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
H.264 Decode Acceleration
Of course the whole reason you opt for a NG-ION (or ION) box is because you want to watch high definition content. The GT218 GPU at the heart of the NG-ION supports full hardware decode acceleration of all H.264 content. You can watch Blu-ray or even ripped BD content using something like Media Player Classic Home Cinema.
Watching The Dark Knight in MPC-HC results in ~12% CPU utilization on the Atom D510 with NG-ION
My personal favorite thing to do with these ION boxes is to load XBMC and use them to stream content to the TVs in my house. You get a great UI, the ability to play virtually everything over the network and there’s even an iPhone app to act as a WiFi remote control for the box (which is necessary given that Zotac doesn't include an IR port). You don’t get TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming support, but you can send 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI.
XBMC in action on the NG ION
The NG-ION works in both capacities. Playing individual H.264 content under Windows 7 was fully hardware accelerated. Getting the XBMC Live image to work took some effort. While it'll install to the system just fine, getting audio working requires an update to the alsa driver that comes on the image as well as a bit of tinkering. After installing the XBMC Live 9.11 CD image to the drive, I followed these instructions to update the Alsa Driver with one slight change to the process:
1. download the script and save it somewhere
2. cd <your-download-dir>
3. tar xvf AlsaUpgrade-1.0.22.1-2.tar
4. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.22.1-2.sh -d
5. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.22.1-2.sh -s
6. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.22.1-2.sh -c
7. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.22.1-2.sh -i
8. sudo shutdown -r 0
For me, step #5 was critical in getting the process to work. Afterwards, I had to download and apply the patch mentioned here to get the GT218 GPU recognized. Finally I followed the last two steps made in this post and got sound working in XBMC.
I suspect that once we start seeing NG-ION boxes ship in the coming weeks some kind souls will make XBMC Live discs specifically for those machines so you'll be able to avoid this process.
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Shadowmaster625 - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Why would intel only give 4 pci express lanes? That's just retarded. Why would NVidia even mess with this atom? Why not just use the old atom? Its the same damn thing. Just do a LTB on the old atom. Nvidia should go BK for doing stupid crap like this.hpmoon - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Wow. So while we appreciate that Zotac sent an early review unit, they should have paid attention when most of us observed that it would be rather offensive to jack up the price a second time merely by gauging enthusiast interest. $209 --> $239 --> $259 = pissed off customers. Now that the reviews are eh, we're done with you. And it's gonna hit you hard when every reviewer bemoans how $260 is just the beginning, with $100 at a minimum in additional expense for the RAM and hard drive. For truth-in-advertising, let's get real: The HD-ID11 is just under $400.Moving along.
hemantha - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
From the power consumption page - "The XBMC Live image I installed doesn't seem to let the Atom cores underclock themselves to 600MHz". I think D510 doesn't support EIST. I believe only Atom Nxxx do. So unless motherboard supports undervolting, I don't think these can be made to run at lower clock speeds.Nathelion - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Is there any information on if/when a Nano-Ion combo will be out? Atom really isn't fast enough to catch my eye, and (C)ULV is too expersive.sucram03 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
Did you really just mention VIA? That's scary @_@Really, the whole fact that is unless costs are driven down, users are almost better off getting a cheap AMD Vision-powered laptop for approximately the same price. You can find some of those laptops on sale for <$450 and have Athlon II X2 M300 CPUs and Radeon HD 4200's, which are both good enough to accelerate any videos thanks to the new release of the 10.4 Catalyst version (H.264 decoding up to L5.1). And most have HDMI ports, bluetooth, 802.11n, the list goes on...
Add to that the general flexibility and portability of having a laptop (i.e. having a built-in display right there with the computer, having a battery), and although you will have higher energy usage, it is NOT going to be a major concern for most households when all you do is boot it up for playback.
Broadcom's chipset is interesting, but still is only able to decode up to L4.1 H.264 if I remember correctly. Nvidia's chipsets would be the BEST to use to enable CUDA decoding and remove pretty much all limitations on accelerating any kind of video, but if you're going to have to pay the same as what you could buy a laptop for (or more), then what's the use? IMHO, AMD appears to have positioned themselves in the middle if we're talking about the HTPC/movie playback department for a budget system. Cost, features, benefits all seem to be pointing to them for the best benefit possible.
CereKong - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Quote:While manufacturers can use all four PCIe 1.0 lanes coming off Intel’s NM10 Express chipset, most have chosen to use just one leaving the remaining lanes for things like WiFi. A single PCIe 1.0 lane can only provide 250MB/s of bandwidth in either direction, hardly enough for a modern GPU. It’s because of this limitation that the next-generation ION GPU could actually perform slower than the first ION.
Thus which manufacturers do provide motherboards with multiple lanes for the GPU - and if possible are there any differences performance wise?
SnazzyS - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link
NewEgg sold out very quickly. Looks like Logic Supply has some in stock: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/zbox_hd_id11idokibovito - Friday, May 14, 2010 - link
Not quite sure there but I've been keeping my eyes on the Acer Revo 3610 which seems to basically be the same thing as this _without_ the cooling fan! Looking at benchmarks the new CPU is 5-10% faster (tops) and the GPU is not much faster either (because of the PCIe 1x lane). In some benchmarks both CPU and GPU are actually slower than ION1 (which has a Geforce 9400M instead of a GT218.I would prefer the new generation, even if it's just a spit faster (think VPDAU and VP3 vs. VP4). But that fan and seemingly no real life performance benefit keeps me looking back on the Revo, which is cheaper and a hardware that is known to work with XBMC and Linux without dirty patches and evening prayers.
I can't see why this "next-gen" thing is better or even more future proof, however I would like to. Anyone?
Thanks
coutch - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
any word if the drivers released today (BETA 256) address the flash performance issue ?Jackie78 - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 - link
Which version of XBMC did you use, since I guess they do not officially support DXVA accelerated video.