Best Quarter use Close by Intel Atom Core 2

Intel Corp Companies in the world’s largest microprocessor maker has just announced their financial performance for the first quarter of 2010. In the report, noted that during the first 3 months of this year, Intel managed to increase their net income amounted to 288 percent compared to last year.”Last quarter was the first quarter of the year as the best ever achieved by Intel during the time,” said Paul Otellini, Intel’s Chief Executive Officer,  Engadget, 15 April 2010.

As a final announcement of the financial report, Intel has also held the latest technology. “The next innovation that we represent from the Atom is dual core, which will be circulated in this second quarter,” said Otellini.As is known, the dual-core Atom processor itself is already available in the market for nettop version of the Atom. Otellini delivered with the announcement, indicated that in the near future, versions of dual core Atom for netbooks will be coming soon.

This announcement also confirms that rumors circulating that Intel is preparing Atom N500 processor platform series to go with Atom netbook D510 is a dual-core processor desktop (nettop).This means that there will be an interesting thing that can be observed in the computer market, particularly in the netbook category in the next few months.

The Asus Server TS500-E6/P4

Asus TS500-E6 P4

The Asus TS500-E6/PS4 is the only dual processor 5U server sold by the manufacturer. The TS500 is sold as a barebones server, so you have to buy it through a reseller. The base price is $699, which is low, considering you can outfit it with two Intel X5500 processors—and remember, that price is before you include processors—or much else. Asus did not provide us with the price for the configured test server, we had to ask a reseller: Colfax sells it with the 24GB of memory that Asus tossed in for $4,450 After factoring the design, management and that price, it’s clear the Asus TS500 is a good deal for businesses that require a super fast server, but it’s not cheap if you want it this fast. Less RAM and a lower price might make it even more attractive.

Design and Setup
The TS500’s tower case (5U) is about the same size as the HP Proliant ML330 G6. By contrast, Dell chose a standard PC case for its PowerEdge T110 server series. Like the HP ML330, the TS500 protects the drive bay with a door. The front bay can house four full-size hard drives. At the bottom right, in an unusual arrangement, Asus placed the audio ports above two USB ports. On the back, Asus kept the old style setup: PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, VGA, serial port, and two USB ports. Finding two Ethernet ports was a nice surprise, especially considering the base price of this server. With two network connections you can do a little more than just run line of business applications. For instance, you can squeeze more horsepower out by running multiple virtual machines, and even segment your network with virtual LANs to manage your VoIP communication or comfortably run Exchange Server by separating the external and internal access to the mail server.

The TS500 I tested arrived with two Intel X5560 quadcore processors, 24 GB of memory and a 1 TB drive. There’s ample room for PCIe cards, a couple of optical drives and an extra drive bay. The motherboard supports eight more drives. A large fan in the back keeps the server cool. The case is large enough to dampen most of the noise from the air flow inside it. For safety, the server includes a power switch for the side panel. Opening the panel triggers the switch and an alert message is generated in the Asus System Web-based Management software (ASWM).

The TS500 is sold barebones, so pricing varies depending on the components you add. The unit I received was configured by Asus, and came without an operating system. After slapping Windows Server 2008 on it, I installed ASWM for management. ASWM integrated well with Windows Server 2008 and was able to discover all components and peripherals.

Management
The ASWM matches some of the functionality of the Dell OpenManage software on the PowerEdge T110, but it has some shortcomings. You can’t manage client connections unless they use the internal VNC server in ASWM. ASWM cannot shutdown the server as easily as OpenManage. There is an agent that you can set up to shut down the server but the options are more restricted. Yet, the interface is friendly and simple to use.

With the ASWM interface you can identify alerts quickly, and set high and low thresholds with graphical sliding bar. The layout of the inventory is intuitive, even for novice administrators. ASWM performs a thorough software inventory of the TS500. You can even stop and start services and track the resources consumed by processes.

Performance
After running Geekbench 2.1 64-Bit on the TS500, I got a whopping score of 14,711. Of course, the two X5560 processors and the 24 GB of memory bumped its performance by a large margin. By contrast, the HP ML 330 with only 8MB of memory and one quad-core CPU scored 5,430 on the same test. We took out DIMMs from the Asus and retested it and still got a great 14,364. With Cinebench R10 64-Bit CPU test, the TS500 managed to top at 26,456 with 24 GB, and did even higher at 28,771 with 8GB; the HP ML330 scored 10,975. Obviously, the dual quad-core processors are doing all the heavy lifting in these tests, less memory didn’t change much.

I also ran the IOzone 3.321 network file system benchmark to test disk I/O and RAID performance. Unfortunately, IOzone could not execute on the command line. It got exceptions every time I ran it. But I saw no other problems with the RAID performance of the server.

Bottom Line
The Asus TS500-E6/PS4 server can certainly run the most demanding line of business applications on the market, as performance tests showed. Moreover, the two Ethernet ports put it on the same level as the HP ML330 for usefulness. The barebones system is an incredible deal, and even over-configured as it came to us, the price of $4,450 isn’t totally outrageous. It’s worth serious consideration for any office that can afford it, but for most might be overkill.

Fujitsu LifeBook P3010 at 2010

Fujitsu P3010

As of this moment, I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of oversized netbooks that are being sold in retail. Oversized netbooks typically have 11 to 12-inch widescreens and have parts with names like Nvidia’s ION, AMD’s Neo, VIA’s Nano, and the most popular of which, Intel’s Atom. Fairly late to the game is Fujitsu’s LifeBook P3010, an 11-inch, oversized netbook that runs on AMD parts, which have an edge in speed over the Intel Atom but trails it in battery life. Even if Fujitsu were to knock down the price from $549, it would still be just an okay netbook.Design  I’m usually a sucker for vibrant colors. The P3010’s shiny red plastics, though plain in design, still grabs a hold of your attention immediately and beats the drab, neutral hues found on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, Samsung NC20 (21GBK), and MSI U210 (008US). Over on the corner of the lid is Fujitsu’s signature infinity logo, which is always a nice finishing touch. It’s a heavy netbook, though, as its 3.5-pound frame outweighs many of its netbook peers, including the Asus EeePC 1101HA (3 lbs), HP Mini 311 (3.3 lbs), and MSI U210 (3 lbs). Only the HP Pavilion dv2-1030us is heavier, tipping the scales at 3.8 pounds.

As with any oversized netbook, the sweet spot is the extra screen real estate. The P3010 has an 11.6-inch widescreen, which not only gives you more to look at than the typical 10-inch ones, but the resolution is higher as well. Case in point: Ten-inch netbooks like the Toshiba mini NB205 and HP Mini 5101 default to 1,024-by-600 resolutions; the P3010, like all oversized netbooks, has a 1,366-by-768 one, or WXGA. Oversized netbooks like the Lenovo S12, Samsung NC20, and MSI U210 have bigger 12-inch widescreens, which you might consider if you want to push this boundary.
Features Another thing that the P3010 can afford to do with a bigger screen (hence, wider dimensions) is put in a full size keyboard. Its keyboard size is comparable to the ones found in the Lenovo S12, Samsung NC20, and MSI U210. In contrast, others in its size class, namely the HP Mini 311, ASUS 1101HA, and HP dv2, top out at 92% of full size. The touchpad seemed agonizingly small at first, but wrapping the chrome mouse buttons around the front bezel, thereby widening the pinch between the thumb and index fingers (used to navigate), made it tolerable. Nevertheless, Fujitsu needs to find a way to increase the size of the touchpad.

The P3010’s other features are average at best. Its most glaring omission is an HDMI port, given that the HP dv2 and MSI U210—netbooks that run on similar AMD parts—are including it. The three USB ports can be found in smaller 10-inch netbooks and 802.11g Wi-Fi seems average, too, when others are bundling 802.11n. Fujitsu is including a 320GB hard drive, though, which gives you more storage than MSI U210’s 250GB drive. Aside from that, it has Bluetooth, a 4-in-1 media card reader, Webcam, an Ethernet and a VGA port.

Performance
To date, I’ve looked at about four netbooks that run on the 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40—a single-core processor and one of AMD’s answers to the Intel Atom. A dual-core Neo is already shipping, but hasn’t shown up in many netbooks. The advantage of using an AMD Neo is that there isn’t a RAM restriction (Intel Atom-based netbooks can only ship with 1GB of RAM, but can be manually upgraded to two), so the P3010 ships with 2GB of DDR2 memory. In terms of raw speed, the Neo is a faster processor than the Atom; its score on our video encoding tests bears this out: The P3010’s 3-minute 56-second score convincingly beat out the Lenovo S12 (4:40), Samsung NC20 (5:30), and ASUS 1101HA (5:32). It has a minor graphics advantage, too, as the ATI Radeon 3200 chipset (with the Neo processor and 2GB of memory) handled high-definition clips (1080p and 720p) reasonably well; at least better than with Intel’s integrated graphics.

As a result of using AMD chips, the P3010 had to sacrifice battery life. As with the MSI U210 (4:13) and the HP dv2 (3:08), the P3010’s 3 hours 25 minutes score on MobileMark 2007 is sufficient enough for a half-day’s work, but falls well short of the 5- to 7-hour scores amassed by the Lenovo S12 (5:19), ASUS 1101HA (6:50), and HP Mini 311 (5:29). Against a smaller netbook like the Toshiba NB205 (8:27), the P3010 gets less than half its battery life.

It’s hard enough to compete as a latecomer, but when you’re priced more than similar netbooks (i.e, the MSI U210 runs for $430), it makes the Fujitsu LifeBook P3010 difficult to recommend. The P3010 does have very good qualities for a netbook, such as speed, ability to playback HD video, and a full size typing experience, but its battery score and price can’t compete with its peers. Consider the MSI U210 and the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 instead.