[toehser]

@LB06:

The beauty of having a remote with a mini keyboard and touchpad available, (the fantastic http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VAVC26), is that I can, if I want, run a vncviewer to control a virtual session on a server, or chromium-browser to check something, or audacious or vlc if I want their features, or audacity to record from the USB-attached turntable, or pop up a terminal window to pull from git and re-build xbmc if I don't feel like getting up off the couch to go to another machine from which to ssh or vnc into the machine. Even sometimes, I just exit xbmc and launch boxee. Why not run the desktop? The machine has the horsepower... Now, I will grant you, Lubuntu or XUbuntu might be a better (lighter) choice...

On choosing between them it would be hard for me to care about the 12 watts based on electricity cost, but, I would extrapolate that it makes the machine that much hotter and/or louder in general, keep this in mind...

On the AMD support issue, my understanding is that it isn't totally clear-cut who is better, NVidia writes better Linux drivers, but AMD I think publishes more information for open source driver writers, who just haven't come forth yet with comparative drivers.

@pingadam:

The truth, for me, is that I would never personally use either of these machines as a general purpose server machine, they both are too underpowered, and don't have enough expansion options... my media lives on an E8400 Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 8Gig RAM, 10TB RAID-5, which averages only 75 watts - ish, that is up 24/7... But, I can see it might be a toss up if you don't care about the HD playback issues. I'm not kidding when I say I like the green circle better, and I respect the 12 watt difference, and it works fine under Linux.

[pingadam]

@LB06: Well all lightbulbs in our house use a max of 11w now! And we already decrease the heating by 2ᵒC - we now don't even use central heating (too expensive), so temps in the house get down to 10ᵒC, and 5ᵒC in some rooms in winter! Also, electricity costs have just risen 12% in one month, and energy costs are only going to rise sharply and rapidly from now on. So for me the primary concern for a small home server would be low energy usage, and apart from using an ARM-based plug computer (which isn't x86/x64), only a small Atom-powered or similar computer would be practical for me I think. I have heard that the AMD E-350 has lower power consumption than Atom + Ion2.

@toehser: Thanks for the feedback, for my intended use as a small home server (and for web / PHP development and a bit of MySQL, and also using Groupware [e.g. Zarafa or Citadel]), I guess a small ZBOX-style computer would be ok, especially as low energy consumption is important for me. The AD02 has both eSATA and USB3 ports, which for me should be plenty for storage expansion (as I intend to install 8Gb RAM and a 1Tb 2.5" HDD), all I need in addition is a small UPS battery back-up to make a nice little home server system for centralized storage / email etc.

I guess that if, in say a year's time, I want to use a HTPC, and if by then the Zacate is still not up to HD video, I can always get another Mini-ITX PC specifically for that purpose (with nVidia GPU of course!).

Anyway, I've still not decided yet 100% which model to go for, but have narrowed my choice down to the Zotac ZBOX AD02 or the ZBOX ID41 (Atom D525 + Ion2): the AD02 has better specs on paper (slightly faster CPU that supports AMD-V, 8Gb max memory), but the ID41 is more Linux-friendly due to its nVidia GPU (but only has a max of 4Mb RAM capability, and the Atom D525 doesn't support VT-x hardware virtualization).

I have for now ruled out the ND22 due to lack of USB3 ports, which I would really like if possible.

Anyway, thanks again for the comments and info.

Kind regards,

Adam.

[toehser]

@pingadam:

I guess I'm not sure why the USB3 matters so much to you - if you are putting your external driver on eSata, and only using the USB for backups - I would think USB2 could handle the data rate after compression to pretty much keep up.

That is, if you did something like:

tar --one-file-system -cf- /mnt/eSata-drive / | buffer -m10m -p75 -z256k | lzop | buffer -m10m -p75 -o /mnt/usb2-drive/backup-eSata.tar.lzop

I don't think that the tarring and lzopping would be able to punch out data fast enough to saturate the USB2 drive bandwidth...

What do you need the USB3 bandwidth for?

I'll try some tests...

From my SSD drive, using lzop compression as above, I can only punch out the output data at 16M/s (USB2 goes to 60M/s!) using "tar -cf- --one-file-system / |buffer -m10m -p75|lzop|buffer -m10m -p75 -z256k -o /dev/null", if I do it without the lzop, I can get to 60M (this is from the SSD - from a real eSata drive it would probably be less...).

How are you planning to do the backups? I guess if you are imaging from the raw drive it would matter...

[LB06]

@LB06:

The beauty of having a remote with a mini keyboard and touchpad available, (the fantastic http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VAVC26), is that I can, if I want, run a vncviewer to control a virtual session on a server, or chromium-browser to check something, or audacious or vlc if I want their features, or audacity to record from the USB-attached turntable, or pop up a terminal window to pull from git and re-build xbmc if I don't feel like getting up off the couch to go to another machine from which to ssh or vnc into the machine. Even sometimes, I just exit xbmc and launch boxee. Why not run the desktop? The machine has the horsepower... Now, I will grant you, Lubuntu or XUbuntu might be a better (lighter) choice...

On choosing between them it would be hard for me to care about the 12 watts based on electricity cost, but, I would extrapolate that it makes the machine that much hotter and/or louder in general, keep this in mind...

On the AMD support issue, my understanding is that it isn't totally clear-cut who is better, NVidia writes better Linux drivers, but AMD I think publishes more information for open source driver writers, who just haven't come forth yet with comparative drivers.

@pingadam:

The truth, for me, is that I would never personally use either of these machines as a general purpose server machine, they both are too underpowered, and don't have enough expansion options... my media lives on an E8400 Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 8Gig RAM, 10TB RAID-5, which averages only 75 watts - ish, that is up 24/7... But, I can see it might be a toss up if you don't care about the HD playback issues. I'm not kidding when I say I like the green circle better, and I respect the 12 watt difference, and it works fine under Linux.

Well personally for that kinds of things I prefer a regular laptop/netbook or just my workstation, but of course it's possible yeah.

Regarding drivers: The 'nv' driver is basically dead in the water. Nouveau is being developed, but it may take a long time and will NEVER reach the level of the proprietary driver. Not without full and timely cooperation from Nvidia. The proprietary drivers are top grade, as far as proprietary drivers go. At the
moment, for VDPAU, this is the only option.

The open source radeon drivers may be somewhat better because they are getting some specs from AMD, but basically it's the same story: FOSS drivers underdeveloped, proprietary drivers only option for XvBA.

I can see how you might prefer AMD + FOSS for a normal non-graphical workstation, but for XBMC FOSS drivers are no option (unless you have a great CPU to do the work, but that is very (power) inefficient). So really the only thing that matters is the quality of 'nvidia' vs 'fgrlx' and nvidia wins hands down.

I fully agree with you on the general server part, but for pingadam power usage seems to be of extreme importance. I guess for some very simple http/sql-server it would suffice.

But personally I'm glad I have a full blown (but still energy concious and silent) server. That I also happen to use as my HTPC/XBMC box.

HTPC = Server + GT430

Given my need for 16TB of storage this is actually the most energy efficient solution. The box is always on anyway, so the added video card won't add that much in terms of power requirements.

[pingadam]

Hi,

@toehser: well I would like to create raw disk image backups of the internal system HDD at set intervals (maybe on a weekly basis - this is just a home mini-server after all, so not critical), so USB3 would help there, with its much higher bandwidth - but this would not be a regular daily data backup, for that I would probably use something along the lines of what you suggested (re tar + lzop), not quite sure yet, so I guess USB3 wouldn't be needed for that. Having USB3 would certainly be a bonus and add future-proofing to the system and gives you extra high-speed storage expansion possibilities. It's just a shame it isn't included on the ND22 motherboard. Maybe as you say though it's not essential, just a "nice to have".

Anyway, I'm not in a rush yet to get the ZBOX, and haven't quite decided on which route to take yet, so may wait a little while to see if anything new comes out first. On paper, in terms of specifications the AD02 looks perfect for my requirements, and I guess it *is* if you're running Windows 7 (and I do have a spare retail copy of this, since my old laptop died on me last month), just a shame the situation (as yet at least - and maybe never?) is not the same under Linux. I'm sure that if (as seems likely) more netbooks, nettops and lower-spec notebooks start using AMD Fusion, then surely Linux will have to improve its support for this platform (or is it that AMD has to improve its support for Linux?!). This is the case where a larger market share for Desktop Linux would have put more pressure on hardware manufacturers for better driver support, but alas....

Thanks again anyway for all the suggestions - if I do get a ZBOX soon, I'll update the thread with how I get on (although my usage will not be for HTPC purposes as yet).

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing how the 2 systems compare when you're running OpenElec (which is supposed to be working on adding AMD Fusion support), so keep us updated!

Kind regards,

Adam.

[Varj]

I'd just like to thank toehser for the fantastic write-up.

:geek-rant warning:

I was originally planning on adding a graphics card to my esx-server, and using vt-d to create a completely virtual htpc solution combined with a hdmi-over-ethernet run to the living room, but when I see how cheap, WAF and effective this ND22 is, I just ordered one straight away.

I guess I just saved some sparetime, even if I lose geek-points.

[Varj]

While it may be slightly off-topic, since this thread will be visited by potential nd22 buyers, I'll post anyway.

I just got it, and set it up with sound over hdmi (disabling the onboard audio card completely), and the 5.1 setup is mixed up (ubuntu 11.04), with the center playing the rear L track, the subwoofer playing the rear R, and vice verca.

It's probably a bios issue, but it has not been patched, so to work around it you will have to edit "/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/nvidia.conf", and replace any hdmi 5.1 channel-map line with this:

;channel-map = front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe
channel-map = front-left,front-right,front-center,lfe,rear-left,rear-right

It will fix the channels, and keep the old settings as comment, as it might be fixed in a future patch/bios.

I've yet to get bitstreaming to work, but having xbmc decode it to PCM works fine.

Tips regarding bitstreaming would be helpful, even if I doubt I'll notice the difference having the receiver decode dts.

[toehser]

Further difference I am observing, when the skin option 'show now-playing as background' is on, the ND22 shows it smoothly behind the menus, the AD02 goes into stutter-judder-skipping behind the menus.

[Walter Sobchak]

How did you quiet down the ND22 in the bios? Which settings can you recommend? I feel its still to loud for silent moments in films.

[MidnightWatcher]

How did you quiet down the ND22 in the bios? Which settings can you recommend? I feel its still to loud for silent moments in films.

There is a section in the BIOS that allows you to select the speed manually. Set it to 50%.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1069-page5.html