Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus: Redefining the Small Form Factor PC
by Ganesh T S on April 11, 2012 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ZOTAC
- Fusion
- HTPC
The ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus is based on a platform meant for an ultra-portable solution. It wouldn't make sense to compare it with full blown desktop solutions (or for that matter, even the mid-range and high end SFF HTPCs we have reviewed over the last two years). In the figures presented in the rest of this section, we will provide the scores obtained by the ZBOX unit and also place other SFF PC scores for comparison purposes (even though the price range of the PCs might not be the same).
Windows Experience Index
It is no secret that the Bobcat cores in the E-450 are the weak links. As expected, the Windows Experience Index pin-points the culprit.
PC Mark and x264 Encoding
We ran two more benchmarks to evaluate the CPU performance. It is not surprising in any way that the AMD E-450 is lagging behind in both of them. Ideally, we should have graphed some other nettops, but we chose machines with already available data points.
WinRAR Benchmarking
An estimate of how well WinRAR performs, particularly with respect to processing split archives, is evaluated next. Towards this, a 4.36 GB MKV file is compressed in the 'Best' compression mode into a split archive (97.1 MB each), which results in 44 files on the hard disk. The time taken to decompress this split archive is then recorded. The performance in this benchmark is heavily influenced by the drive in the system. Ideally, SSD-based systems should be able to easily beat hard disk based ones.
We find that the ZBOX slots somewhere in the middle. Even if the SSD was fast enough, it appears that the CPU is too slow to decompress the archive fast enough to match the speed of the SSD. In the next subsection, we will deal with the mSATA SSD specifically.
Primary Drive Performance
As mentioned earlier, the mSATA SSD in the system is from Kingston. The Kingston SSDNow mS100 has a Phison controller. The table below shows the Iometer test results for the mSATA SSD.
| IOMeter Performance | |
| Test | Transfer Rate (MBps) |
| 4 KB Random Write | 5.87 |
| 4 KB Random Read | 6.29 |
| 128 KB Sequential Read | 211.89 |
| 128 KB Sequential Write | 103.39 |
The suggestion is that writes to the drive be kept to a minimum. The 4K figures are downright abysmal, considering we get more than 50 MBps for most SSDs. It is quite possible that the transfer rates may go down as more writes are done to the flash.
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apexjr - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Can I attach a disk shelf to this thing via eSata port multiplier?TerdFerguson - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The sweet spot, IMHO, was the ATOM/ION net-top, which at least one vendor managed to bring in under the $200 mark. Sadly, they were only available for an awfully brief time and haven't seen fitting replacements. Everything since has offered half the performance for twice the price.Kakumei - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I believe you are mistaken. While there are/were completed dual-core ATOM/ION nettops, by the vendor hitting under the $200 mark I believe you mean the single-core Atom 230-contained Acer Revo 1600's that were priced at $199.99. The Atom 330 models were priced $100 more ($299.99). The ION2 came with a very slightly more powerful D510, but it wasn't worth writing home about. Either way, the CPU performance certainly wasn't twice as good, let alone as good, as the AMD E-350/E-450. The Graphic performance is superior to ION and ION2 systems as well... (Read an anandtech review).That said, ION nettops were really the only game in town for the form factor at the time. I have a Revo 1600 in my house, though now I end up using my C-60 netbook at friend's quite often. Seeing the further reduction in form factor from this Nano XS AD11 box is exciting. Crossing my fingers that the next gen is as great a leap.
Matias - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
ATOM+ION was slower than Brazos, I had it before.MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Should have waited for Trinityredisnidma - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I guess what the results would have been if an Atom processor was used instead, because according to Ganesh, if the Zacate APU performed bad, then Atom would have been total crap... :/TerdFerguson - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The better Atom machines had NVidia ION chipsets w/ video support.ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Yes, it would have been real bad! I have never been a big fan of Atom-based PCs.. but, given the available feature set, I am sure there is a market somewhere for the capabilities.. Whether the target market is happy with the purchase of the PC after extended use is a different story altogether.jabber - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I rolled out about a dozen Asrock Ion Atom boxes for business/office use a couple of years ago.They are all still trucking along fine and the users still love them.
We had just one user who is a bit of a social media guru who really pushes his hard (well 20+ browser tabs open etc.) so we recently upped to a (slightly better) 7200rpm HDD and 4GB of ram. We also OC'd his box to 1.8GHz (every little helps) and he is still happy too.
457R4LDR34DKN07 - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
does the remote have mouse cursor control?