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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zeo - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
Imagination never supported open source drivers for their GPUs, and 3rd party driver support tend to be messy to begin with... The Intel based GMA's though have typically provided Linux support.While Intel also supports initiatives like the Tizen OS.
Fortunately, Intel will be going back to their own GMA with the next generation ATOMs.
While Nvidia may be offering something with their Kepler series, as it's suppose to have versions that can go as far down as being included in Smart Phones. So a updated version of the Nvidia ION may not be out of the question.
randinspace - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
I was just looking at Logic Supply's website. I'm not surprised that they sent you guys a "new" platform for testing since they have no reason to do anything other than push their existing customers to upgrade, but I am surprised that they only offer a single AMD fanless solution when they're still offering Core 2 Duo ones. I can almost see a case for seemingly offering mobile C2D (I didn't double check but I was assuming these were the ones that had the onboard GPUs from nVidia) instead of Fusion in their Linux systems as well if only because Apple (indirectly) got away with it but... I simply couldn't find a product on their website that made sense to me from top to bottom, or which even more importantly actually made sense to buy from them instead of someone else. The msi products, for instance.Of course now that I've considered all that at least it finally makes sense why they approached you guys about doing a review that's not even aimed at enthusiasts let alone consumers in the first place.
[My last sentence looks strange to me so just to clarify: I'm not trying to accuse you guys of anything aside from UNbiased reporting, I'm just saying that in the absence of compelling products Logic Supply looks like they could stand any kind of buzz related to their band. Since this review at least inspired me to check their website maybe that wasn't a bad idea on their part?]
ericgl21 - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
Latest graphics driver I found for Atom Nx00 is v8.14.8.1077, dated 2012/06/03.It is for the following devices:
VEN_8086&DEV_0BE0
VEN_8086&DEV_0BE1
VEN_8086&DEV_0BE2
VEN_8086&DEV_0BE3
Download from here:
http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GRAPHICS-BOARD/IN...
speculatrix - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
gma500 used the PowerVR SGX 535, which was a disaster; the driver was closed source and not great quality, developed by Tungsten Graphicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA500#GMA_500
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am...
Tungsten Graphics was bought by VMWare. Chances are there's noone left who helped develop the driver, and probably noone who has authority to open source it. I did try contacting vmware to ask about what happened but noone (wanted) responded.
name99 - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link
"Despite being the third generation of Atom processor from Intel, performance per core and per clock has essentially stood still since the very first Atom was introduced, and it continues to do so. Other than the single-core and dual-core models, Atom is about making a very small, inexpensive, low power x86 chip. The 32nm shrink that the N2800 represents is all about reducing power consumption further still, which is how we can get two x86-based cores with a combined TDP of just 6.5 watts....
Unfortunately, there's a rub. ... Intel was having problems getting the GMA 3650 working properly in Windows. "
All this, IMHO, simply reinforces my point all along regarding ARM vs Intel.
Yes, Intel has astonishing logic and process engineers. But they cannot change the fact that the full x86 package (and that is what Intel has decided Atom will ship with) is insanely complex. It took 7 years to move Nehalem from idea to shipping product, and that's only going to get worse.
Meanwhile ARM is much more agile, able to move from A8 to A9 to A15 micro-architecture during the time Intel has stood still, and ARM seems to be a lot more willing to let the past go. They've specifically stated that the ARM-64 instruction set is based on all the lessons they've learned over the past years about what works and what doesn't, and that basing it on the existing 32-bit instruction set was not a priority where that did not make sense. Of course the first few rounds of ARM-64 CPUs will carry 32-bit baggage, but I imagine that will be dropped as soon as those aggressive customers with substantial control over the code their devices run (*cough* Apple *cough*) are willing to do so.
powerarmour - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
There is also a rumour it seems that Intel won't have any GMA 3600/3650 drivers ready for Windows 8 either...Imagine buying a Cedar Trail tablet in the bizarre hope that you'll be able to run the latest and so called greatest on it from Redmond, and be faced with basically a buggy mess due to the current Windows 7 drivers (even the latest 1077 version will downright crash the system if you attempt to run a Metro apps)
This is bad stuff, very very bad...
Xbit labs did a review of their own also :-
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/atom-...
2D performance is simply dreadful and unacceptable, this is epic fail pure and simple. And they have the nerve to sell these to the public?