09:20 – Yesterday I finally got around to building a new system on the Intel Atom motherboard I ordered a couple of months ago. Ultimately, that’ll be Barbara’s new system, but for now it’s sitting in the den next to my end table. I want to get the kinks worked out before I move it to her office and reclaim the hex-core beast she’s using now. For an extremely low-end processor, the Atom does pretty well. It probably doesn’t hurt that it’s a quad-core model. I installed 4 GB of RAM, which is the most that it accepts. Performance for web browsing and email is snappy, and that’s all Barbara does most of the time. It’s running Kubuntu 12.04 LTS. Just for the heck of it, I may blow that away and take a look at Linux Mint.
We’re still getting stuff cleaned up upstairs and moving components downstairs, but we’ve already made a lot of progress. Barbara wants to have the library/living room cleaned out today, as well as the foyer. We’ll get that done, except that there’ll be a stack of boxes in the foyer awaiting pickup tomorrow by USPS.
I did not know that anyone was using atoms for desktop systems. I did not see any quad core atoms at amazon? I read an article a while back that the Microsoft cloud is built using atom cpus for low power requirements and heat insensitivity.
My new standard cpu for desktops is the I5-3570K:
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B007SZ0E1K/
I am using the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard which has very good graphics unless you are a serious gamer (way good enough for business):
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-CrossFireX-NVIDIA-Motherboard-GA-Z77X-UD5H/dp/B007R21JK4/
And 16 GB of ram ($100) with Windows 7 Pro x64. Runs like a banshee with a SSD drive (Intel 520s are awesome but the 330s are cheaper). Of course, we are running a huge customer database that eats ram like crazy. If you are just using the desktop as a terminal then you probably do not need much.
BTW, old Cringe has a good column entitled “Windows 8, Users 0”:
http://www.cringely.com/2012/08/30/windows-8-users-0/
He thinks that Windows 8 Service Pack 1 will bring the start button back and I agree.
I thought it was a dual-core, but the system information shows four CPUs. Possibly two of those are virtual.
Atoms use a different instruction set than x86. Because of that, the guys on the Rivendell forum cannot get it to work on Atoms, yet.
My Asus netbook has a dual core Atom in it running Windows XP x86 so I believe that it has the same instruction set as the regular Intel cpus. That netbook will run 6 to 8 hours on a single battery charge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom
BTW, I got my Windows 7 Pro x64 pc running as a server crash problem fixed! I looked at the error log and found event 2017 for the nonpaged memory pool in it. I have applied the following fix and so far it is running well:
http://alan.lamielle.net/2009/09/03/windows-7-nonpaged-pool-srv-error-2017
BTW, your Atom cpu may be hyper-threaded. My i7-2600K cpu is hyper-threaded with 4 cores so Windows 7 x64 pro reports 8 threads in the Windows Task Manager.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom
reports that some of the Atom Cedarview cpus are hyper-threaded as well as x64 capable.
Yeah, I misrepresented the problem. It had to do with 32 vs 64-bit architecture. Here’s the relevant section from that Wikipedia article:
===QUOTE
Atom implements the x86 (IA-32) instruction set; x86-64 is so
far only activated for the desktop Diamondville and desktop and
mobile Pineview cores. The Atom N2xx and Z5xx series Atom models
cannot run x86-64 code.
===/QUOTE
The forum problem was in trying to run the latest Rivendell appliance disk release (which is on 64-bit CentOS), using one of the Atom processors that does not support 64-bit. But surely, if you have mulitple cores and hyperthreading, it is going to support 64-bit.
Sorry about the misleading info.