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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hobbesmaster - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I'm assuming he meant POS as "Point of sale" instead of "piece of s***" The two often go hand in hand, but the issues are usually software!A lot of those systems are moving to USB though from what I understand. Regardless, this should handle an XGA touch screen fine which is probably all its intended to do.
They also list this under automotive, that wouldn't be a bad application either. You'd have a WVGA screen at max there.
beginner99 - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Even though its obviously intels lack of creating useful drivers once more as the producer of a system requiring such a driver i would not buy it if it doesn't work...so Logic IMHO is to blame too at least partially. But it seem to be the trend to release "faulty" products anyway.khimera2000 - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
This review has some nice information, but it leaves so many questions that should not of cropped up. How does it perform against the last generation on both sides? how does it compare to the current generation from its competitor?The last time I checked it was the E-series that AMD marked as there "power efficient line" why is this being compared to an A6? Why was it not compared to an E-450, or at least a E-350? at least these two would be in the same area, and so would be perfect for comparison against an Atom N2800.
Without a point of comparison against other power efficient parts I look at the Data as a wash of useless. there's nothing in there that's relevant if its not seeing how it does against its competition.... and at least in my head that's the E-350, E-450, and VIA's cluster off product offerings.
I don't care who comes out on top, I just want to know how heavy the trade off is at this level of power draw, I want to know if bad drivers can result in a system that has to push hotter then its competiters, I would like to see how far these chips have advanced... also a brief rundown on each companies secret sauce would be a nice touch... refreshers always help :)
Spunjji - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Looks like you beat me to it! ;)I'm guessing the usual caveat of testing the systems they had to hand applies here, but you're right, the comparative data isn't of much use.
Credit where it's due though; this information does at least tell us that Atom is somehow more useless than ever on the desktop.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Bingo! Unfortunately, most of what we have on hand is limited, and I'm pretty sure none of us are interested in buying our own low-end Atom nettops. It's partly a problem of simply not getting enough of these types of systems for review, and when we do get systems they're often sent to different reviewers. Anand has played with a nettop at some point, so have I, and so has Ganesh. Most of those were a year ago or more, though, and so there's not a lot of overlap in the performance results.UrQuan3 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
Wish we could arm-twist LogicSupply a bit for the other review units since they seem to stock AMD E-series and Via Nano systems as well as Atoms.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
For the curious:http://www.silentpcreview.com/Jetway_G-T40E
Pretty much what I'd imagined - Intel win for power consumption and thermals, AMD win for just about everything else. That 28nm shrink of Brazos needs to come sooner.
randinspace - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I think at least part of the answer to your question lies in the fact that Logic Supply themselves seems strangely (tragically? misguidedly?) married to the Atom if Brazos' presence in only one of their fanless systems is any indication.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
A comparison to / mention of Brazos would have been nice, what with it being the prime competitor in this market! I'd really like to know how Intel's update changes the performance stakes, as Brazos was never that far ahead on the CPU side to begin with. I understand that you may not have had a system to hand but some passing comment would be lovely.silverblue - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Brazos is a fine competitor, however it'd be an unfair comparison as you mentioned above because of its higher power consumption and temperatures. Brazos-T is on the way which should improve on that.Ironically for AMD, Brazos is much faster at single threaded workloads than Atom; it's only when Atom's HT is leveraged that the two get much closer.