ASRock's High-End Vision 3D HTPC Reviewed
by Ganesh T S on October 3, 2010 10:20 AM ESTThe Vision 3D is not meant to be a gaming powerhouse. However, it does turn out to be pretty decent for gaming at 720p resolution with medium graphics settings, as we shall see in this section. With respect to this capability, the performance can be said to be comparable with various notebook gaming solutions. Given the fact that the Core 100 scored poorly in the synthetic benchmarks, we will not be considering it in this section.
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In all the above graphs, low and medium settings correspond to games run at 1366x768, while the high setting corresponds to a resolution of 1600x900. Despite the fact that these are not resolutions one would run at in a HTPC usually, I chose to present the benchmarks for these because our notebook reviews use these resolutions. With 30 fps providing barely playable performance, we find that the Vision 3D is certainly not capable of 1080p gaming at high settings. However, 720p gaming at medium settings should be a decent experience for most of the current games.
3D gaming over HDMI 1.4a onto 3D TVs is also possible on the system. This is enabled by the nVidia 3DTV Play software which comes bundled in the accompanying CD. On 3D capable monitors, the dual link DVI port can be used for the same purpose (similar to what could be done with the older 3D capable nVidia graphics cards).
The Vision 3D also has AiWi enabled. An iPhone or iPod can be used as a motion sensing device similar to the Wii remote. We covered this aspect in a little bit of detail in the Core 100 review, and there is nothing much to add here except for the fact that gaming experience is much smoother thanks to the more powerful CPU and GPU. However, ASRock loses some points for not porting the app over to Android yet, contrary to what they had promised earlier during the Core 100 review. In any case, iDevice owners can enjoy this feature without issues.
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ProDigit - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
Looks interesting at first, but I don't much like nvidia graphics cards, and the WD drive.WD drives are known to break right after their warranty expires when using them a lot.
The only good about the nvidia card is that it could be set up to work with CUDA (CPU + GPU in parrallel); although cuda now also supports most ATI/AMD cards.
The price of this setup is quite on the high end. If it wasn't for 3D vision, I'd say this computer would go for no more than $699. With 3D, I'd say $799 max.
I personally don't care if it supports 3D or not, since I have no monitors that support this resolution. So for me it's only worth $599.
ProDigit - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
They should have gone with a Toshiba drive instead. Yes, WD has faster continuous write and read speeds, but Toshiba is much better in IO performance.An OS like Windows 7 would boot faster with Toshiba, than with WD, and would run significantly cooler too!
WD is absolutely NOT the best drive they could have chosen! The cheapest perhaps yes.
ganeshts - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
Looks like the WD Scorpio Black is as good as the Momentus XT from Seagate (except for the Disk Capture benchmark):http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorp...
So, from a price-performance ratio, it makes sense to go with WD.
I have also mentioned in my review that a mini-PCIE SSD for the boot drive would have been good :)
sprockkets - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
The best notebook drives were made by IBM, and now Hitachi. Whether that still is the case, who knows.Zok - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
CUDA is not supported on ATI/AMD cards. DirectCompute and OpenCL are, however, supported by both.LtGoonRush - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
Studies of both operating disk populations and drives sent in for data recovery show that no brand of drives is measurably more or less reliable than others, with the notable exception of the Seagate model ranges affected by their firmware bugs. It's also been conclusively proven that drive usage doesn't affect failure rates; lightly loaded and heavily loaded drives fail at the same rate. It's true that a failing drive will have its death hastened by heavy load, but you shouldn't be using a drive that's failing anyway, it should be replaced with the first SMART error it logs. The WD Scorpio Black drives in particular are the fastest notebook HDDs available, balancing high throughput with excellent seek times (Seagate drives have always had abysmal seek performance). It's also a little silly to complain about heat when we're talking about drives with sub-4W PEAK power draw.chrnochime - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
great job for correcting him without making it more obvious how wrong he is. I would've not sugarcoat it as much as you did though heh.lexluthermiester - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
Seriously? Not liking Nvidia, well that is just personal preference. You not having a TV/Monitor that supports what this system can put out is not the fault of the maker or the system itself, it your problem. But bashing WD? They make the finest hard drives in the world and there are certainly worse hard drive makers. Now I'm not going to be low class and name names, but really? And if you don't like this little system, then don't buy it, but don't bash something that certainly has usefulness to a certain audience of users and at a very fair price.Parhel - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
False. WD drives are not "known" for high failure rates. All drive manufacturers compare about evenly in most areas. WD is one of, if not the, best choice out there.Samus - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
I was a WD fan in the 90's and after the 7200.7's came out and they ditch the wetsuits I became a die-hard Seagate fan because of the 7200.7's legendary reliability, low cost, 5-year warranty and 'decent' performance. These were all big selling points during an era where the Deathstar 75GXP rocked the storage industry with what some circles were calling a "definitive" failure rate within the warranty period.The Seagate drives just worked. However, recently I've had a lot of Seagate 7200.10 and 7200.11 drives giving me SMART errors, specifically reallocated sector counts. They also run hot compared to my new WD Blue 1TB drive and they're all mounted in the same cage. A few years ago I had a 1.5TB Seagate I had to flash to CC1G because of the firmware 'recall' which was definitely a quality control concern. I didn't loose data, but I know somebody who did, one day their drive was just blank. We flashed the firmware and his data was back, but the drive failed after a few months without warning, just spun up and clicked. Tried freezing it. No dice.
Seems like WD is taking the quality/reliability crown, where as they've always had the performance crown...but performance wasn't as important to me as making sure the drive would work for 3-5 years without any issues.
I'd consider a Hitachi in the future, but will probably continue to stick with Seagate and WD drives. Considering how many dead Samsung and Fujitsu drives I've pulled and replaced from friends' desktop and laptop's over the years, it's a no-brainier to stay the hell away from those. Toshiba I have mixed feelings about because over the past 20-years, I just didn't care much for their laptops. Hypocritically, I love Thinkpad's but when IBM had those 75GXP failures, I didn't change my mind about their laptops, and still think they make the best laptop's out there. Ironically things are different now, because Hitachi makes the hard drives and Lenovo makes the Thinkpad's. IBM has little to do with either now.