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
Zotac's Ion vs. Intel's D945GCLF2 in Application Performance
Up to now I focused on Zotac's strengths but how does the platform compare across the board to the far cheaper Intel D945GCLF2? Zotac's Ion supports faster memory (DDR2-800 vs. DDR2-533), more memory (4GB vs. 2GB), has a much faster GPU and uses a newer SATA controller. What does that translate to in the real world? The next few pages of benchmarks will show us just that.
I ran through my benchmarks with both 4GB and 2GB of memory installed in the Zotac Ion to see if there was any difference. Most of my benchmarks showed no performance difference so I performed all of the Ion tests with 4GB of memory while the Intel based Atom boards used 2GB, the maximum that you can use in those systems.
I compared performance between the Zotac Ion, the Intel D945GCLF and the D945GCLF2. For reference I included a 1.6GHz Intel Celeron 420 and a 2.0GHz Intel Celeron 440 as well as the recently released Pentium E5300. All of these chips sell for between $30 - $70 but they are all based on modern day out-of-order, speculative execution cores. Remember that the Atom is an in-order processor, long proven not to be the fastest design for absolute performance.
All benchmarks were run under Windows Vista. The rest of the systems use the same configuration as our normal CPU reviews.
| Motherboard: | Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) MSI DKA790GX Platinum (AMD 790GX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X48 AMD 790GX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15) Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32)
NVIDIA ForceWare 185.85 (Ion)
|
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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gochichi - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
The board is cool as could be. And also, the external power brick is precisely what is needed to make this thing relevant.I've always had a dream to build my old computer case, to build a computer that was unique in its size and look. I'm a pretty good wood worker, and I can cast simple aluminum shapes... you get where I'm going with this.
So this obviously is the dream motherboard for that application. Making some awesome looking little computer out maple or something.
It also hits the mark with the silent or near silent design. You add a laptop hard drive for its quiet operation and you're in business.
I am impressed, and as an enthusiast it hits the marks. The problem is that I'm more of an enthusiast in my mind than in my purchases. I snap out of the trance and realize that for the price of the motherboard you can have a complete computer w/ a case and a warranty with a 2.2ghz core-based single core Celeron which would just about trounce this little fellow. It's not quiet and it's not tiny but I'm a looser like that. I just can't do it.
Then again, I don't have a ton of extra cash. I can think of a million things I'd rather do with $400.00 than build a swanky looking (and silent) PC with this platform.
This platform is ripe for the picking. It's cheap to make, and it fills a need. We need to start seeing these out in the stores in volume. Because at the end of the day, these computers could be small enough that you don't even see them. Ubuntu is also ripe for the picking (Microsoft is fine, just too expensive for these little machines IMHO).
It is absolutely possible, to make a desirable machine out of this with 2GB of RAM and an 80+ GB hard drive for the sub $200 range. I can find some pictures of Acer's computer, but I haven't seen it at Walmart... so really, it hasn't been released yet. These products are profitable and cheap, why aren't companies making them?
Hrel - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - link
Seems to me this article shows you wasted money, and could have easily gotten away with putting an E5300 in your HTPC, or similar, and saved what? 300 dollars. Yeah, Q9650 still costs WAY too much to be a viable option, and for most uses is overkill anyway, especially for an HTPC.piasabird - Sunday, May 24, 2009 - link
How would this compare to an Intel 1.4 Gig Celeron? I have an Intel 1.2 gig Celeron and it still runs and it runs fairly cool with a lower end power supply. This is the Celeron based on the PIII. Is the Atom processor more advanced that that?ozonarium - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 - link
Why these things do not have a video input for video recording? Or I'm missing something. Thanks.Guspaz - Sunday, May 17, 2009 - link
You'll probably get better results from CoreAVC for h.264 playback (compared to MPC-HC's DXVA codec) for at least two reasons:1) CoreAVC is far better multithreaded than libavcodec, which MPC-HC's decoder ultimately relies on. It makes 720p h.264 generally playable on an Atom 230 even without any acceleration, and the 330 should have no issues
2) CoreAVC recently added CUDA support, which includes the 9300 used in the Ion.
I also recommend combining it with Haali's Renderer (comes with Haali's Splitter) and giving it a chunk of RAM for the buffer. It will buffer uncompressed frames/audio and help smooth over any spikes in CPU usage.
mode101wpb - Thursday, May 14, 2009 - link
I have been eyeing this one up since I knew about it. I recently built the MSI Wind PC barebones nettop single core 230 Atom. It handles 720p fine if it's not streaming, albeit the processor is loaded 90%, 1080p is not possible on the 945GC.The Ion will smooth over some of the issues nicely, as well the Zotac board supports up to 4GB of ram, the MSI Wind PC nettop maxes out at 2GB, though it supports x64 there isn't enough Ram available to make good use of it. The Zotac has the same processor (230) so x64 is not an issue either. DVI is nice as is the power brick.
Newegg has two 230 mobos in stock, $149 w/o the 90w brick, and $169 with it. Not cheap, figure in $50 for 4GB of Ram, optical drive (blue ray $$$ or dvd), hdd and a case it's easily a $300-600 build for the single core 230. No pricing on the 330 yet, but I suspect it will be over $200.
I would opt for the dual core for better performance, albeit heat and energy savings will be sacrificed. Still have to wonder justification on this, the Atom has limitations and there will be a bottleneck for sure.
nubie - Thursday, May 14, 2009 - link
It's only $139 for a socket 775 version.The Celeron 420/430/440 are much more powerful than an Atom. Even if you underclock them a little.
If you need "power brick" power investigate the PicoPSU: http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC">http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC
I am sure if you want a proper mini PC you could build one on 775 (don't forget that there are 45nm processors and you can use a copper core heatsink, even a $10 OEM one from the older 65nm Quad cores will keep it running very cool).
I would love to see the power usage back-to-back with a PicoPSU between the "Ion" and the LGA 775 platform (please choose a low-end proc like Cel 1400/1500 or e5200, and throw in a Celeron 420-440 as well). I would expect it to be 10-15 watts more, but with much more processing power.
monomer - Thursday, May 14, 2009 - link
A few weeks ago, Anand posted an article regarding Blu-Ray playback performance issues with the Ion chipset, which was quickly taken down after Nvidia wanted time to replicate the results. Whatever happened with this? Was there some type of workaround used to fix the Blu-ray playback?strikeback03 - Thursday, May 14, 2009 - link
On page 3:"Earlier versions of PowerDVD were not well optimized for Atom, but the latest updates to PowerDVD 8 and PowerDVD 9 ensure smooth playback on even a single-core Atom/Ion system (I used an older version of PowerDVD in my short lived Ion Blu-ray Investigation which was the cause for poor performance in those tests)"
OSdeveloper - Thursday, May 14, 2009 - link
Since most people are using Windows XP, and especially since XP is more likely to be used on Atom based computers, it would be more meaningful to run benchmarks with XP rather than Vista. Other than that, it was a very interesting read. Good job Anand!