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
Gaming Performance: Better and Worse than ION1
Here’s where things get a little iffy. The ION2 GPU is located behind a single PCIe 1.0 lane, that’s a maximum of 250MB/s of bandwidth in either direction. The original ION had a full x16 connection to the chipset. There are going to be certain situations where the next generation ION platform is actually slower than its predecessor. In games that are more compute bound we should see the next generation ION platform win out. In those that are CPU bound, we may see the opposite.
In either case you can actually play some games, at very low image quality settings on the next generation ION, which is something you simply can’t do on the base Pine Trail platform:
When there is an advantage, we saw anywhere from a 0 - 30% increase in GPU performance over the original ION. However when it loses, the older ION is about 5 - 10% faster.
| 3D Gaming Performance: NG-ION vs. ION | ||||
| Low Quality Settings | Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 (NG-ION) | Zotac ZBOX HD-ND02 (ION1) | ||
| Left 4 Dead (1024 x 768) | 27.8 fps | 22.9 fps | ||
| World of Warcraft (Good Quality - 800 x 600) | 11.8 fps | 11.2 fps | ||
| DiRT2 (800 x 600) | 17.5 fps | 18.5 fps | ||
| BioShock 2 (800 x 600) | 18.6 fps | 16.7 fps | ||
| Dragon Age Origins (800 x 600) | 23.3 fps | 17.8 fps | ||
NVIDIA tells us that it’s up to the motherboard manufacturer to determine how to allocate the PCIe lanes coming off the NM10 Express chipset. However it’s hard to see a scenario where a company would sacrifice things like WiFi or Gigabit Ethernet for better gaming performance.
GPU Compute Performance: Still Slightly Slower than ION1
I ran a quick Badaboom encode converting a rip of the Weeds season 2 Blu-ray to an iPhone optimized format. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Badaboom is a CUDA app that uses a supported NVIDIA GPU to do all video encoding. If you’re not going for maximum image quality and just want a quick way of getting your video transcoded to a portable device, Badaboom is great.
Despite the increase in GPU and shader clock, the anemic x1 interface to the NG-ION GPU actually dropped performance compared to ION1. This is still something you can’t do with the base Pine Trail system, but it’s not exactly an upgrade over the original ION.
| CUDA Performance: NG-ION vs. ION | ||||
| Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 (NG-ION) | Zotac ZBOX HD-ND02 (ION1) | |||
| Badaboom 1080p H.264 to iPhone Conversion | 15.2 fps | 15.4 fps | ||
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rnjeezy - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
and switch wifi to usbTekkamanraiden - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
While this looks pretty kick ass I'm looking forward to the Amd version. I'm curious how well the Neo processor with 3200 will do against the Aton with Ion2.Soulkeeper - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
I too would like to see products from amd and/or via to compete here.I'm tired of "the intel show" 24/7
I wouldn't pay $100 for that ion thing
dealcorn - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
As the Zotac NM10-B-E motherboard is shipping with HDMI and the Intel NM10 chipset, the Broadcom Crystal media solution is a viable build your own HTPC strategy that operates on fewer watts. I would have liked a side by side comparison.nick.cardwell - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Does this or any ION2 nettop use Optimus??? I am looking for a small D510 system to run headless and would be willing to buy an ION2 system strictly for the resale value if it uses Optimus to switch off that power hungry GPU. I am sill waiting on the Shuttle XS35 to show up as it is fanless.CZroe - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
The comments in the article about manufacturers not wanting to reclaim PCIe lanes from WiFi and GbE don't sound so convincing. For example, they could easily integrate WiFi via internal USB or an Ethernet bridge.Heck, if nVidia wanted to make a real symbiotic chipset to go with this they could actually engineer a GbE/WiFi chip that uses multiple internal USB ports to achieve enough bandwidth. And by "enough" I mean "somewhat more than 100mbps but less than 1,000mbps." Users can't often maximize GbE because they need a GbE switch for full duplex and, assuming a max-speed file copy, a destination drive which can write as fast as the source can send. I doubt many users really need GbE over 10/100 Fast Ethernet/802.11n.
Also, what happened to all the rumors of an OC'd PCIe bus for ION2?
As for Zotac's design, I'd much prefer a larger, cooler, quieter design than this, especially if it is going in a home theater. If it would still be super-small, why not give it a proportionally huge HSF? The LEAST they could do is give it metallic housing and throw a heat pipe on it (even just one side).
rennya - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
The latency guys, the latency.KaarlisK - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
Besides which, the NM10 chipset only has 1 USB2 controller, so no increase in bandwidth from ganging USB ports.modemide - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
I enjoyed the article and this looks like a viable option for my next HTPC. However, I didn't see anything addressing the signal issues most people experienced with the initial version. Can you comment on that?Thanks.
Bateluer - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
How come we don't see any of the ULV CPUs in form factors like this? I cannot imagine it'd be too difficult to stick in a Celeron SU2300, or a Pentium SU4100, or one of the ULV C2S chips. There's super netbooks that are thinner than these nettops that use these ULV chips. I can't imagine that designing a little beefier cooling system in the same Zotac chassis or into the Acer Revo chassis would be overly difficult. It may add a little to the price, but the trade off in performance might be worth it.