Getting the newest NVidia drivers to run on Suse 7.2 only to watch Sax wreck havoc on the XF86Config. Sweating bulltets while trying to recover X into runable condition. Finding the right setting on Debian to run Loki's Tribes 2 in hardware mode.
Nothing like hand-cofigging your XF86Config. All you miss is the dirt, heat and steam and having to shovel coals into a hatch below your PSU
out of interest (Score:2)
and if so did it work?
Re: (Score:2)
Multicore C7 = x86 Niagara? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now there's a move to multi core designs and blade servers, and even the slowest x86 server is probably over powered for a server, you have to wonder if they could do an x86 version of Niagara [theinquirer.net]
From here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_C7 [wikipedia.org]
"You can also see a quad-core C7, could be manufactured for the same cost as a single core P4 on 90 nm process."
Now Niagara is 8 core and each core has four threads admittedly, but there's something to be said for a four way x86 chip for blades. The power consumption wouldn't be too bad either. But you can have four C7 cores per P4 core. If I were AMD for example, I'd be playing around with an x86 Niagara.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.arch/msg/991f
Hmm, and I'd find (or invent) some new benchmarks too.
Re:Multicore C7 = x86 Niagara? (Score:2)
I think too many existing programs in the x86 world are still course grain multithreaded (at best) for AMD or Intel to make a go of 8 core x 4 smt for an architecture. Certainly for desktop processors, multicore is still of limited utility. Look at the number of games that are not multithreaded. The speed benefits on these games when running dual core are, as yet, limited.
Even in the web area, there's at least as much of a push for blade s
Re:Multicore C7 = x86 Niagara? (Score:2)
Personally (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand that it's not attractive for a company to look at lower margin items, but imagine if you could retail something like the original mini ITX boards in the price range of, say, $50 (it's currently about $110). Every garage inventor in the country would be creating new embedded computing applications.
Not just the boards... (Score:2)
Re:Not just the boards... (Score:2, Insightful)
And who really wants to be an inventor if it means having to deal with a whole mess of tools and building shit, like . .
Maybe they just don't make inventors and engineers like they used to, but we used to be able to handle making a tin box pretty good.
KFG
Re:Not just the boards... (Score:2)
I love the silence (Score:2, Informative)
Even though they are not amazingly powerful I would never go back to some huge whirring pizza oven. No hard drives either, all boot from 4G IDE flash drives, one with a modified Dynebolic/Puppy linux crossbreed and the other I usually boot DSL (Damn small = fits on a 512M USB thumbdrive) Not a single moving part in the room! (unless you include me, and I don;t move much) All the sound files are
Re:I love the silence (Score:2)
Why? Booting usually doesn't involve very much writing, just reading (Windows is probably an exception here). Throw in enough ram so you don't have swap much, and it would probably last forever - or atleast longer than the mechanical parts in a harddisk would.
ah, more via pain (Score:5, Informative)
Most recently an Asus board I owned last year, locked up as solid as a monkey if any heavy DMA activity occured. Worse, after doing hours of Google searches, I managed to find info stating that Windows drivers disabled various chip functions, so that the chipset could run in a stable function.
Apparently, from the slant of posts that I read, it was taken as fact that VIA often had issues with chipsets, and merely patched those issues with drivers. Typically, one buying a VIA board in Windows would end up with degradation of their chipset via drivers. Linux users were, however, not so lucky. VIA would ignore all pleas and requests about issues with their chipset, and the belief was that they did not want such issues with their chips to "make it to the press". Acknowledging that they had reduced chipset performance with drivers, would obviously not go over well. Chipsets are marketed to certain specs, and using drivers to "make it work", but not deliver those specs is clearly opening liability.
After reading this, I looked at issues I'd had over the years with graphic cards causing hardware lockups, boxes that would randomly reboot and the like. In almost all cases it tended to be with system that contained VIA chipsets. Further, I also found posts from many Myth users, complaining about DMA issues with their mini-itx boards.
VIA? I'd recommened everyone stay away.... I sure the heck do! Time isn't worth the $20 you save by walking away from an Intel or SiS chipset. Sure, these chipsets have issues, but Intel and SiS both seem a little more talkative with Linux developers.. and tend to produce a better product. VIA seems produce these flaws in almost _all_ of their chipsets.
My experience, sure. You'll have to make up your own mind. All I know is that $20 in savings is peanuts over 20 hours of debugging.. when the debugging is a useless task.
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience, sure. You'll have to make up your own mind.
Not that anecdotes are all that meaningful to others, but I've had relatively good luck with VIA ch
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:3, Insightful)
The KT266 and 333 were pretty good as Windows desktops. But I'm using one as a Linux server now, and it's... not great. I have to run it with APIC disabled. Turning on APIC (in recent 2.6
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:4, Insightful)
The KT133 was immensely popular, as I recall. It's no surprise that lots of people report problems with it. On the other hand, I didn't say that the KT133 was particularly great, just that it was stable for me (while using it as an example of how the quality of the motherboard manufacturer seemed to matter a great deal). I leave beating the heck out of chipsets for review websites, which then form a decent basis of my purchases (at least since the KT400). Performance? It wasn't high on my priority list.
I don't recall noticing huge performance differences in benchmarks of articles I read, but I could certainly be mistaken. I would still take a decent performance hit if it meant greater stability (which is why I stay far away from overclocking). I tend to buy the low end (but good quality) of what's available at that time, and upgrade more often (I think it provides more consistent relative performance at a good value).
Overall, I'd jump at an Intel chipset, since Linux support is probably most consistently good there. But when the AMD options are just so much more appealing, you're left with VIA, SiS, and NVIDIA (roughly speaking), and I still have no compelling reason to move off of VIA.
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:2)
Your motherboard may vary.
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:2)
Anecdote (Score:2)
On the other hand, a friend went through hell with nForce.
Also, you start off talking about VIA under Linux, then suddenly switch to talking about Asus under Windows as if that's relevant. Huh?
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but my personal experiences were all normal motherboards, with VIA chipsets (not cpus) on board. DMA issues effect motherboards and VIA chipsets, desktop or otherwise.
My recommendation, stay away from VIA until they clean up their act a bit.
Re:ah, more via pain (Score:2)
Sure makes me wary (I've been buying i875 and NVidia NForce lately).
DVI (Score:3, Insightful)
When's the actual release? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:When's the actual release? (Score:2)
too slow to boot (Score:4, Interesting)
Around 30s at the best of times to get to a shell with init=/bin/bash and only a little less if you use the linux bios. Disappointing to say the least, no decent set-top box can take more than 5, maybe 10 seconds to start.
Even using suspend to boot directly into a running system is not going to help since most of this time is going to be spent in the bios.
Not to mention that some boards come with a compact flash, but you can't boot from it! What's the f... point?
Re:too slow to boot (Score:2)
Do you have a TiVo? Do you have any idea how long it takes to turn on a TiVo? Mine (a series 2 DirecTiVo) takes over one minute to boot. My brother's (a series 2 stand alone) takes about the same time.
For something that will stay plugged in for long periods of time, boot time doesn't matter. Turn the thing on, load everything up, and when the user want to "turn it off" you let them put it in standby. Almo
10 seconds? That's a speed demon (Score:2)
Tell that to TiVo and DirecTV. My DirecTiVo takes well over a minute.
Thin clients (Score:2, Funny)
What about those of us who aren't so thin? Have they had problems with the not so thin using their boards?
interview with the CEO (Score:2)
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2656883479.html [linuxdevices.com]
Price? What's the price? Anybody know the price? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They target thin clients ... hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:They target thin clients ... hmmm. (Score:2)
Redefinitions happen all the time in IT, you know?
Re:They target thin clients ... hmmm. (Score:2)
Anyway, these thin client processors can run
Re:They target thin clients ... hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:They target thin clients ... hmmm. (Score:2)
But thank you for pointing me on this, it's realy a word with potential, might come in handy when writing reports!
Re:Why IDE? (Score:5, Informative)
That would explain to me why these machines don't go SATA yet - most people are building their own systems with them, I'd imagine.
No floppy req'd for my Win install on no-RAID SATA (Score:4, Informative)
Some nForce motherboards I've seen have SATA RAID mode enabled in the BIOS by default, which might require a floppy. One motherboard I installed Windows XP on, the Intel D915GUX [intel.com], had the SATA boot option disabled by default in the BIOS. After enabling SATA boot and choosing SATA mode without RAID [intel.com], WinXP w/SP2 installed without a problem.
Maybe SP2 needs to be on the installation CD, but I doubt it because I'm pretty sure I installed Win2000 w/SP4 on a SATA drive (Intel D945GT motherboard) without using a floppy (this was a while ago).
Yes I have (Score:3, Interesting)
Same with my SATA-based Athlon X2 server.
Gentoo 2006.0 was flawless on my new Inspiron E1705.
Re:Why IDE? (Score:2)