Zotac ZBOX: Brazos Goes HTPC
by Andrew Van Til on June 9, 2011 5:00 PM ESTVideo Decoding Quality
| HQV-HD Quality Tests | ||||||
| Class 1 - Video Conversion | ||||||
| Core i5-2500K | NVIDIA GT430 | AMD 3200 | AMD 6310 | AMD 5550 | Best | |
| Video Resolution | 20 | 20 | 2 | 7 | 20 | 20 |
| Dial | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 |
| Dial w/ Static Pattern | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Gray Bars | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Violin | 5 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Film Resolution | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Stadium 2:2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Stadium 3:2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Overlay on Film | 8 | 10 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Horizontal Text Scroll | 3 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Response Time | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| 3:2 Lock | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| 2:2 Lock | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Multi-Cadence | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 |
| 2:2:2:4 24FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 2:3:3:2 24FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 3:2:3:2:2 24FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 5:5 12FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 6:4 12FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 8:7 8FPS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Color Upsampling Errors | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Interlace Chroma Problem | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Chroma Upsampling Error | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Class 1 Total | 46 | 50 | 17 | 27 | 50 | 90 |
| Class 2 - Noise and Artifact Reduction | ||||||
| Core i5-2500K | NVIDIA GT430 | AMD 3200 | AMD 6310 | AMD 5550 | Best | |
| Random Noise | 14 | 17 | 14 | 14 | 9 | 20 |
| Sailboat | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 5 |
| Flower | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Sunrise | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| Harbor Night | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Compression Artifacts | 12 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 20 |
| Scrolling Text | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Roller Coaster | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Ferris Wheel | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Bridge Traffic | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Upscaled Compression Artifacts | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 20 |
| Text Pattern | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Roller Coaster | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Ferris Wheel | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Bridge | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Class 2 Total | 29 | 28 | 29 | 29 | 27 | 60 |
| Class 3 - Image Scaling and Enhancements | ||||||
| Core i5-2500K | NVIDIA GT430 | AMD 3200 | AMD 6310 | AMD 5550 | Best | |
| Scaling and Filtering | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Luminance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Chrominance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Vanishing Text | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Resolution Enhancement | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Brook, Mountain, Time Elapsed Flower, Red Hair, Wood Grain | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Class 3 Total | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 |
| Class 4 - Adaptive Processing | ||||||
| Core i5-2500K | NVIDIA GT430 | AMD 3200 | AMD 6310 | AMD 5550 | Best | |
| Contrast Enhancement | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Theme Park | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Driftwood | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Beach at Dusk | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| White and Black Cats | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Skin Tone Correction | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 10 |
| Skin tones | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 10 |
| Class 4 Total | 23 | 23 | 23 | 23 | 27 | 30 |
| Benchmark Total | 128 | 131 | 96 | 106 | 134 | 210 |
When evaluating HQV-HD scores it is important to remember that while numbers are produced, the outcome is still somewhat subjective and results should only be evaluated within the context that created them. In this case, testing was conducted with the above connected to a Panasonic TC-P58VT25. Given the results I’ve seen from AMD with its 5550, I was somewhat surprised to see the 6310’s performance, especially in the cadence detection section of the test—a place where AMD was the first GPU vendor to pass all of the formats. It does display an obvious advantage versus the older AMD 3200 found in the Zino HD, so hopefully we will see further improvements as the drivers mature.
HQV is a useful tool for measuring video performance, but only in a limited context. So to get a better feel for the GPU’s capabilities screen shots from three (480i/720p/1080i) “real world” samples were captured at their native resolution. Here we can see clear differences in performance between the AMD 6310 and the other GPUs (AMD 5550, Intel HD 2000 and NVIDIA GT430) in deinterlacing, noise reduction, brightness, and color. That said, the most interesting story told by the images is found when comparing the differences within the AMD family. Looking at the 480i sample in detail, we can see that the 5550 has a clear advantage in deinterlacing quality (most likely due to the 6310’s lack of vector adaptive DI support), especially along the goal line. There is also a marked difference between the states where the video processing setting were set to their defaults and when they were disabled—an indication that the GPU does not support advanced video processing (VP) features when “Enforce Smooth Video Playback” (ESVP) is enabled. Now we can debate if anything is truly missing in this regard in the comments, but it is worth noting that the VP features are not available.
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babgvant - Friday, June 10, 2011 - link
The slim, slot loading BD drive is a big part of the cost increase. At retail a drive like the one in this system would go for $120+. ZOTAC sells a similar E350 system w/o an ODD for ~$320 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...wkeller - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link
You can have a Foxconn NT A3500 barebone E350 for around $200 (without memory/disk). Runs very quit and uses very little power. Also has lots of USB2/3 ports in a very small case.Penti - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link
Nice, but as we know the problem with something like Zacate is that it won't be powerful to do (more advanced gpu-accelerated) interlacing and stuff like that. If you need to playback virtually anything you still need a CPU that's powerful enough to do software decoding. We already know that a low-end AMD-gpu is still not powerful enough to do post processing. You won't escape from the problem by just integrating the graphics, it's still a good system on it's own though. A Intel Mini-ITX system with Z68 with external graphics would be interesting by it's strengths too albeit some other properties, especially if your system also do encoding, or handles heavier TV-capture/viewing tasks.Zacate does a good job handling a cheap platform that does bitstream decoding and so on though. But it has limits. Systems to playback pirated or ripped content and all sorts of formats including web-streamed or online content normally doesn't always work out perfectly. Flash Player doesn't always work out so good with hardware acceleration either thanks to it's awkward architecture. The all-round system takes some work, it's not effort less. This fills a place, this system. It comes in a quite nice form factor. BD makes it quite costly compared to the pure Zotac Brazos barebone though, it's ~190 dollars less on newegg. A DVD-only system would also had cost less. Like their Atom-based system with only a plain old DVD-drive. It's also quite preferable over the Atom based BD-system with ION-NG for the same price. All for a pretty reasonable price. If you don't need even more power that is.
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Hugh R - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
Is the DVI output dual link? I'm wondering whether it can drive my 2560x1600 monitor.The official specs and manual are silent on this issue. That probably means that it is only single link.
Oscarcharliezulu - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
Bluetooth was not mentioned so presuming another USB port used up for my dinovo mini.Would people say the zotac is better than my amd4850e on a 780g (amd 3200) ?
Hdmi support is better as is image quality, but not sure I can give up the CPU speed which give me a lot of flexibility.