Ron Johnson wrote:
On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 21:06, Tom Allison wrote:I am getting really curious about these new Via CPU's that work on the micro-ITX systems. I especially like the idea that I can get a very functional machine with only 30W.On the other hand, my 1GHz Athlon plays FPS games well, but sounds like a Boeing 737 is parked 2.5m from my head. So, what's important to you? Speed or silence?
Try 3W, not 30W.But I'm just wondering if this is a little too good to be true. Can I really get a reasonably functional machine from these machines?The primary design goal of these x86 CPUs is low power usage. In fact, they just released a *passively cooled* 733MHz CPU. To obtain this goal, though, the sacrificed speed. Floating point execution is particularly dreadful. So, you won't be playing any 1st person shooters...
Maybe not first person shooters, but the dynamic content on webpages (java applets and macromedia) is desired by many of my subjects..er.. I mean users... and I wouldn't want that to suffer.
My other application is primarily as a web/email server with some cool web stuff. I'm thinking the core software elements would be postfix, spamassassin (spamd/spamc), procmail, postgresql, html::Mason, PHP, squirrelmail... All along that thread of a low volume (unless I get slashdotted) web/mail server for home use and to play with while I figure out more cool things to do with web pages and email.
Currently I am using an Athlon K7 (700MHz) with 768MB RAM and a 20GB HDD for my web/email server. This is very sufficient for anything that I've been doing to date (which isn't much) and would be tickled pink if I could get a Via machine that would be able to perform as a server with the same performance.
What are my chances? -- A shapely CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL is FIDGETING inside my costume..