The Battle of Bay Trail-D: GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V and ASUS J1900I-C Reviewed
by Ian Cutress on October 17, 2014 10:00 AM ESTConclusion: The Motherboards
With only a few dollars separating our two candidates, one might imagine that they would act very similar to each other and you end up buying more for the brand over the capabilities. To a certain extent that is true, but these boards actually differ quite a lot in terms of their functionality. It all comes down to what extras each manufacturer decided on. The GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V goes with two network ports, a PCI slot, a DVI-D port and a USB 3.0 hub, whereas the ASUS J1900I-C has a single network port, a PCIe 2.0x 1 slot, a HDMI port and fan controls. The best way to compare ends up as a rundown of the feature set:
| GIGABYTE vs. ASUS, J1900 mini-ITX | ||
| GIGABTYE J1900N-D3V | ASUS J1900I-C | |
| Network Ports | 2 | 1 |
| USB 2.0 Ports | 2 | 6 |
| USB 3.0 Porrts | 4 | 1 |
| PCIe 2.0 x1 | 0 | 1 |
| PCI | 1 | 0 |
| Mini-PCIe | 1 | 1 |
| Digital Display | DVI-D | HDMI |
| BIOS Visuals | Text | Designed |
| Fan Controls | No | BIOS + OS |
| Update BIOS in BIOS | No | Yes |
| Control Network Priority | No | Yes |
On the performance side of the equation, almost nothing splits these two boards. CPU results are all very similar, they draw almost the same power from idle to load, but it can be said that the ASUS has the upper hand for POST times and DPC Latency. Both motherboards seem to match each other on audio quality and USB speed.
One area where the J1900I-C surpasses the J1900N-D3V is in the BIOS and software packages. ASUS has this squared down with an easy to understand menu, extensive fan controls and a tool to update the BIOS from within the BIOS. The fan controls in the OS software fully test the fans, and we even get a form of Network management control. In contrast to the GIGABYE board, the BIOS is flat with plenty of confusing options. The GIGABYTE’s software is a little better, but still nothing to direct the fans.
On the counter argument, the GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V is more equipped for network connectivity and USB 3.0. While the four USB 3.0 ports are coming from a hub, the idea here is not for simultaneous access – it allows four high speed devices to be connected at once and when one is needed on its own, it gets the full bandwidth. The only downside here is that for the ASUS and the GIGABYTE boards the on-disk drivers had trouble initializing USB 3.0 on Windows 7, so the latest drivers are needed. ASUS would also argue, in terms of functionality, that a HDMI and PCIe 2.0 x1 would be more welcome for more people than a DVI-D and PCI slot.
The conclusion about which board to buy comes down to common sense. As a day-to-day product for home use, the ASUS would be my choice as the better experience especially if the user had to deal with fan controls or USB 3.0 boost. That being said, the four USB 3.0 ports on the GIGABYTE is a difficult one to concede as it could be very useful for connected devices that require bandwidth. If the BIOS and Software packages were updated to include fan controls, and the BIOS went into GIGABYTE's 'Classic' EFI style, it would probably swing me towards the GIGABYTE. However, for embedded applications that requires increased network connectivity or PCI, the GIGABYTE targets that market well, with the ASUS focusing on HDMI/PCIe.
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KWIE - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
I actually love this little platform - I went for the ASRock Q1900-ITX as I needed four SATA headers to use it as the base for a FreeNAS box with Plex installed in a jail (FreeNAS booting from USB and 4-drive mirrored/striped with ZFS). It works absolutely wonderfully and the only thing I can hear is the drives. For around 200 euros I was able to buy this, BitFenix Prodigy case, 8GB RAM etc. etc. etc. and I was able to move the drives out of my main rig which now doesn't have to be on 24/7, saving more than the thing is worth a year in power (my main rig idles at around 100W - this idles at 14W. Going on a 24/7 calculation and with prices in Germany (25c per KWh) this means I'm saving around 184 a year). Can't complain in the slightest.llisandro - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
Ian, I was really hoping to see Anandtech's usual "Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks" on these guys, bummer. I would assume people care more about HTPC-centric benchmarks than raw CPU power on these kinds of systems.friikazoid - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
I have a question for those of you, who have experience building with these(/similar) boards.Would any of you be willing to post your complete builds with these? As in the case, memory, drives you chose? I've been building standard desktops for years, but would really like to try a small experiment with one of these. I'll be honest though, I don't have as much time on my hands now as I used to to do some research. So if anyone has suggestions on how to put a small cheap system together with these, I would appreciate it?
For example, do you guys go for HTPC/mini-ITX type cases? Typical PSU or use extrenal brick? Any cases work better than others? Have any fun tricks with hardware, etc. to make things work?
I was thinking something like this could be really fun with an immersion liquid cooled system. Not for performance obviously, just for the effect, haha.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
I used a M350 Universal Mini-ITX enclosure and an 80Watt Pico PSU, because that was the first one to include the required 12V connector. External brick is a 60Watt type. Both the Pico PSU and the brick are overspec'd but there is nothing lower available. For this board idle power is 10Watts the dual Core variant with a little less hardware did 6.3 Watts so the Pico PSU/Brick combination doesn't seem too bad. Certainly an onboard PSU with an 19V supply would be more elegant.I used 2 4GB Kingston Value RAM DIMMs, which need to be 1.35V low power.
For storage I took an older C300 256GB from Crucial that was lying around, because the major aim was a silent desktop.
The system is 100% silent and sufficiently fast enough for all desktop like activities. I've tried Windows 7 and 8, CentOS 6+7, Fedora 20 and Android x86 with good success and support.
It's so uncomplicated and stable it's downright boring.
schizoide - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
Asus and HP Chromeboxes are regularly available for ~$135. They have Haswell celeron CPUs, which are much, much faster than these atoms. For that price you also get a case, 2GB RAM, a 16GB M2 SSD, and wifi. Oh, and it has a HDMI port. Out of the box they make amazing HTPCs-- install openELEC and you're good to go with XBMC or Plex.Everything is fully upgradable, if you want to replace the RAM and SSD you can do so. They work 100% fine in linux and can run windows too, although you do need USB audio for that as no drivers work. The chromeboxes aren't fanless, but they are very, very quiet.
Given that the chromeboxes exist at that price point, I can't figure out what consumer need these atoms really fill.
Shiitaki - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
I happen to be using an quad core Atom for my HTPC, but only to get the Nvidia GPU that is part of the motherboard.In any other scenario it is better to buy the least expensive motherboard and desktop processor. For 20 or 30 bucks more you get far better performance, better connectivity, etc. The ITX is a great idea, but the premium on the parts, and practical considerations like connecting hard disks make it less useful than it would seem.
If I am building a NAS, then I should use a motherboard with 6 SATA and a power supply with enough connectors. If I'm building a media center pc, software decode is still the best, most comapatible, and future proof. And that will take something better than an Atom.
Between Intel holding the Atom back at the beginning, and the aggressive pricing of the core cpus, the Atom is hard to justify since the cost savings is so small when you consider the cost of the entire machine.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
Excellent article. This makes it clear that I wouldn't replace my Core i3-3225 in my home theater PC, but the Gigabyte board with its dual NICs would make an incredible platform for Sophos free home firewall appliance with UTM.http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/so...
It's limited to fifty IPs (fine for home) but something like this gives you a big boy's toy for experimenting with LAN configurations, using your home as a lab.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
Some additional data you may find useful:The nominal clock rates seem to be for marketing purposes mostly and might have been hard limits in the previous generation (J1850 and J1750): I've never seen them in practice.
The J1900 and J1800 parts are officially listed as 2.41 or 2.58 Turbo frequencies, but contrary to Haswell U-type CPUs they hit and sustain that speed constantly under load and they drop to 1.3GHz on idle.
Same with the GPU speeds, which will sustain the maximum specified speeds as J1900/J1800 parts.
I've run Prime95 for hours on the J1900 without it ever dropping below 2.41 GHz. When I add FurMark for the GPU, it will start lowering down, once it reaches the throttling temperature configured in the BIOS (or the internal hard limit). That combination reached 28 Watts behind the PSUs (Pico-ATX & external 12V brick), while idle for was around 10 Watts for the GA-J1900N-D3V and 6.3 Watts for a GA-J1800N-D2H (maximum power there was 22 Watts).
The J1800 couldn't be pushed to throttle nor any higher than 60°C with any combination of Prime95 and Furmark nor wourld it ever use any frequency below the "Turbo" setting.
The J1900 reached the 80°C throttle I had configured in the BIOS after hours of running Prime95 and Furmark in combination inside a M350 Universal Mini-ITX enclosure by Mini-Box Black.
No CPU or Graphics benchmark alone will ever get there, you'd need both so I'm confident it never throttles during normal use. Using the exact same passive cooler on both devices may not be optimal, but the 10 Watt TDP figure on both J1900 and J1800 is simply misleading: The two devices never use the same power under load or idle.
At 2.41 GHz the J1900 reached about 80% of the speed of a Core2 based QX9100 at 2.4 GHz using 18 Watts instead of 58 Watts on POVray and CineBench 15 CPU (no GPU) loads: The IPC is pretty impressive and these are full CPU cores, not hyperthreads or partial clusters sharing FPUs or decoders.
The DVI connector carries full audio signals and with an DVI to HDMI dongle you have full HDMI functionality including HDCP. 1980x1200 resolution works with DVI and VGA, but might not with HDMI.
I found it hard to gauge, where the almost 4 Watts of idle power difference between the two Gigabyte boards came from (10 vs. 6.3).
CPU-Z always reported similar power figures for the quad J1900 and the dual J1800 under load and idle, while the power meter behind the PSU showed twice the increase when the quad CPU was loaded vs. the dual.
It leads me to believe that CPU-Z measures power figures only on one of the two J1900 dual clusters: No idea wether this is a software bug or and LPC bug.
Apart from dual vs. quad CPU the J1900 hold the Renesas USB hub chip and the extra Ethernet port. Deactivating the second Ethernet port (or in fact both) mode no difference whatsoever on idle power which leaves either the USB hub itself or simply signals that the 2nd CPU complex doesn't shut down completely, while the system is idle.
This review could have provided a clue with some careful idle power comparison between these boards: An opportunity missed!
If the extra CPU complex is the culprit (hard to imagine, actually) a J1800 might be the better choice for desktop work, where the two extra cores of a J1900 won't find anything useful to do.
I can't see too many people using a J1900 doing Linux kernel compiles or even Android builds, but there the two extra cores might actually be useful.
I wanted a completely silent system first of all and worried somewhat less about the last Watt of idle power consumption. One use case other than (or in addition to) silent desktop would be a firewall, home server and SIP telephony appliance and in that case the extra CPU cores allow for a little more headroom.
As would an extra 8GB of DRAM, which is not supposed to work according to Intel, but simply does if you buy an ASRock branded J1900, which simply support 16GB!
Most likely it's an Intel market segmentation limitation and not a technical obstacle, but your BIOS most likely needs to support it, too.
artk2219 - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
I just wanted to post this here. Dualcore sandy bridge cpu, m-itx, m-pcie, it can run a laptop display, msata, runs off a 19v powersupply from a dell or hp, and uses sodimms in case you have any laptop memory around. For 52 dollars.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
GlauberReis - Sunday, November 20, 2016 - link
Does it j1900 it's good to development java, javascript, frameworks and database ?