ASUS Eee Box Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Performance
The Eee Box we previewed shipped with 1GB of DDR2-667 and despite the limited memory size, performance was actually surprisingly good under Windows XP. Windows popped up quickly and the OS itself was snappy; the Eee Box’s Atom processor was more than fast enough for single tasking in the OS. If you’re looking for a PC to surf the web, check email, listen to music and watch standard definition videos then the Eee Box running Windows XP is more than sufficient, it’s actually fast. Start multitasking a lot and you’ll want the 2GB upgrade, but again, 1GB is totally fine if you keep your application launching under control.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said for under Vista; while performance between XP and Vista is actually pretty similar within applications, it’s the speed of the UI that really varies between the two OSes. Without Aero, Windows Vista still feels slower than XP despite posting very similar application performance scores. While the Eee Box feels like a fast machine under XP, it feels underpowered when running Windows Vista. Upgrading the memory to 2GB doesn’t have any impact on the feel under Vista either unfortunately.
The Eee Box has no problems running Vista, however we’d strongly recommend against it. The experience is just so much better under XP that we’d suggest keeping Vista on your more powerful machines and leave XP or Linux on the Eee Box.
Power Consumption
Measuring power consumption of the Eee Box is unbelievably simple thanks to a very small difference between idle and load power.
| Phantom Power | Idle Power | Load Power | |
| ASUS Eee Box | 1.2W | 14.5W | 19W |
| Intel Celeron 420 Desktop | 1.2W | 58W | 70W |
The Eee Box consumes 1.2W of power at the outlet when completely turned off, which is pretty high given how low its idle and load power levels are. When sitting idle at the Windows desktop the Eee Box pulls around 14.5W and under load it will peak at 19W.
The Atom processor in the Eee Box is actively cooled using a fan and a very small heatsink connected to the CPU and chipset via heatpipes. While the Atom processor can run without a heatsink, we suspect that the combination of the chipset and the tight operating quarters forced ASUS to use active cooling in the Eee Box. In order to keep costs down however the size of the thermal solution was limited and ASUS ended up relying on a fan to keep the CPU and chipset cool rather than a large heatsink.
Unfortunately during testing the Eee Box was no where near silent, while we could manually reduce fan speed to make the system quiet the BIOS refused to do so by default. ASUS mentioned that there may be issues with the thermal sensor in our unit and the final production systems may be quieter.
Our sample is an early prototype and we expect a final unit by July, but for now ASUS isn’t really capitalizing on the low power consumption of the Atom processor. The Eee Box should be silent and it just isn’t right now.
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sprockkets - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
I guess too, that I would use this computer for a 3rd system, where I just needed to use a computer if my others were in use doing cpu intensive stuff.I have a D20GLY2 for that purpose, except since it has the sis chipset, video support in linux stinks. Having an intel chipset would be great. If it were at the 965/G31 level, it would run compiz great.
Perhaps what I like about it, is that it is a small out of the way computer, good for basic tasks, for most people who need little, and would not suffer from say, the problem when one half of those computer/monitor combo went out, both are rendered useless.
Kishkumen - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Looks like it should be able to handle standard mpeg-2 based 1080i HDTV. I'll probably get one or two to use as MythTV frontends.Visual - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
please re-check the pricing table that you published...you make it clear in the text after the table that the windows model should cost $299, not $269 as the table says now.
feelingshorter - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
1. My parents own a small business. Due to theft, they need a working computer that i can hook up a camera up to that can capture video or images every x number of seconds. Second, they play music at their small business, so i can put MP3s on the machine (no need for high quality sound as it's just classical music). A draw back is that you need a monitor but I have a 19 inch LCD that I can pass along once i upgrade to a 24inch. Also the computer can then be locked in a "web browsing mode" or "media center mode" to allow for people to select the music and surf the web with. At the end of the day, it can be brought to the back of the business and hooked up to the camera system for surveillance (independent systems can cost a lot too but are less versatile than a PC).(At their small business, they are currently using a 5 disc CD changer, which doesn't give enough variety in music, with customers complaining about hearing the same thing over and over. Also, if you continue to play the CDs over and over again, it will overheat! Silver pressed CDs are supposed to be quite reliable but if your playing it for hours at a time, it WILL start to shudder.)
2. At less than 20watts, it will work perfectly as a machine that can be left on 24/7 (or can that not be assumed?). Anyone remember how hot some of AMD's cpu are, 2200+? A desktop that uses less power than the monitor your hooking it up to? I'll buy one just to save money on air conditioning. If not that, it will serve as a good computer in a pool room in your house. Just for our friends to surf the web while you play pool and have a beer. None of my friends really play games. We waste time on youtube and watching comedy, which this PC is powerful enough to do.
All that being said, at $270, which is really cheap already for a PC, some of us would probably rather put that money into a powerful gaming pc ($1300). Having a PC like that, in the pool room in your house for when you have guests over, is worth buying just for the small form factor and low watt usage.
3. You can also hook up a USB hard drive to it, connect the PC to a network and now you have NAS storage for all the PCs in your house.
4. This one is more for businesses. Schools and test taking centers, tutoring centers, and large corporations with stores that uses windows xp as their checkout will love this. I remember when i used to work at Hollister, their seemingly generic and custom touch screen computers they use to check customers out is actually running windows XP beneath it (you would only know if it crashed, which i saw it do and reboot) with custom software. I don't remember the cost per computer but it was ridiculously expensive for what you get (well, the store costs 11 million to open so i guess business can afford it) . This Eee PC will do the job just fine for less watts and $.
I'm also sure there are other uses but its 2 AM.
AMDJunkie - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Because the picture on the front page is always delicious irreverent and most of all, amazing.