Intel D945GSE vs Zotac ION ITX

[Vincent Hoffman]

On 04/04/2010 22:54, Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> --->> Cc: me when replying, as I'm not subscribed. <<---
>
> I cross-post this reply to freebsd-hardware@ since the result of my
> little study around Atom-based motherboard may be of interest for
> readers of this ML too.
>
> On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 03:00:09PM -0600, Tim Judd wrote:
>   
>> On 4/4/10, Jeremie Le Hen <jeremie at le-hen.org> wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> --->> Please Cc: me when replying, I'm not subscribed. <<---
>>>
>>> I plan to purchase a Zotac motherboard with a embedded ATOM processor.
>>> It uses an NVidia chipset.
>>>
>>> http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-ionitx-f-e-atom-n330-1-6ghz-dual-core-mini-itx-intel-motherboard.html
>>>
>>> My intent is to build a small NAS with ZFS and NFS/CIFS.  I'd like to
>>> know if anyone successfully ran FreeBSD on this motherboard and what
>>> performance could be achieved, especially if ZFS is used.  I checked the
>>> archives without luck.
>>>       
>> A NAS w/ ZFS, NFS and CIFS/SMB, doesn't need any feature of the ion
>> chipset.  Why are you electing for this board if you're not running
>> any graphical environment?
>>
>> And ZFS is memory hungry, the Atom is a i386-like chip, so you'd have
>> too much overhead with ZFS.
>>     

Actually I run a zotac atom board, forget the model just of hand but can
look it up tomorrow if you like, Its amd64 so zfs should be viable, I
dont run it though.

CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU  330   @ 1.60GHz (1601.61-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x106c2  Stepping = 2
 
Features=0xbfe9fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x40e31d<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE>
  AMD Features=0x20100800<SYSCALL,NX,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  TSC: P-state invariant
real memory  = 4294967296 (4096 MB)
avail memory = 3356155904 (3200 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <050809 APIC1106>
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 HTT threads
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  1
 cpu2 (AP): APIC ID:  2
 cpu3 (AP/HT): APIC ID:  3


>> I think you've elected the wrong board for your purposes.  Will
>> FreeBSD run on it?  yes.  I have freebsd on another atom N-series ASUS
>> box.
>>     
> Yeah, you are right.  I should have mentionned that I do not want
> necessarily a high-performance NAS, it's for home use so my premary
> concern is the low power consumption.  This is why I want an Atom-based
> motherboard.  By the way, I found an post on OpenSolaris forums where
> the author achieves something like 35MB/s on a ZFS filesystem through
> CIFS using an Intel Atom-based motherboard [1].  This is enough for the
> use I intend to have.
>
> Zotac mobo is better than Intel D954GSE because it provides a wireless
> interface - although I couldn't figure out which chipset yet, so I don't
> know if it's corretly supported on FreeBSD - and three S-ATA connectors.
>
>   
The zotac board I have is atheros
ath0: <Atheros 9280> mem 0xfebf0000-0xfebfffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci4
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: AR9280 mac 128.2 RF5133 phy 13.0

which is working fine for me (8.0-RELEASE)

Hope that helps a little.
Vince

> I'm still not sure about which motherboard to buy actually.  After some
> additional reading, my leaning seems to go towards Intel's one as it is
> less expensive and consumes half the power of the Zotac's one (13W with
> a HDD [2] vs. 25W [3]).  I can live with two S-ATA connectors and I can
> plug a wireless interface on the available PCI connector if I ever need
> it.
>
> Regards,
>
> [1] http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-discuss/2009-June/048214.html
> [2] http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2009/06/hands-on-whs-build-with-intel-d945gsejt.html
> [3] http://www.anandtech.com/show/2765/12
>