Ubuntu and the Intel Atom 330 Processor

[Odd]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi, all!  I'm thinking of building myself a small desktop system using
>> a rather inexpensive ITX-form factor mobo-CPU combo from Newegg which
>> has the Intel Atom 330 processor.  This is the 2GHz dual-core Intel
>> Atom, the one that's only just now starting to show up in netbooks and
>> a new nettop from Acer.  Its got 2 SATA, 1 IDE, 4 external USB 2.0
>> ports plus a header for a front side ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1
>> audio, the Intel GMA 950 GPU, but no PCIe just one 32-bit PCI slot.
>> It can support up to 2GB of RAM which for Ubuntu is more than plenty
>> enough.
>>
>> I'm wondering, has anyone on this list had experience with Ubuntu
>> running on Intel Atom processors?
> 
> I'm running such a box as a prototype for something I'm working on. It
> runs sweetly on 8.04 but won't even boot Linux Mint 5.1 from CD, which
> suggests some subtle incompatibility with this somewhat aged code.
> 
> I don't like Atom chips & don't recommend them. They were meant for
> small cheap battery-powered devices. For a mains-powered computer,
> they make no sense at all. They're deliberately underpowered,
> poorly-specified and do not give good value for money.

I agree

> Cheap does not mean good value. Look at the Celeron chips, another
> range of cheap & nasty cut-down and crippled Intel CPUs.

And yet contemporary Celerons, while being crippled, are much
faster than the Atom. That just shows how much it sucks. The
only thing it has going for itself is battery life.

> If you are on a really tight budget, I'd go with an older, 2nd-hand
> chip or system. A late-model Pentium 4 will be a lot quicker and
> probably cost less, though it will run hotter and be noisier.
> Alternatively, if you must have new, I'd go for a low-end AMD Sempron
> or something. Modern versions of these are not cut-down & crippled
> like the lackluster Duron; the Sempron is just a rebadged Athlon XP,
> basically. They're cheap, fairly quick & fully 64-bit. I'm typing on
> such a box right now with a 2100GHz chip in it, and performance is
> very acceptable - *notably* better than my 1.6GHz Pentium-M notebook.
> Yet it was about the cheapest AMD chip we could get.
> 
> Atoms sort of make sense in netbooks; not anywhere else, for my money.

I agree.

-- 
Odd