Intel D525MW - suitable?

Hi all,

My almost 70 year old father currently has a old Athlon XP 2500, 1GB RAM, Geforce 5200, running (and struggling a bit with!) Win 7 (32 bit for obvious reasons!)

He uses it for email and internet and the odd Word document - its not used for gaming. If it is ever used for gaming, its old stuff like Civ 2 etc, absolutely nothing recent.

They are downsizing their lives pretty much, meaning they want rid of the ATX case that is the Athlon XP. I've been looking into bulding them a ITX system to fulfill their requirements - I was waiting for the AMD fusion E350 for example, but ITX boards using that seem to be few and far between, and those that do exist are £110 min. Price is a big issue.

I've been looking at the Intel D525MW board - using a dual-core atom 525 CPU, which E-buyer has at the moment for about £57. putting the bits together, I could make a ITX system based on this board and 4GB DDR3 (SO-DIMM) for about £150 all in (MoBo, case, RAM, HD, DVD).

I'm struggling to find benchmarks or reviews of this chip and / or this board. How much better (or not!) would it be for simple Internet / email type stuff over the Athlon XP and 1GB RAM?

I know the integrated graphics is about 1.6x the geforce 5200, and both are pretty much SM2, so thats pretty much the same, but as said, this will be used 99.9999% of the time for 2D stuff.

Any links / advice / suggestions appreciated!

Cheers!

Here is the CPU:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=49490

TBH i would imagine the Fusion path would be a lot better, overall.

That or a cheap dual-core Athlon X2 or Pentium dual core set up as both of these would trounce Atom performance.

Edit:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/110?vs=114

As you can see from this graph the X2 is massively superior - get a uATX AM3 motherboard with onbaord graphics which are really good for office use you've got massively more performance for the same if not cheaper cost.

Hi Terbinator,

Thanks for the comments - Trouble is, AM2+/3 ITX moBos are few and far between as well! Think they do idealy want an ITX system - even mATX is a bit too boxy for them!

Really? Some of those Silverstone cases are quite small from what I've seen.

Such as: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...s-atx-uatx-psu

But as you say, ITX is expensive. :P

There are some pretty small mATX cases around, the Cooler Master Elite 100 for example. Or how about a 775 shuttle for £100?