alternatives to atom based computers?

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157321

has anyone tried this motherboard/cpu combo? it's a via single core chipset and not very fast but it has parallel and supports ddr2 and ddr3 ram with pci and pci-e. was wondering if anyone has tried different ram speeds to see if cas latency has an effect on latency results or if ram throughput is more important. i figured at such a low cost, being single core and with all the connectivity this may be a good candidate to test with linux cnc.

There are some VIA boards listed on the Latency page on the Wiki: wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Latency-Test

It looks like a very similar board got good numbers. If you are using a hardware or FPGA signal generator, the latency doesn't need to be all that good. I usually have trouble just getting a board's display hardware to play well with Ubuntu.
--
Kirk Wallace
www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/

I didn't see it last I looked but sure enough it is on there. there were problems with the video though so its a no go. a video card would put me over the cost of an amd e-350 or Intel d510 for sure. though I'm sure the configuration would be easier on the via being single core. still interesting.

The celeron 847's might also be a good replacement, for example:

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128585
These are basically a sandy bridge CPUs (like i3,i5,i7) clocked very slowly so at
1.1 GHz they are about twice as fast as the dual core Atoms at 1.8 GHz

that one has a parallel port on a header but latency is unknown

Edit: maybe not so good a choice until LinuxCNC can run on newer kernels
apparently you need a newer kernel than the one in ubuntu 10.04 to
support the Intel video in sandy bridge chips

doesn't linuxcnc run on new kernels if you compile your own kernel and software? i have been running linux for a while and though i haven't done kenrel compiling i think it's within my abilities. i was always an amd fan but there is no denying the sandy bridge is a fantastic processor.

Yes, but this is quite tricky for RTAI (and RTAI doesn't support newer kernels yet)
however if the performance under xenomai is acceptable that path is getting easier:

wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?XenomaiRuntimePackage

yeah maybe a sandy bridge is something to think about next time around. I'm sure my first conversion won't be my last.