EPIA MII 12000 Review

Posted on May 18, 2004

Jump to: Introduction The Nehemiah C3 CLE266 Chipset Box and Drivers Cardbus and Back Panel Board Connectors BIOS Settings Cooling & Power VGA & TV Output Benchmarking Details Sandra Benchmarks More Benchmarks AES Benchmarks Video Playback Audio Quality Conclusion

EPIA Benchmarks - Setup Details

To keep results as consistent as possible, we did a fresh install of Windows XP SP1 onto a Maxtor 160GB HDD drive, and applied recent security patches. Each board was tested in turn. We used default BIOS settings on all boards - tweaking memory settings on EPIAs never improves benchmarks (we learnt this in our last multi-board benchmark session, and it is still the case today). Conveniently, 3 boards could use the EPIA MII VGA drivers, the MII boards and the EPIA TC. We used the XP "rollback" feature to install the EPIA M and CL VGA drivers to prevent conflicts, though the CL functioned almost identically with the MII VGA drivers. After some initial testing, one stick of 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM was chosen for all the boards, apart from the EPIA TC (which takes an SODIMM - we used a 256MB stick). All tests were conducted multiple times, to ensure accuracy.

Five 1000+ MHz CLE266 EPIAs

We decided to compare the EPIA MII 12000 with its closest cousins, the original EPIA M 10000, the twin LAN EPIA CL, the EPIA MII 10000 and the EPIA TC 10000 with built-in DC-DC converter. Each board has a 1Ghz C3 chip cooled by a 40mm fan (1.2Ghz in the case of the MII 12000). There are fanless 600Mhz Eden CPU versions of each board: the EPIA ME 6000, CLE 6000, TC 6000E and MEII 6000. All these boards use VIA's CLE266 chipset and share many supporting chips, so should give similar results.

Here's a brief overview and pictures of each board, so you know what we're talking about:

The EPIA M 10000

The Nehemiah version of the EPIA M 10000 was released in May 2003, designed for general purpose multimedia use, and was the first 1Ghz EPIA motherboard with a Nehemiah core C3 processor.

The EPIA CL 10000

The EPIA CL 10000 was released in September 2003, designed for communications and networking related uses, and is unique amongst current EPIA motherboards in that it has 2 x 10/100 LAN sockets.

The EPIA MII 10000

The EPIA MII 10000 was released in December 2003, a version of the EPIA M with additional expansion possibilities. An integrated PC CardBus / CF Reader daughterboard allows the inclusion of a PC Card (such as an 802.11 wireless card) and a Compact Flash card, both snugly fitting into the rear I/O panel next to the other connectors.

The EPIA TC 10000

The EPIA TC 10000 was released in April 2004, designed for mobile and space-saving applications due to its built-in DC-DC converter. The EPIA TC has a 12V DC input and requires a regulated power source from an external AC-DC adapter or 12V suppy. The EPIA TC has an SODIMM socket underneath the board, and comes in two versions - one with an integrated PC CardBus / CF Reader daughterboard as on the EPIA MII, and one without. Only the version without the daughterboard is generally available to distribution, the version with it is only intended for the IPC market (much like the EPIA PD is intended for POS devices)

The EPIA MII 12000

The EPIA MII 12000 was released in April 2004, and is not just a 1.2Ghz speed-bumped version of the EPIA MII 10000. It is the first EPIA motherboard to use the C5P version of the Nehemiah core, and the first C3 CPU to include VIA's Padlock Advanced Cryptography Engine.

Benchmarks - Sisoft Sandra -->