ASRock ION 3D - A Next Generation ION HTPC
by Cameron Butterfield on January 14, 2011 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ION
- ASRock
- Media Streamer
- HTPC
General Performance
As mentioned in other articles, raw synthetic benchmarks are not necessariliy a good benchmark for HTPC performance. The primary purpose of an HTPC is to provide seamless video playback and high image quality without dropping frames or displaying any other sort of distraction. That said I will be providing some of the same benchmarks as we have seen in other reviews as a point of reference.
USB 3.0 Performance
The Core 100HT suffered from a limitation on the total throughput of its USB 3.0 ports, due to the chipset not fully supporting PCIe 2.0 fully (see here). Equipment was unavailable to test the throughput of the USB 3.0 ports on the ION 3D, but we were able to confirm with ASRock that there was no PLX Bridge implemented on the ION 3D that would have improved the performance of the USB 3.0 ports over the Core 100HT. It stands to reason that ASRock might have been able to cut costs further by not including the USB 3.0 ports on a budget ION based HTPC, since it could be speculated that users purchasing a low powered ION HTPC might not especially care about having USB 3.0 ports, especially if the ports do not run at full speed anyways.
Windows Experience Index
Here we see that the ASRock ION 3D has a low processor score, which is expected. However, its graphics and gaming graphics scores very slightly outperform the Core 100HT that uses Intel HD Graphics. Of course all of these scores are blown away by the Vision 3D PC that utilizes an NVIDIA GT425M and costs roughly double the price of the ASRock ION 3D.
DPC Latency Check
Another important criterion for HTPCs is the ability of the system to handle real time streaming of audio and video without dropouts. A handy tool called the DPC Latency Checker helps in analyzing this. This tool was run multiple times in various HTPC scenarios. This test was somewhat of a tossup, as when files were played from the local HDD the bands stayed in the green, but if the system was streaming over the wireless network, it seemed that this caused a large amount of red spiking. Presumably this is because the processor is busy performing calculations for the wireless network card, and that takes CPU resources away from video tasks and increases the latency detected by this test. In actual usage, normal video files played just fine; it was only some 1080p content that displayed issues during streaming,
Simple Gaming
The ION platform is not really a gaming platform; however, a simple gaming test was performed in order to see some baseline figures for the capability of this system. We ran a timedemo of Left 4 Dead 2 on the highway level at 1280x720 and Low quality. The result was 22.16 FPS. A quick minecraft game at 720p was playable at an average of 28 FPS at normal rendering distance. The ION can definitely work on less demanding games in a pinch, but it definitely should not be your next gaming system.
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jabber - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Pretty much, just a refresh really.icrf - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
It seems one of the most recommended boxes from the XBMC community is from the Acer Aspire Revo family. It sounds like $350 gets you something similar, the biggest loss is BD, but it is over $100 cheaper.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Any plans on one of these finding their way into your testing labs?
vol7ron - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
It says it has Component A/V, but I don't see any; but I do see DVI.About the USB3 Comment:
They probably included it for marketing, even knowing it isn't full USB3. The more people you can mislead, the better your sales.
krumme - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
"And indeed, the Brazos platform decimates Atom in single-threaded apps, still manages to beat it decisively in more parallelized programs, and embarrasses it in anything having to do with graphics"All for less money. How obvious can it be.
As stated before go to:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-e350m1-...
What was this review about anyway?
silverblue - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Until Cedar Trail, Atom isn't a viable platform. I'm interested in seeing how Cedar Trail performs, though, especially if it performs as rumoured.pirspilane - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I have a Core 100HT, and it has proved problematic. When I turn off the TV, the HDMI audio stops and a reboot is required to bring it back. Playing a Sony PS3 through the same setup, I don't have this problem.I don't want to run my 600w plasma just to listen to iTunes. It defeats the purpose of having a low power HTPC.
The problem I suspect is with the HDCP handshake. While the PS3 recovers its sound after the TV is switched off, the ASRock's Intel chipset/drivers can't.
A workaround is using the Toslink output. But even then, the ASRock sometimes hangs when the TV is switched on again. Today, I had to power it down with the front panel button. But when I restarted it, the Bluetooth transceiver didn't come on and I had to get a USB keyboard to get the thing working again. So it took me about 15 minutes to get a youtube video to play.
thewhat - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
"USB 3.0 devices may not be needed by the target users of this device"Huh?
I was under the impression that you can copy files to/from this device. How is a fast transfer speed not needed?
I'm personally hesitant to get anything that stores data without USB 3 nowadays.
Spacecomber - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
I skimmed through this article, but I didn't really see what I was looking for, which is some idea of how well this would work for handling live streams of video of off the internet. Just playing around with different computer set ups that I have in the house, I've been surprised at how much processing power this kind of content seems to use. For example, I'd have thought that Pentium 4 @ 3.4 GHz or an Athlon XP at 2.3 GHz would do a better job. I'm getting the impression that a dual core is needed for these online flash video streams.Any thoughts on what the minimum amount of processing power is that would be needed for this kind of work (leaving aside GPU acceleration, since I find that rather iffy and perhaps best not counted on at this point)?
Jello1o - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
I have an older Atom dual-core (the 510) server running and while it is capable of playing back standard-def flash, there will be a bit of choppiness in the video. Without GPU acceleration I would not recommend any Atoms for flash playback at the moment. Even my Core 2 Duo(technically Pentium) E5200 desktop is usually at %60 with flash video and sometimes up to %80 with the high quality flash video.I'm using my Atom D510M0 based system as a web/email and DLNA server. It seems to be adequate for those uses.
schlos - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
hi,i just wanted to check and confirm that, you can still send TrueHD and other DTS variations via the SPDIF optical out, and an AV receiver can decode it instead, correct?