Intel D525MW - suitable?

[maverick77_uk]

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!

[Terbinator]

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.

[maverick77_uk]

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!

[Terbinator]

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.

[DDY]

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