I received my VIA VT310-DP motherboard on Wednesday (March 12). However, I had some problems with booting it. I probably don't have any computers which worked flawlessly from the start. This motherboard was no exception. After I assembled my computer, it booted (fans were working), however, there was no view in the monitor. Firstly I thought that it was a RAM issue but in the end it appeared that PSU of the small case couldn't deliver enough power (Update: see a post above. A reason is not the power shortage but -5V feed). It is quite strange because the motherboard requires only 90-120W PSU. That case has 250W PSU. So, I have to use a full PSU now that it is not good for power usage. This was not the only problem with this motherboard. Then I was assembling it I noticed that I can't connect front panel audio connector because it is not compatible with pins on the motherboard. I perhaps will buy external audio card to solve this problem...
Microsoft Windows XP installed in less than 30 minutes (into SATA hard drive). Almost all hardware (chipset, network, video and so on) wasn't recognized by Windows, I needed to install drivers. Another day appeared that USB was working only 1.1 speed. I needed to change some option in BIOS. If I make shared memory disabled than motherboard hangs on POST test (I installed PCI video card). The only way to escape that reset the BIOS. USB mouse and keyboard support is disabled in BIOS by default. CPUs temperatures are quite high from the start (48-50 Celsius). They rise to 57-64 on full load. But it can be due to their small size. CPU's cooling system consists of a small heat sink (54,5x40mm) and 40x40mm fan on it. I changed default loud fan with the fan made by Titan which is much more quieter, however, I noticed that temperatures was 1-3 degrees higher on idle. Eden-N processors support PowerSaver 3.0 (something like AMD Cool'n'Quiet and Intel SpeedStep) feature, however, I didn't find any driver for it. There is only PowerSaver utility which changes CPU frequency for the second CPU only. What is more, Windows hangs after multiplier reaches 4.5 (default is 7.5). It also hangs after multiplier starts to go up again. So this utility wasn't useful at all and I couldn't use PowerSaver feature.
What about performance? Yes, it is much slower that my Athlon 3400+ system but it is not terrible. The system is usable and quite responsive. I can watch films, do office tasks, browsing, watching photos and and so on without any problems. And the system is almost silent. However, I can't watch HDTV video rips at all. I hoped that GeForce 6200 would solve this, however, I probably need something like HD2400Pro with UVD. I don't know if I'll manage to get it (and need PCI version) and if it really helps (though, CPUs usage don't go higher 80%, so I think that hardware acceleration from video card should help). I changed quite slow Adobe Acrobat Reader with Foxit Reader and it works very well and fast. I will try to change Mozilla Firefox with K-Meleon, however, Firefox is not very slow too, just K-Meleon seems more responsive and less memory hungry right now. If you use Skype, you need to install it without extras support or otherwise SkypePM.exe will use about 50% of all your CPU resources (one CPU) all the time. My e-mail client for a long time is Sylpheed and it works fast too. There is one application where you will see that this processors are much slower. It is Folding@home distributed computing project. While my Athlon64 system working on 70% of its computing power makes one percent in about 28 minutes this system (each CPU) needs several hours and more at least using all 100% of its power. I still need more time to test some other resource hungry applications (for example, java based ones). CPU and memory tests showed very slow FPU performance and quite slow memory system bandwidth (these are known problems with C3 CPUs).
That's all for now. I will write more about it in other posts in the future.
You can find more photos here.
Microsoft Windows XP installed in less than 30 minutes (into SATA hard drive). Almost all hardware (chipset, network, video and so on) wasn't recognized by Windows, I needed to install drivers. Another day appeared that USB was working only 1.1 speed. I needed to change some option in BIOS. If I make shared memory disabled than motherboard hangs on POST test (I installed PCI video card). The only way to escape that reset the BIOS. USB mouse and keyboard support is disabled in BIOS by default. CPUs temperatures are quite high from the start (48-50 Celsius). They rise to 57-64 on full load. But it can be due to their small size. CPU's cooling system consists of a small heat sink (54,5x40mm) and 40x40mm fan on it. I changed default loud fan with the fan made by Titan which is much more quieter, however, I noticed that temperatures was 1-3 degrees higher on idle. Eden-N processors support PowerSaver 3.0 (something like AMD Cool'n'Quiet and Intel SpeedStep) feature, however, I didn't find any driver for it. There is only PowerSaver utility which changes CPU frequency for the second CPU only. What is more, Windows hangs after multiplier reaches 4.5 (default is 7.5). It also hangs after multiplier starts to go up again. So this utility wasn't useful at all and I couldn't use PowerSaver feature.
What about performance? Yes, it is much slower that my Athlon 3400+ system but it is not terrible. The system is usable and quite responsive. I can watch films, do office tasks, browsing, watching photos and and so on without any problems. And the system is almost silent. However, I can't watch HDTV video rips at all. I hoped that GeForce 6200 would solve this, however, I probably need something like HD2400Pro with UVD. I don't know if I'll manage to get it (and need PCI version) and if it really helps (though, CPUs usage don't go higher 80%, so I think that hardware acceleration from video card should help). I changed quite slow Adobe Acrobat Reader with Foxit Reader and it works very well and fast. I will try to change Mozilla Firefox with K-Meleon, however, Firefox is not very slow too, just K-Meleon seems more responsive and less memory hungry right now. If you use Skype, you need to install it without extras support or otherwise SkypePM.exe will use about 50% of all your CPU resources (one CPU) all the time. My e-mail client for a long time is Sylpheed and it works fast too. There is one application where you will see that this processors are much slower. It is Folding@home distributed computing project. While my Athlon64 system working on 70% of its computing power makes one percent in about 28 minutes this system (each CPU) needs several hours and more at least using all 100% of its power. I still need more time to test some other resource hungry applications (for example, java based ones). CPU and memory tests showed very slow FPU performance and quite slow memory system bandwidth (these are known problems with C3 CPUs).
That's all for now. I will write more about it in other posts in the future.
You can find more photos here.
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