Socket AM1 (Mobile/Desktop) CPU Low Wattage systems

[DaveLembke]

Been tempted to buy one of these latest Mobile Processing Power Desktop boards that are for AMD, however I have held off until I get more feedback and do more research. According to Tomshardware it seems as though its a repackaged Mobile CPU for Desktop application. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-5350-am1-platform-review,3801.html

I was thinking about going with a Gigabyte Motherboard shown here, although I was surprised that they didnt use the better quality solid state capacitors and it has the cheaper electrolytics: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128696&cm_re=gigabyte_am1-_-13-128-696-_-Product

And as for the CPU, I was thinking of getting the 25 watt 1.6Ghz Athlon Quadcore shown here with 2MB Cache: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113365&cm_re=socket_am1-_-19-113-365-_-Product

The application for this is going to be for a low power consumption workstation that will run very often, but it would also be nice to be able to play games equivilent to what a laptop could handle, however since this board has a PCIE 16x slot, you can throw some good GPU processing power at it, however I am not sure what the maximum GPU you can stuff into this before you cant gain any better performance because of the CPU bottleneck factor?

The most complex game to run on this would be World of Warcraft, which should run fine on this since it can run ok on my daughters old Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT with an ok video card. However there is not much info out there showing benchmark results for this CPU that I linked to know if its better than, equal to, or less than the Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT. My assumption is that it should be better since its a quadcore, but if the cores are 4 weak cores then the quadcore is more of a marketing feature with the quadcore assumption of processing power which may fall way short of expectations.

Has anyone here built one of these Socket AM1 systems to give some feedback on the performance and which CPU you are using?

My intention on building one of these low wattage systems is to get by on less wattage than running a 95watt CPU system and save electricity, so I could cut my power usage by 70 watts per hour possibly. Only a small savings of money, but it all adds up. I have a laptop that is low wattage and can play games, but like the feel of a desktop computer, and the fact that it has a PCIE 16x slot, it means that I have the ability to give it better GPU processing power than what my laptops capable of. If I wanted to, I could just plug the display into the VGA output etc and have desktop keyboard and mouse etc, but if I had a desktop that had the processing power of a laptop CPU and a decent GPU, I think it might work out ok, but there is that uncertainty factor since these AM1's are so new to the market.

[camerongray]

I've never used one but they do look interesting.

The only issue I see is the upgrade path - With FM1 you are really limited to low end CPUs and limited expansion potential, with FM2 you are a bit better but still can't go that high, with AM3+ you can get pretty high end but then you get into power hungry CPUs - With an Intel based platform you can start off with a Celeron and later upgrade to an i7 if you want.  It really depends if this is an issue for you or not.

Also bare in mind that while the slot is physically a x16 slot it is only wired for x4 speed so any sort of decent video card is out of the question.

Interesting to see electrolytic caps on that board - With the CPU being a SoC, it means the motherboards are very simple but it's strange seeing a board released today (especially from Gigabyte) with electrolytic caps.  The larger ones appear to be United Chemi-Con so at least aren't bad but I'd still look at other boards to be on the safe side.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for into info... also... thanks for catching this fine detail that I didn't notice initially.

Also bare in mind that while the slot is physically a x16 slot it is only wired for x4 speed so any sort of decent video card is out of the question.

[Calum]

It's not necessarily out of the question, it's just that some high end cards might be slightly bottlenecked.  I would suspect that they'd be held back by the CPU before the limited bandwidth.