ASUS Eee Box Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
What do you do with this thing?
With most hardware we review it’s very clear what you’d use it for. The GeForce 9800 GTX is a card you’d buy if you want to game and a Core 2 Quad Q9300 is your ticket to faster video encode times, but what would you do with a really cheap desktop PC?
Inevitably the Eee Box will be rejected by many who have no need for it, but if you've ever wanted a PC in your home where it didn't make sense to put a $1000 machine the Eee Box is a potential candidate. The Eee Box, much like the Eee PC, falls into a class of computing devices that are designed to be cheap and “fast enough”. ASUS managed to fulfill both of these requirements with the Eee Box and honestly, it’s tough to get much better at $270.
The Eee Box is a great way to repurpose an old monitor, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse it can be a very clean kitchen PC, 3rd or 4th computer in the house. At the same time, it's quick and functional enough to be a good introductory computer for a relative or child. You don't really make any software sacrifices since it can run the same stuff as a modern day desktop, you just give up some expansion and performance but for a first computer those aren't major concerns.
We suspect that if you have to ask where you'd use the Eee Box then it's definitely not for you. But those who end up buying it will have had a need for it before ASUS ever thought about making it. We're honestly curious: for those of you who are interested in one of these things, leave a comment and let us know how you'd use it.
HTPCeee?
(I know I’m getting a little tacky with the page headers)
The Eee Box uses the desktop implementation of the Intel Atom processor which signifies two things: 1) it uses a desktop chipset, in this case the 945G, and 2) the Atom’s FSB is fused to run in GTL mode and not the lower power CMOS mode.
By using the 945G chipset instead of Poulsbo (the mobile Atom chipset), we lose support for one key feature: hardware H.264/MPEG-2/VC1 decode acceleration. Modern desktop chipsets from AMD and NVIDIA both support full decode of all three of these formats, but nothing from Intel. The Intel G45 chipset is supposed to change things but it is neither available nor cheap enough to be used in something like the Eee Box (the same goes for the AMD/NVIDIA offerings).
Without hardware decode assist for any of the HD video codecs the Eee Box’s Atom processor is left to do all decoding on its own, and unfortunately it’s not fast enough to decode any high bitrate HD video. In our testing we found that the 1.6GHz Atom was fast enough to decode a 4.5Mbps 720p H.264 stream at around 90% CPU utilization; anything more complex and we started seeing dropped frames. 1080p HD movies are completely out of the question. The CPU is fast enough to play 720p XviD/DivX however.
Processing power issues aside, the Eee Box simply lacks the appropriate outputs to make this a viable HTPC. There’s a single DVI output on the back of the Box and a single analog audio output as well; without support for HDMI or digital audio the Eee Box can hardly be considered for any HTPC applications.
What we would really like to see is full hardware decode acceleration in addition to HDMI 1.3 out in a future version of the Eee Box, with that the Eee Box could easily function as a HTPC terminal streaming high definition content over the network. In its current incarnation however, you’ll have to skip the Eee Box if you’re looking for a new HTPC.
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Casper42 - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Gigabit Network with 2 USB Ports means you could make a sidecar that holds a small Power supply and 2 Desktop Drives (1TB Each) and plug them in USB.That gives you a SATA Boot drive and then either 2TB in RAID0/JBOD or 1TB in RAID1
Small enough to not run up your power bill like crazy and yyet still flexible enough to run your OS of choice for the hosting platform and any other little utilities you might want (cough BT Client cough).
erikstarcher - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Looks like it would make a great car pc. hook up a 7" touchscreen to it for control and you are set. I bet it would do music, video (non hd) and gps without a problem. And it won't kill your battery as fast as some other solutions (like the laptop I am now using).Yooshaw - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
This was my first thought - you could really make a killer Carputer with this thing.strikeback03 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - link
I thought that as well, though would almost certainly need a USB audio solution due to lack of other expansion. And the loud fan would be annoying too. I hope some more small devices/components come out for Atom/VIA Nano soon.MooseMuffin - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Splashtop is a killer idea. There's been plenty of times where I've hosed my OS in some way, and this provides a way to still go online and google a solution.LuxZg - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
I agree, and this is one thing that is nice about Eee Box. But since it IS available on other MBOs as well, it's not huge advantage..pnyffeler - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
How does the Atom perform for Remote Desktop and/or any other remote connections, with or without VPN? I just wonder how well this would work for working from home if your company offers such remote options.Martimus - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
I like seeing that Microsoft isn't allowing Windows XP on machines with larger than 80GB HDs. That should help establish a larger foothold for Linux on these types of computers. Of course when marketshare gets bigger, so will the compatibility which means that an alternative OS might actually be feasible. All this caused by Microsoft's attempt to maximize profits in the short term. Looks more like they are shooting themselves in the foot in the long term. I hope this type of computer really catches on and causes Linux or some other OS to really become mainstream.Griswold - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Put a VIA Nano (C8) in that thing and I'm interested. Atom looks like s ure loser (but will be punched through with Intels might) for anything bigger than Intels envisioned MIDs.eeebox - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
People go on about it not being usable as a Media streamer, can't do HD yada yada...but is it powerful enough to be used as a SDTV recorder using a USB DVB-T tuner? I'm not even too fussed about record and play at the same time, simply record. It's been confirmed it can play 4.5Mbps 720p H.264 at 90% and 720p Divx fine so that means it should be able to play SD perfectly fine, so how would it handle the encoding side of it for recording?Seeing as though it'll cost only a little bit more than an average HDD TV recorder I want to get an eeebox for use as a compact low power HDD SDTV recorder with easily replacable HDD and a web browser (Splashtop ftw) and the VESA mounting to the back of a TV is perfect as I use my TV as a monitor.