The Battle of Bay Trail-D: GIGABYTE J1900N-D3V and ASUS J1900I-C Reviewed
by Ian Cutress on October 17, 2014 10:00 AM ESTASUS J1900I-C Visual Inspection
The implementation of J1900 from ASUS differs a fair amount from GIGABYTE. Taking the board out of the box and the first thing to notice is the DRAM placement – instead of stacking one above the other, the modules are arranged such that one is above the SoC and one is to the right. There is still enough space for standard sized modules in both of these slots, and ASUS has even placed a fair amount of electronics underneath as well – the top DRAM slot has the Nuvoton SuperIO IC in that area, for example.
Similar to GIGABYTE, the motherboard has only two fan headers. The CPU header is below the socket beside the CR2032 battery, with the CHA header just to the left of the DRAM slot at the top. Both of these headers are 4-pin as well.
ASUS has prioritized different connectors around the edge, with the LPT header and COM header having priority at the top over the 4-pin CPU power connector which has a spot just to the left of middle nearer the SoC. This is an abysmal place for a 4-pin CPU power connector as it means any cable has to stretch over most of the board in order to reach. While making a neat layout might not be the ultimate goal for anyone using a Bay Trail motherboard, having this connector here might still disrupt airflow over the passive heatsink.
On the right hand side of the motherboard are our two SATA ports with the front panel header in yellow beside them and the internal buzzer nearby. The mini-PCIe port also rests in this bottom right corner beside the battery. Another difference to the GIGABYTE board will be the extra slot at the bottom – where GIGABYTE used a PCIe to PCI bridge, ASUS has implemented a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot instead. Perhaps unfortunately this is a closed ended PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, meaning that larger cards cannot be used. Above this is a TPM header.
Also on the board is the front audio header, powered from a Realtek ALC887-VC audio codec, and a USB 2.0 header behind the USB 3.0 on the rear panel.
The rear panel looks a bit bleak compared to the GIGABYTE, but this is because ASUS has decided to only use one COM header here and we get HDMI rather than a DVI-D. There is also only one network port, and the PS/2 connector is a joint connector. Where GIGABYTE uses a USB 3.0 hub to have four USB 3.0 ports, the J1900I-C only has one and four USB 2.0 ports instead.
Board Features
| ASUS J1900I-C | |
| Price | Link |
| Size | Mini-ITX |
| CPU Interface | Soldered |
| Chipset | Bay Trail-D Quad Core |
| Memory Slots | Two DDR3L SO-DIMM slots supporting up to 8GB Up to Dual Channel, 1333 MHz |
| Video Outputs | VGA (2560x1600 at 60Hz) HDMI (1920x1080 at 60 Hz) |
| Onboard LAN | Realtek 8111G |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC887 |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1 1 x Mini-PCIe |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 2 x SATA 3 Gbps |
| USB 3.0 | 1 x USB 3.0 (SoC) [rear panel] |
| Onboard | 2 x SATA 1 x USB 2.0 Header 1 x LPT Header 1 x COM Header 1 x TPM Header 1 x mini-PCIe 2 x Fan Headers Front Panel Header Front Audio Header |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 4-pin CPU |
| Fan Headers | 1 x CPU (4-pin) 1 x CHA (4-pin) |
| IO Panel | 1 x PS/2 Combination Port 4 x USB 2.0 Ports 1 x USB 3.0 Ports 1 x Realtek Network Port HDMI VGA 1 x COM Port Audio Jacks |
| Product Page | Link |
One might ask why the J1900N-D3V costs less than the J1900I-C and yet has two NICs and four USB 3.0 ports. The J1900I-C combats this with a HDMI port (which will arguably be preferred), have a total of six USB 2.0 ports and a PCIe 2.0 x1 port, which should also be more versatile.
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Antronman - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
I'd much rather be using a Kabini for some mainstream browsing and multimedia.speculatrix - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
the first UEFI firmware on the Gigabyte motherboard was just awful, the followup F2 was slightly better, but to make it useable you need the F3 version. Updating can be a problem, I started a discussion about it here:http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...
there was a big discussion about baytrail motherboards on the silentpcreview forums, here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...
rstuart - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
"Load Delta Power Consumption" is just jargon - and you don't define it. Googling it return just one page of hits. If they are any indication, it total draw from the wall.But even that figure is meaningless unless you tell us what conditions the test was done under. Eg, was the test setup identical for all systems tested, not just the motherboards in question. What power supply was used? What does load was the system put under?
Also, a comparison of the system at idle versus under load would be interesting. Most of the time my systems are idle.
Bonesdad - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
White titled on a white background...valkyrie743 - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link
the ASUS J1900I-C looks like nice for a simple XBMC box.Mvoigt - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link
Just slap an Zotac geforce 610 PCI 1gb ddr3 in the pci slot and you got and decent machine for sligthly older games.... :) even never ones at low res....evident - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link
I would have loved to see J2900 numbers in this article as well to represent the top end of these bay trails. I still don't care what anyone says, I still don't feel this is a viable platform for granny's daily web surfing and farmville activities, let alone a HTPC. you just cant justify miserable performance when you can step up to a sandy bridge celeron for way better performance.if you look at real world pricing for J1900 based machines, the only winners are the pc box manufacturers charging $200-300 for this garbage. you can easily pick up a haswell pentium or last generation ivy bridge pentium for that price if you wait for a clearance.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
I'd love to see those, too. Even more I'd like to be able to actually purchase J2900 hardware, but I have yet to see any.dealcorn - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
Several posters have suggested that Kabini may be more attractive than Silvermont. In the real world where companies report revenues quarterly, Baytrail-D and Baytrail-M took significant market share from AMD during the second quarter of 2014. The trend accelerated as Atom claimed increased market share during the third quarter and I believe Dr. Su projects this share loss trend will continue in the fourth quarter. The reasons this occurred are not discussed in the Article but are sort of obvious if you look at real word pricing and real word consumer preferences.Today, Newegg will sell you a AMD’s Kabini 5350 for $65 and a BIOSTAR AM1MHP motherboard with Gb Ethernet for $32 making the 5350 a $97 platform. Alternately, you could buy a ASRock Q1900M with a single Gb Ethernet connection for $70. The real world 5350 platform costs $27 (38%) more. I would argue that ASRock is a preferred brand name over Biostar and perceived brand quality does matter at the low end. Obviously, the 5350 has better graphics for gaming but the J1900 supports 1080p video or better in all major codecs. Because the J1900 is significantly cheaper and has fully adequate graphics for everyone but gamers, sales of the 5350 are limited to cheap dedicated gamers and the 5350 dominates the cheap dedicated gamers segment. Problem is, gamers tend not to be that cheap. For a few dollars more than $97 you can step up to a super gimped Intel big core solution with discrete graphics card and far greater game potential than the 5350 solution. In the real world, it does not help to dominate a market niche with trivial sales volume and the quarterly earning releases of AMD and Intel powerfully make this point.
As a side note, the J1900 motherboards tested in the Article feature dual NIC's and that is an expensive feature in this price class. By way of contrast, Newegg sells no AM1 motherboards with dual NIC's. Because J1900 is very efficient, some folks leave them powered on 24/7 so they can act as a passively cooled firewall/router download station. Finally, Intel does not use contra-revenue with either Baytrail-D or Baytrail-M, These are full margin products. Anyone who asserts otherwise just got hit kinda hard with the stupid stick.
silverblue - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
I can buy a 5350 for about £40 and a Biostar AM1ML board for £20. An MSI J1900I costs a little under £60, so you can get into both for about the same price. I suppose it depends on features in the end.As it is, AMD should cut at least £5 off the RRP.