Asus will build an AMD Fusion mini-ITX mainboard
IT LOOKS LIKE Asus is designing a mini-ITX mainboard for AMD’s first low-power Fusion chip code-named Ontario.
Details about the motherboard are hard to find. It would appear that Asus wants to put it under the bonnet of home entertainment systems that it has planned, but it could equally end up as part of an EeePC or similar setup.
Word on the street is that AMD’s Ontario chip will have the same power as an Athlon II X2 250U, but with a DirectX 11 graphics chip built in and running on only 18W.
If it can do this then it looks like Ontario will be a viable rival to Atom in the mini-ITX market.
Asus is keeping details of performance or the board’s eventual use close to its chest, although Bit-Tech even applied a Chinese burn to the press officer.
All Asus will say is that it is still early days for its mainboard design. µ
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18 watts for the Graphics chip alone? I get that it’s more powerful than an X3100, but people aren’t building their HTPCs as FPS machines. A high end dual core Atom is 13 Watts FOR EVERYTHING.
AMD, you fail once again.
posted by : Dan, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @Dan
Umm…did you read the article? It’s 18 W for the CPU + GPU + Northbridge. And, given that it will be profoundly more capable than the Atom at pretty much everything , I think it will be quite competitive, in both performance and power.
posted by : Ryan, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @Dan
Boy, can you read? "Word on the street is that AMD’s Ontario chip will have the same power as an Athlon II X2 250U, but with a DirectX 11 graphics chip built in and running on only 18W." 18 watts for everything. I’m not going to argue about the rest you said because i couldnt care less about it, i use a CPU + discrete in my PC and will not use ontario. But man, you gotta start reading more accurately
posted by : StickyGlue, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment Agree
I agree with Dan, but I’m mad as a box of frogs.
posted by : Bob, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment Passive
I hope the final product is passively cooled and the whole thing with disks, 4GB of memory and other IO takes under 60W at full load so I can build that nice, small computer for the little sister moving out of home. The Ontario family should have some "cooler" members as well..
posted by : Anonymous Coward, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @ Anonymous Coward
You may want to look into an Atom-based system. I built a home server using one several months ago and couldn’t be happier. The whole system (including 4 500GB HDDs, minus monitor) only uses 36 watts according to my Kill-A-Watt. The chip is passively-cooled with a big aluminum heat sink, so the only fan in the system is a big 120mm on the rear of the case. It runs cool, even tucked away in a corner under a desk in my home office.
I’ve been thinking about buying another to replace an old Dell P4 I’m using as a HTPC when it finally croaks (which it will. Soon. It’s one of the shoddy Optiplex models they’re being sued over), but this all-in-one solution may be a more viable option.
posted by : Jon, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @dan
Did you get a good paycheck from intel this week?
posted by : AMD Fanboy, 14 August 2010 Complain about this comment atom still sucks for HD
If this system can make a nice HTPC with limited gaming capability, I might be game. And this is just because I deposited my last check from Intel last week. 
posted by : Rob, 14 August 2010 Complain about this comment 
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