Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 Review: Next Gen ION is Better & Worse than ION1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2010 3:51 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- Next Generation ION
- HD-ID11
- ZOTAC
- NVIDIA
Final Words
By not including native H.264 decode acceleration in Pine Trail Intel assured NVIDIA another year of success with ION. Compared to a standard Pine Trail Atom nettop you get the ability to play H.264 content and even play some light 3D games at low quality settings. Personally I think it’s a great option for an HTPC.
NVIDIA’s Next Generation ION isn’t exactly the follow on that we expected. While GPU performance has improved, in many cases it’s a bit slower than the original ION thanks to the anemic PCIe x1 connection to the chipset. This isn’t NVIDIA’s fault, it’s simply a reality that we have to deal with.
Thankfully there’s no impact to H.264 playback, so if you’re going to use it primarily a s a HTPC then you’ll get all of the benefits of the original ION with a slightly faster CPU. If you do care about gaming or CUDA performance then you might find yourself disappointed. It’s still way better than a bare Pine Trail platform, but it’s just not an improvement over the original ION.
The obvious argument against NG-ION would be for Pine Trail + Broadcom Crystal HD decoder to handle video playback. The issue there is missing HDMI support from Intel's integrated graphics core. By not taking the HTPC market seriously, Intel has left the door wide open for NVIDIA.
The Flash limitations are also potentially a deal breaker for some. We’ll have to see if NVIDIA can get 1080p Flash acceleration working by June, but for now if that matters to you then you’ll want to hold off.
As for Zotac’s HD-ID11 in particular, I like the system. At $259.99 it’s a little pricey for not including any memory or a HDD/SSD, but it’s got a good size and look for a HTPC. You have to be pretty married to the idea of using a PC as an HTPC though, since you can technically get cheaper boxes to stream content to your TV. The added flexibility and power is nice though, especially if you use a dedicated software stack like XBMC.
The plethora of USB ports as well as the easily accessible internals are nice. I'm worried that the cooling isn't sufficient for any sustained CPU intensive workloads, not without spinning the tiny fan way too quickly at least. For a dedicated HTPC machine this shouldn't matter, but if you're trying to make this a multipurpose box be warned that it may not always go unnoticed.
The industrial design of the ID11 doesn't really work with most HT components, but it does feel right at home on a clean shelf or next to a flat panel. If you don't have a good WiFi or RF remote option you'll be let down by the Zotac's lack of IR support on the ZBOX.
As is the case with any ION platform, you don't really have to be sold on something like the ZBOX. It's either something you've been waiting for or not. I'd say once we get the Flash issues figured out, some more mature easy-install software packages and make sure there are no remaining hiccups, these boxes will do quite well.
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Rayb - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
I'll go with the ION1, since the flash 10.1 patch everything else became a non issue.QChronoD - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Are there any tiny systems like this out there which have something faster than an Atom that use the ION chipset?sprockkets - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Yes, but only if you want an LGA775 processor. It uses the 9300/9400 chipset, which is basically the same thing.Works great. Except I really, really want fanless.
icrf - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
I've got a Wolfdale HTPC now with one of the Zotac NV9300 Micro-ATX boards, and it works, but it's noisy. The lack of wake-on-USB from S3 and the lack of fan control access from Windows pissed me off about the board enough I'll probably avoid Zotac boards for the foreseeable future. I can live without the wake on USB from S3, but not being able to dynamically control fan speeds is just terrible. Every motherboard I've bought for more than the last five years have had that. I didn't even think to look for it.More than a little OT, but for me, the big competition for this is something like the Boxee Box, which I haven't heard a peep about since CES. Anyone know any more details about it? I thought it was originally slated for 1H10 but I've seen a bare 2010 quoted, too. I'd probably pick one of those up just to see how well it'd work. I'd be on the pre-order list if I knew I could get XBMC running on it. I've got Boxee, XBMC, and Hulu installed on my HTPC now and can flip between them. Boxee is the one run least often because the other two do what they do much better.
hpmoon - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
My suspicion about the Boxee Box delay is quite simply that the media assholes are standing at the ready (and have scared Boxee to this effect) for suing them with full force as soon as the hardware hits the market. They must believe (or at least their questionably schooled lawyers must believe) that the legal ramifications suddenly change when it's not just a PC running the Boxee software and thus framing Firefox Web site visits anymore, but an actual non-PC device doing something very different without full-blown Firefox PC functionality.Of course, if this were the backstory, no one would tell you this.
icrf - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
The experience of running Hulu through Boxee is bad enough I'm not sure I'd worry about it too much. You can play/pause it, but that's it. Seeking forward or backwards isn't supported. If the stream dies halfway through and you need to restart, or you have to pause it for a long time and the connection times out, or if you just want to repeat what someone said, you're SOL.If I'm wrong and some of this got fixed, someone holler, but Boxee seemed more about the social aspect than anything else. You can get these little clip videos from all over the internet, publicize what you're watching and what you like or don't, etc.
ClagMaster - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
I wonder if the memory controllers on board the AMD and Intel CPUs are as optimized as those found on the P965, P35 and P45 ?The P965/G965 has a wonderful memory controller that was far more efficient than that on the AMD 64.
How can one evaluate this ?
aj28 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
A bit off topic, but I think it's worth pointing out that AMD64 (754/939) was a DDR controller, while Intel's P965 was a DDR2 controller. I miss the old nForce controllers, which were some of the more feature-rich, error-free (at least in my experience) chipsets out there. It's a shame that Intel has designed their new platform the way they have...Calin - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
NVidia chipsets had that issue with the disk controller (the possibility to totally trash the content of your hard drive). Other than that, they were for quite a time the high point in chipsets. The only "hotter" chipset I remember was the "BX-100" variant (Intel's 66MHz 440BX chipset, made to run with the Pentium !!! processors on a front side bus of 100MHz).rnjeezy - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
yes, i know there's a point in having it, but it's probably good to have another m.b which removes it, and then add one more lane to the gfx