The D201GLY2 is the cheapest motherboard-processor combo solution to come out of the Intel stable. Built to the micro ATX form factor, the motherboard is mere 17x17 cm. This combo makes a lot of sense for people building Linux nodes or low power downloading machines.
The motherboard comes with an Intel Celeron 220 processor soldered, which means no speed upgrade. The core 2-architecture based processor runs at Jurassic 1.2 GHz on a 533 MHz system bus. Thankfully, the motherboard supports DDR II, but it has single memory slot—so no dual channel for you.
Though the motherboard comes from Intel, both the chipsets are from SiS, namely, SiS662. The graphics driver for Windows works well, but with Ubuntu 7.10 and Linux Mint 4.0, we ran into display problems and needed a patch driver for the GUI to work properly.
Other features include two SATA ports, one IDE slot, six USB ports, one serial port and one parallel port. A 10/100 Ethernet comes onboard and it has only one PCI slot.
Considering the hardware, we didn’t run our usual heavy duty tests, but instead relied on some old ones to do the number crunching. The processor is reasonably fast and can handle three applications simultaneously.
Running multimedia, we could see the system suffer a bit when switching between applications. Graphic engines on the motherboard are quite weak and don’t stand a chance when put to gaming. Reasonable resolution movies run fine, but high resolution ones occasionally stutter. The chipsets and processors are passively cooled and when put to task, get really hot. We suggest going for the actively cooled model (D201GLY2A).
Priced at Rs 3,300, the D201GLY2 offers excellent value and if you want to build a compact, low cost machine, the 201GLY2 is definitely the solution to go for. However, don’t expect to run games or any other heavy duty application. We suggest this for building a downloading machine, a print server or a file server.
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