COMMELL LV-670 MiniITX Motherboard Review

As many of you are now aware the Small Form Factor sector of the PC market seems to be exploding, there are new products being released all the time. The smallest of all these form factor is MiniITX at just 170mm x 170mm manufactures have very little space to work with. Up until now the performance of these motherboards/cpu's have been very limited. Best suited to that of an office use or home theater pc use, Commell have brought a high performance Pentium 4/Celeron based solution to try to fix this problem. Lets see if it lives up to this.

What are the specifications of the Motherboard?

Compact Mini-FlexATX Form Factor @ 170 x 170 mm
Socket 478 supports Intel mPGA478 Pentium 4 / Celeron CPU @ 533/400 MHz FSB
Chipset: Intel 845G series (845GL/GV/GE) GMCH and 82801DB ICH4
DRAM: 1 GB DDR200/266 SDRAM
PCI Enhanced IDE: dual Channels support 4 ATAPI devices up to UltraATA/100 with 100Mbps of data transfer rate. One 40-pin and one 44-pin IDE port for both of desktop and slim type ATAPI devices.
VGA Interface: Intel 845G (GL/GV/GE) GMCH built-in Intel Extreme Graphics with 266 MHz VGA core, 256-bit 3D engine and dynamic video memory
LAN Interface: Intel PRO/100+ 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet interface
Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface with up to 480 Mbps of data transfer rate
IEEE 1394 interface with 100/200/400 Mbps of data transfer rate
TV-out interface with AV and S-video output
AC97 3D 5.1-CH / SPDIF audio interface
I/O Ports: two serial port, parallel port, FDD, IrDA, PS/2 keyboard and mouse port
One PCI slot up to 2 bus master PCI expansive slots via riser card
Pentium 4 additional +12V power free for standard ATX power supply

What is Mini ITX Form Factor?

I think I should start this review by explain just what MiniITX form factor motherboards are. The form factor was originally proposed by Via to be an ultra small form factor smaller than the FlexATX and MicroATX form factors that were the smallest at the time. The original MiniITX boards were highly feature boards with a CPU soldered onto the board this was cheap to produce as there was no packaging cost on the processors and motherboards which can be complex and expensive to implement. The specifications of the MiniITX form factor are that the board may not be bigger than 170mm x 170mm as you can see this is tiny when compared to the normal ATX standard. Via also aimed to have a very low heat output from the MiniITX so the huge coolers fitted on nearly all modern systems were redundant. Up until now no one has managed to combine the MiniITX form factor with a powerful processor that is not soldered directly onto the board. Commell have set out to do just this with the LV670.

First Impressions

Receiving the parcel from the courier I opened up the outer box to find a very boring looking brown cardboard box. The is no flashy box with lots of pretty pictures here, personally I think thats a good thing it means more money is spent on the product rather than PR. The box itself is a very sturdy number so there is no danger of the motherboard being damaged in transit. Opening up the box you are greeted by the motherboard protected in its Anti-static bag. The first impression you get is; "wow how small is that?" its very tiny until you see what close up you cant believe cramming that many components onto a board would be possible, but it is.

The Package

So what do you get when you purchase the LV-670? Well the following:

Manual
Driver CD
1x IDE cable
Floppy disk drive cable
Line In/Line Out/Mic Cable
Serial Cable
2x USB 2.0 cable

All these are nicely packaged below the motherboard. You will note that there is no ATX blanking plate, this is a major omission as the connectors on the motherboard are not the normal ATX standard of layout. This means you will have to go without one making the back of the case untidy. Considering the minimal cost of the back plate I cant understand it being left out. Hopefully Commell will change this in the future.
The cables included I find it quite odd that three cables have been included. Sure all of them are useful, but bear in mind nearly all of the MiniITX cases have one maybe two PCI slots this means that either you use the slot for any pci card you have or choose the specific cable included you need the most. I would like to have seen all these connectors include on one blanking plate. Odder still is the fact that the serial port is also included as an external cable. You would expect to see it on the motherboard backpanel not as an external solution. That said most people no longer use serial ports and the internal port would be very useful for those wanting to use Serial LCD's.
Moving onto the manual, is not the largest most complete example I've ever seen but does the job for the most part, it does have a very good set of pictures so you can see what is what. As well has having many of the pin layouts for the connectors.

Case/Power Supply Decisions

Choosing the right case for this motherboard is very important, you need to take into account the fact it requires an extra Pentium 4 Power connector. Currently there only a few MiniITX cases that have this extra connector on the power supply. The case in question is the Chyang Fun CF-668 . Please see here for more details. Using this case brings up one problem with the Commell board as soon as you try to install the board. The layout of the power supply connectors are on the far side of the processor this means that you have to extend the cables in order for them to fit. A minor problem if you dont mind extending the p4 connector and can solder a few wires, a major problem if you can't.

Connectors

At the back of motherboard we have the normal connectors for you to plug in your devices, the connectors include:

Keyboard/Mouse PS2
S-Video
Parallel
RCA Jack
VGA
Dual USB
10/100 LAN RJ45
IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
Front Audio
Center / Bass
Rear Audio
SPDIF Audio

On the motherboard:

2 x Fan Connectors
1x 18-pin DIMM Socket
40 Pin IDE Port
44 Pin IDE Port
Floppy Disk Drive Port
RS-232 Serial Port
IrDA Port
2x USB 2.0 Port
CD In Port
Wake On LAN Port

Straight away you should note some odd connector choices with this board first off is the Serial RS-232 port on the motherboard and not on the back panel. Second is that there are two different types of IDE Port a 40 pin and a 44pin port. This difference is due to Commell deciding that due to the space of some of the MiniITX cases some manufacturers are specifying that you use a laptop style hard disc or optical drive. If the board has only normal size IDE connectors you would need a converter to allow the drives to be used. These are quite cheap and easy to find so its not a problem. Now this choice by Commell is both good and bad. I ran into problems using the Chyangfun case as I was using normal sized components so I was forced to use the single ide channel and the cable wouldnt reach both components.
Looking at the other connector choices there is a good collection of them, its nice to see firewire and USB 2.0 it gives you plenty of choices when selecting external components. The TV-Out functions of the board give you a couple of choices there is both an AV RCA connector as well as an S-video connector on the back panel. The board supports both PAL and NTSC modes.

BIOS

The LV-670's BIOS options are laid out in the normal manner there are the following options:

Standard CMOS Features
Advanced BIOS features
Advanced chipset features
Integrated Peripherals
Power Management
Dual USB
PnP/PCI Configurations
PC Health Status
Frequency/Voltage Control

Chipset

The Commell uses Intel's 845G chipset. The chipset contains two main components: Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH) for the host bridge and I/O Controller Hub for the I/O subsystem. The GMCH provides the processor interface, system memory interface, hub interface, and additional interfaces in an 845G / 845GL chipset desktop platform. This chipset has lots of features including the following:

533 and 400MHz System Bus
Intel® Extreme Graphics Technology
Intel® Hub Architecture: Dedicated data paths to deliver maximum bandwidth for I/O intensive applications.
Flexible memory technology allows DDR usage for higher system performance or PC133 for cost-effective systems:(The Commell Supports 1 GB DDR200/266/333 in 1 Memory Slot)
Intel® Dynamic Video Output Interface
Hi-Speed USB 2.0
LAN connect interface: (Commell have specified a Intel Pro/100+ which is a well trusted Network Solution)
Ultra ATA/100: Takes advantage of the latest industry innovations in HDD features and performance.
AC’97 Controller: Excellent audio quality, with up to six channels for full surround- sound capability including a simultaneous modem connection.

The chipset is renown for being a good stable solution, the onboard audio is found commonly on many different motherboards. Its an excellent choice, and only those wanting high end audio will be disappointed. I use a AC'97 sound solution as my main computers sound solution and I've never been dissapointed by it. The LAN capabilities are provided by another good choice in the Intel Pro/100+ solution this is a well trusted network solution and you will not have to use your precious PCI slots for another network card. (Unless you want Gigabyte Lan or to use the Motherboard as a router and need a second LAN port). The LV-670 also supports IDE-based, bootable DiskOnModule embedded flash disks which is good for those wanting to use a large flash disk to hold a Linux OS for example.

Intel Extreme Graphics

Providing the graphics for this motherboard is the Intel Extreme Graphics solution this has been created for the 845 based chipset by Intel. This graphics solution is not a top of the range graphics card replacement but more of a lower end solution. Selling it as "extreme" is a bit borderline if you ask me but as you can see in the testing phase it can hold its own in games. For an onboard solution it is quite good, not up there with that found on Nvidia's Nforce series though.

The features of this graphics solution are:

Rapid Pixel and Texel Rendering: Uses special pipelines that allow 2D and 3D operations to overlap to speed up visual effects without impacting system performance
Zone Rendering: Unique technology for drawing 3D scenes that optimizes performance between graphics and system functions.
Dynamic Video Memory: Dynamically allocates graphics memory as needed to balance memory usage among the operating system, applications, and graphics.
Intelligent Memory Management: Tiled memory addressing, deep display buffers, and dynamic data management assure efficient usage of memory.

Test System

Pentium 4 2.26GHz 533FSB CPU
512MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB Hard Drive
Chyang Fun CF-668 Mini-ITX case
150 Watt p4 Power Supply
Windows XP OS

Benchmarking: Pifast

Benchmarking of the various combinations begins with Pifast. It simply calculates the constant Pi to the desired number of places. 10 million is chosen for this test. If you want to run it for yourself, click here for the benchmark standings and download link. Just unzip and click on the .bat file.

Results

Program : PiFast version 4.1, by Xavier Gourdon
Computation of 10000000 digits of Pi
Method used : Chudnovsky
Size of FFT : 1024 K
Physical memory used : ~ 61163 K
Disk memory used : ~ 0.00 Meg
------------------------------------------------------------
Computation run information :

Start : Mon Apr 07 15:46:47 2003
End : Mon Apr 07 15:48:48 2003
Duration : 120.38 seconds
============================================================
Total computation time : 120.38 seconds (~ 0.03 hours)

As a comparison this is almost identical to a AMD XP1600 at 1400Mhz on an Aopen AK77-Pro motherboard with 256Mb of RAM. A normal reading for the same 2.26Mhz Pentium 4 in a Shuttle SS51 is around 100secs.

Benchmarking: 3DMark 2001

Next up is the benchmarking tool 3DMark 2001, this gives the graphics and system a really good work out and gives a good indication of how a system will perform in games.

As you can see the Commell scores 1343 3DMarks this is quite low, but this is to be expected as the Intel Extreme Graphics are going to be the limiting factor on 3D performance.

Gaming Performance: Quake 3 Arena

Now I thought what would happen if someone wanted to use the Commell as an occasional gaming rig how would they get on? I tried the Commell out in Quake 3 Arena 1.32 which is going to be a major test for any on-board graphics. I tested out the board with some timedemo's to give it a big test, I used very intense demo's where lots happens and here are the results:

Fastest
(Resolution: 512x384 - 16bit) = 66.0 FPS
Normal
(Resolution: 640x480 - 16bit) = 63.0 FPS
High Quality
(Resolution: 800x600 - 32bit) = 38.8 FPS
High Quality
(Resolution: 1024x768 - 16bit) = 35.0 FPS

As you can see all of these are above the threshold of playability of 30FPS. I would recommend playing at 800x600 for the best results.

Performance Conclusion

The overall performance of the Commell is quite impressive for the size of the board. I was pleasantly surprised at the Quake 3 results it was more than playable at all the resolutions tested. The Commell could easily be used as a gaming rig for example with real problems. If you wanted greater 3D performance you can always add a PCI graphics card such as ATI's 9000 solution which will be much more powerful than the onboard Intel graphics.

Pricing

This where the Commell really falls down. At the moment it is being sold at around £163 including VAT in the UK this puts it at price well over that of most motherboards. If you look into the cost a bit more its £50 more than the EPIA-M10000 mini-iTX motherboard which is a well spec'd but very slow motherboard/cpu combo so you have to pay another £50 and you don't get a CPU included as with the Epia. Worst still, you can get the case and a similiar motherboard as part of a barebones unit for around £195. Which all leaves the Commell in a sticky predicament really

Gallery

Full Image Gallery

Pro's

In the tiny MiniITX form factor
Very good performance the best MiniITX has to offer at present
Passive northbridge so no unnecessary noise
If you are using laptop parts there is an IDE port ready waiting for you.
Manual clear on connectors and pin layouts.

Con's

High price
IDE connectors of two different (44pin and 40pin) so you may have problems connecting your drives
Power supply connectors may be a stretch for some cases
No AGP Port
Doesn't include the ATX back plate required for most cases.
Some people have reported problems with choice of memory though I had no instances of this during testing.

Conclusion

If you are after the fastest MiniITX board you can get your hands on this is definitely a board you should consider, however the high price means that very few will be able to afford this board.

Thanks

Thanks go to Nigel at Ultim8pc for supplying this motherboard, Ultim8pc stock lots of SFF kit and is well worth a look.