Logic Supply LGX AG150 Fanless System Review: Cedar Trail or Cedar Trial?
by Dustin Sklavos on May 28, 2012 11:30 PM EST- Posted in
- kiosk
- Systems
- Atom
- Cedar Trail
Conclusion: A Good Product Held Back By Bad Drivers
It's reasonable to suggest that the Logic Supply LGX AG150, given the tasks it was designed to handle, is a successful product. It's designed to draw little power, run quiet and cool, and be as inexpensive to mass produce and sell as possible. While that price tag looks a little bit rough, Logic Supply appears to be willing to offer discounts on orders of multiples, so it's not a done deal. Commercial and industrial applications that just need a low-power x86 box with serial and network connectivity are probably going to find themselves very happy with the LGX AG150.
Where things start to fall apart is the driver situation with Intel's GMA 3650. This single issue is holding back Cedarview from even really reaching basic user experience parity with its predecessor. We're more than four months out from the last driver release from Intel for the GMA 3650, a driver release that doesn't even work anywhere near as well as it should. There's also only one driver for the GMA 3650, and that's for Windows 7 32-bit. This is the kind of box that Linux users should be able to get excited about, but Linux driver support is completely absent. It's at Intel's peril that they ignore that market, because while Joe Average consumers are largely disinterested in Linux, the kinds of users that would be looking at the LGX AG150 may not be.
Ultimately, the Cedar Trail Atom seems to have been unceremoniously dumped on the market while Intel focused the lion's share of their attention on getting Medfield ready to go in smartphones. This isn't a difficult mentality to understand; the smartphone market continues to grow while netbooks and nettops are gradually being eaten away by encroaching competition. What's more, for Windows drivers it's easy to see why Intel might be spending more effort on HD 4000 than GMA 3650. I'm honestly more offended by the fact that a broken product was released to the market, and that it's beginning to seem like Intel is deliberately limiting Atom's performance by refusing to make any changes to the core architecture.
Yes, Atom is slated to go down to 22nm next year and finally get a real update to the CPU architecture; will it be enough for Windows products? Heck, CULV on 22nm with some minor tweaks seems like a no-brainer compared to a rehash of Atom, but CULV even at 22nm wouldn't be fit for smartphone use. And that's the crux of the issue: originally, Atom wasn't integrated enough and small enough to actually make it into retail smartphones; now with Medfield it is, but at the same time that sort of design just isn't fast enough for Windows products.
Where does that leave Cedar Trail? Vendors can only produce kit based on the hardware that's available. The N2600 and N2800 processors are faster on the CPU side than their predecessors thanks to higher clock speeds, and they cost half as much per chip. At sub-768p resolutions it seems like they're not that bad. The problem is that we're at a point where it's not unreasonable to ask for basic functionality at 1080p in Windows 7 from an x86 product, and Intel has left vendors in a tight spot. Do you spend twice as much per chip for last generation kit, or do you release a product with problematic hardware?
If Intel can get the driver situation straightened out with GMA 3650, and I mean straightened out in a major way, then the Logic Supply LGX AG150 (and pretty much all Cedarview-based products) will benefit tremendously. As things stand the LGX AG150 is still a potentially excellent product for its niche uses, but you'll need to know what you're getting into beforehand.
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KZ0 - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Last page: "Atom wasn't integrated enough and small enough to actually make it into retail smartphones; no with Medfield it is, but at the same time that sort of design just isn't fast enough for Windows products."supposed to be " ... now, with Medfield, ... "?
Denithor - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
And another one, fourth paragraph on the last page:The word should be 'crux' not 'crus' (which isn't even a word). Spell check should have caught this one...
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Unfortunately, this was some information I added to Dustin's review in our CMS, which doesn't really have spellcheck in place. Thanks for the catch; the offending typos have been fixed.eanazag - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
We should not be surprised that Intel cannot get a GPU to function correctly on a part that they make less money on than their main parts. When the last 3 generations of Intel IGPs have been additionally handicapped by their software. I have an Core i3 540, which processor side I am very happy with, but on the graphics side I feel like I should have went a different route for.In x86 this is where we are left. We can do the old desktop model and buy an Intel processor with a discrete graphics card and not compromise. Otherwise we are buying a compromise in either direction with Intel and AMD.
I am still perturbed Intel did not license x86 to nVidia. I think things would look a lot different today if Intel didn't try to squeeze nVidia out of as much as they could. Think Ion and chipsets. I really think AMD would be doing better if they didn't do the same thing in chipsets to nVidia. I really don't think there would be serious competition to Apple in the tablet space if Intel would have granted an x86 license to nVidia. Would there be other ARM choices? Yes. But no one would be as successful as pushing a gaming platform as nVidia is with Tegra/Android ecosystem if Android was left to do it on their own.
I really want to commend nVidia on staying relevant. I really thought their ship was going to sink when AMD and Intel kept finding ways to relegate nVidia to only discrete cards.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I disagree on several points with your idea that NVIDIA would somehow make a better x86 CPU than AMD or Intel, and that they could also get all the chipset stuff right. NVIDIA chipsets ranged from decent with a few minor quirks to downright awful at times. I think NVIDIA pulled out of the AMD chipset business voluntarily when they decided they couldn't offer better quality for less money. On the Intel side, they could have continued to offer something, but I'm convinced we're better off with SLI on Intel chipsets rather than NVIDIA locking SLI use to their own chipsets.Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
On that I actually disagree. It's true their chipset business was a little "eh," but nForce 2 was a stone cold killer back in the Socket A days.Lothsahn - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I work with Logic Supply for the enterprise, and they're great. They have excellent communication, solid products (we've had little to no RMA's), and excellent support and customer service. When we did have an issue, they had a person in-house reproduce our issue and solve the problem within a day.Compared to working with other sellers (like Dell), it's a world of difference. They make solid products at slightly higher prices, but you get what you pay for.
We've actually been using a very similar product for 2 years, based off the NF96FL mainboard. While our system isn't quite fanless, Logic supply recommended a specific set of fans that are high reliability, and we haven't had a single failure (>40 deployed systems).
bernstein - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
whats really interesting woud be a comparison with amds atom counterpart e-350, especially in those 3dmarks...aduncanvickery - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I would be interested to see what the Linux performance and support is like for this system. I know a lot of retail outlets use slightly-customized small linux distros for their in-store browsing and internet catalog kiosks. Any thoughts?Lothsahn - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
The PowerVR driver is a mess in linux. Search for "poulsbo linux", and you'll see a lot of information about that. That means the graphics driver problem is likely a huge issue in this model.OTOH, we've been using Ubuntu 10.04 on the NF96FL mainboard (Atom D525) and we haven't had any stability issues at all. We've had ~40 systems deployed, and to my knowledge, haven't had a single crash.