Decide for me.

[dave_the_nerd]

Celeron 847 for $75 vs. Atom D2700 for $50. (Newegg.) Going to pair it with a 320GB HDD and 4GB of RAM either way.

Small system for show, mostly - modding an old compact mac case, running Basilisk II to emulate System 7. Might also use it for home server duties. Intending to run Win7 32 or 64 depending on the CPU type. (I understand that Atoms don't like x64.)

Running on my i5, Basilisk is crazy-fast, but it appears to be single-threaded, so the 847 is tempting.

If I bring it to work (a lot of the other IT guys have "hobby" computers or parts on their desks for show, and I'm the competitive sort) it would be used for light office tasks and remote desktop as well.

 

[Jimzz]

The Celeron 847 is better, and worth the extra charge, IMO. Its a Sandy Bridge based CPU. It also supports dual Ch memory.



EDIT
This 847 board comes out to the same price as the MSI AR but has more features...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128585

 

[ShintaiDK]

847 without question.

 

[dma0991]

Celeron 847. Should've made a poll.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks for the feedback. (Sorry about the lack of poll.)

Anything wrong with ECS?

http://www.amazon.com/ECS-Elitegroup...dp/B00B9810U6/

 

[Jimzz]

^

Nothing wrong with ECS but that board only supports single Channel memory and requires so-dim memory (laptop memory).

 

[NTMBK]

Definitely the 847- for what you're talking about it sounds pretty perfect.

 

[daveybrat]

If i had to choose right now, the Celeron hands down.

But if you can wait a little bit, i'd be interested in the new AMD Kabini mini-itx iterations coming out soon.

You can view some of the boards on Anandtech's main page from Computex.

 

[Exophase]

I expect the 847 to have an even larger advantage than usual when running Basilisk II, if it even makes a difference. But if you just want to do things similarly to what an old Mac could do it probably won't matter.

Most Atoms outside the mobile line, including the D2700, are 64-bit.

 

[Jimzz]

If i had to choose right now, the Celeron hands down.

But if you can wait a little bit, i'd be interested in the new AMD Kabini mini-itx iterations coming out soon.

You can view some of the boards on Anandtech's main page from Computex.

Problem looks like he is budget locked and I doubt the Kabini systems will be cheap to start. Heck the E450s are still over $100+ after all this time.

 

[Magic Carpet]

D2700 is a joke, I had one and it was slower than my Pentium 4 rig. Not worth your time.

EDIT:
wPrime 32M 1.55 - ~50s (that's with 4 threads). You can imagine how stellar was its single-threaded performance

 

[VirtualLarry]

If i had to choose right now, the Celeron hands down.

But if you can wait a little bit, i'd be interested in the new AMD Kabini mini-itx iterations coming out soon.

I'm concerned that the Kabini SoC versions only have 2 SATA ports. I miss that Asus C-60 mobo with the six SATA6G ports on it, that was a nifty little mini-server mobo.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks for the advice; pulled the trigger on the ECS Celeron 847 board.

 

[cyrusfox]

I'm concerned that the Kabini SoC versions only have 2 SATA ports. I miss that Asus C-60 mobo with the six SATA6G ports on it, that was a nifty little mini-server mobo.

Offtopic but, plenty of boards have 4 ports for kabini, see below. It may be limited to 4 but pcie sata cards can be found very cheaply.
The Asrock KA5200-ITX has 4 SATA ports.

Also Sapphire's IPC-FT3GT2 mini-ITX motherboard is sporting 4 sata slots.