Zotac's Ion: The World's First mini-ITX Ion Board
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
The DivX encoding performance of the Atom 330 is a bit behind that of the Celeron 420, but somewhat respectable thanks to its ability to work on four threads at once. The Atom 230 is noticeably slower however.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
Under the x264 encoding test Intel's Atom 330 is actually faster than both single core Celerons. The single core version is much slower and there's no real performance advantage afforded by the Ion.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
Our encoding results are echoed in Windows Media Encoder 9.
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ahmshaegar - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Greater power consumption = more heat. Where's that energy going to go?marshylucas - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
You were faster, I was about to reply something similar.Thumbs up for the fanless design!
Jeffk464 - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Yes, but my laptop is very quiet, even with being severely limited on space for a heat sink and fan. If you had more rooms to put a large heat sink on it with a large low rpm fan, I think it would be near silent.trabpukcip - Friday, May 15, 2009 - link
A laptop does not make the best HTPC though. Connectivity is too limited and is generally inconvenient.GeorgeH - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
"a single Gigabit Ethernet port (just like on the Intel boards)"Actually, only the D945GCLF2 has Gigabit Ethernet. The D945GCLF is stuck with 10/100, which is kind of a deal killer for me.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Thanks for the correction :)Take care,
Anand
DrLudvig - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I'm confused here, most places it says that the hole ION thing is a 9400 chip, while some other places, like now here, says 9300?What is it really?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
The 9300 and 9400 are the same chip, the difference is GPU clock. Take a look at the table on this page:http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3432">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3432
The GF9300 on the Zotac board actually runs a bit slower than the stock GeForce 9300. It runs its core at 450MHz and its shaders at 1.1GHz instead of 450/1.2.
Take care,
Anand
Badkarma - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Anand,Can you please confirm/deny if the Zotac Ion boards support wake-on-usb? The Zotac 9300 mini-itx board does not support wake-on-usb and therefore powering the system on from standby from the MCE remote does not work without physical workarounds.
Thanks.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I'm out of the office right now but I'll try it this weekend :) Drop me an email to remind me if you don't see something by the end of next week :)Take care,
Anand