HD Video/Blu-ray Playback
One of Nvidia’s key arguments in promoting Ion is that it can play HD movies smoothly, so naturally we wanted to check. For once, we won’t include the graphics results on this page, because they’d be superfluous. The answer is really very simple: yes, you can play Blu-ray content with no problems and without jerkiness on the Ion platform. During our favorite scene in Casino Royale, (scene 13, with an average throughput of approximately 30 Mbps), PowerDVD 8’s CPU utilization averaged 66.7%. So, even with the GeForce handling decoding of the H.264 format, the Atom processor was being pushed to its limits.
The 945GC chipset, on the other hand, can’t handle the decompression chores, so playing Blu-ray disks is simply impossible on the Intel platform. That doesn’t mean that HD is inaccessible, however. It’s quite possible to play HD video with the Intel motherboard, but you’ll have to stick to lighter movies—720p and not 1080p. We were able to play movie previews with bitrates of approximately 10 Mbps with no problem.
Note also that the player software is important, too: the same file might play fluidly with Cyberlink Power DVD but be extremely jerky with Apple QuickTime. When graphics power is short, poor optimization sticks out like a sore thumb.
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Any reason in particular you used different OSs in this comparison?
Lol, 136 3d marks for Intel chipset :-)
Any reason in particular you used different OSs in this comparison?
Yes : we had to keep Nvidia reference platform as it was (Nvidia had installed Vista Business), and didn't have a business edition on hand to install on our comparison platform. Both were updated and we selected the services running in the background so there really shouldn't be any significant difference due to the OS.
Yes : we had to keep Nvidia reference platform as it was (Nvidia had installed Vista Business), and didn't have a business edition on hand to install on our comparison platform. Both were updated and we selected the services running in the background so there really shouldn't be any significant difference due to the OS.
Fair enough, just curious, seemed unusual but makes sense now.
Good article, would love to build a HTPC based on this platform (the girly wouldn't complain either!) The Ion system is however lacking a PCI/PCIe slot for a TV card making it just shy of perfect! Suppose you can get USB TV cards... *shrug*
LOLOL
ConclusIon
Thanks. Don't forget this is only a reference platform, a demonstrator build by Nvidia for OEM to assess the performance and capabilities of its newest offering. OEM will be able to add or get rid of whatever connectivity.
LOLOLConclusIon
Guess what ? You're the first to notice it
Good article.
Was the AMD / Intel legend on the 3D Mark scores to give AMD fans a boost??
Do you know this would be perfect if the CPU was half decent. Atom for desktop = fail?
Confused; why is there AMD on the performance benchmarks legend( Page 6 )?
Anyone willing to explain, or am I missing something?
Do you know this would be perfect if the CPU was half decent. Atom for desktop = fail?
No the conclusion is:
Atom for gaming = fail!!
As a super low power platform the Ion appears to be great for our times (peak oil, etc.).
HD playback capability is my measure of failure for a desktop platform. One of the reasons why I am not happy with the state of play with GNU/Linux currently (video acceleration is sh*t due to crap drivers from Nvidia and ATI). After all not everyone wants 3D gaming capability (I know it's seems weird to "us").
Bob
Wonderful Review!
Sorry I'm late on this article, but there was nothing new anymore to read on the main page (Tomshardware.com/us) so I came over here!
Next thing Nvidia is looking into is getting CUDA to work on the Ion platform,and righteously!
The platform is strong enough to support the dualcore Atom even, but for sakes of powersaving I guess they preferred to keep with the atom (2 cores in Windows) instead I guess...
Cuda will perhaps do little to games or 3DMark apart from aiding the CPU when it's being maxed out, but perhaps will increase score drastically on pcmark or other desktop benchmarks; especially on Winrar!
A question:
Where can we purchase this ION platform?
It'd be nice to see the ION platform with an extra 8xPCIE port for another graphics card that can run in SLI (Cuda/SLI together would be even better) with the internal card.
This should give some fun to the overclockers, and hopefully provide sufficient fps for casual games, including spore, on perhaps larger detail settings.
If Intel was ever selling it's Atom processors with its own norht/southbridge/memorycontroller (perhaps even it's on-die/on-chip videocard) Ion would probably be done for, unless Nvidia will produce it's own processors.
x86 processors have a patent, so they'll either cost more, or lack performance. (The produced processor needs to be something else as a x86 processor of Intel, 'simulating' x86 environments; & a simulation will almost always decrease performance).
I guess the AMD/Intel text is just a tired or perhaps drunk reviewer