ASRock ION 3D - A Next Generation ION HTPC
by Cameron Butterfield on January 14, 2011 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ION
- ASRock
- Media Streamer
- HTPC
Overclocking
In addition to providing full control of the clocks in this system, ASRock has included some basic overclocking profiles in the BIOS. The stock speed of the Atom processor is 1.8GHz, and CPU overclock profiles range from 1.9GHz to 2.1GHz. The NVIDIA GPU also has overclocking options from 550MHz to 650MHz. Simply bumping the clocks up using the overclocking profiles on the test system resulted in a bootable but unstable system; I increased the CPU voltage to ensure stability and was able to run Prime95 for several hours after making this minor adjustment. This ends up being a 16% overclock—nothing outstanding, but when using an Atom processor, you take whatever you can get.
Power Consumption and Fans
ASRock rates the system at 27W. I found this statement to be accurate, as the system registered only 24W on a Kill-a-Watt meter at idle speeds in my testing. The ION 3D ships with a fan configuration very similar to the 100HT. The fans were sent out stock at the lowest setting resulting in a very quiet machine. Even when the processor and GPU usage ramped up, the fans never increased in speed and remained essentially inaudible during all testing.
General Usage Observations
During the course of this review, I observed some behavior using this Atom based system that was somewhat unexpected with regard to performance. While the ION 3D did play back almost all media files perfectly, there were some issues when attempting to skip between different parts of the video being played. Pauses and re-syncing audio and video feeds sometimes took longer than would be considered desirable in a media streaming device. In addition, the platform experienced considerable choppiness/unresponsiveness when simply copying files across a gigabit network; this showed up using the DPC latency program.
The majority of these slight performance issues can be chalked up to the Atom platform, which simply isn't going to be as responsive as mainstream desktop processor platforms. Prospective purchasers of this system should keep in mind the desktop performance capabilities of an Atom based system, and given the potential to improve both CPU and graphics performance AMD's Brazos platforms are probably worth waiting for.
Additional Features
ASRock tries to pack as many features as possible into its systems, and the ION 3D is no exception. Some of the features that ASRock lists are basic items that any computer would have (i.e. listing the speed of the memory), but the company has also used some unique features on this device such as the ASRock App Charger, which allows your iPhone and iPod devices to charge at a quicker rate than they would using a normal USB connection. This is a nice touch and can be somewhat useful for users who happen to own i-devices. The only catch is that the ION 3D needs to be in hibernate, standby, or off modes for this to work.
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jabber - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Pretty much, just a refresh really.icrf - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
It seems one of the most recommended boxes from the XBMC community is from the Acer Aspire Revo family. It sounds like $350 gets you something similar, the biggest loss is BD, but it is over $100 cheaper.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Any plans on one of these finding their way into your testing labs?
vol7ron - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
It says it has Component A/V, but I don't see any; but I do see DVI.About the USB3 Comment:
They probably included it for marketing, even knowing it isn't full USB3. The more people you can mislead, the better your sales.
krumme - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
"And indeed, the Brazos platform decimates Atom in single-threaded apps, still manages to beat it decisively in more parallelized programs, and embarrasses it in anything having to do with graphics"All for less money. How obvious can it be.
As stated before go to:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-e350m1-...
What was this review about anyway?
silverblue - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Until Cedar Trail, Atom isn't a viable platform. I'm interested in seeing how Cedar Trail performs, though, especially if it performs as rumoured.pirspilane - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I have a Core 100HT, and it has proved problematic. When I turn off the TV, the HDMI audio stops and a reboot is required to bring it back. Playing a Sony PS3 through the same setup, I don't have this problem.I don't want to run my 600w plasma just to listen to iTunes. It defeats the purpose of having a low power HTPC.
The problem I suspect is with the HDCP handshake. While the PS3 recovers its sound after the TV is switched off, the ASRock's Intel chipset/drivers can't.
A workaround is using the Toslink output. But even then, the ASRock sometimes hangs when the TV is switched on again. Today, I had to power it down with the front panel button. But when I restarted it, the Bluetooth transceiver didn't come on and I had to get a USB keyboard to get the thing working again. So it took me about 15 minutes to get a youtube video to play.
thewhat - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
"USB 3.0 devices may not be needed by the target users of this device"Huh?
I was under the impression that you can copy files to/from this device. How is a fast transfer speed not needed?
I'm personally hesitant to get anything that stores data without USB 3 nowadays.
Spacecomber - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
I skimmed through this article, but I didn't really see what I was looking for, which is some idea of how well this would work for handling live streams of video of off the internet. Just playing around with different computer set ups that I have in the house, I've been surprised at how much processing power this kind of content seems to use. For example, I'd have thought that Pentium 4 @ 3.4 GHz or an Athlon XP at 2.3 GHz would do a better job. I'm getting the impression that a dual core is needed for these online flash video streams.Any thoughts on what the minimum amount of processing power is that would be needed for this kind of work (leaving aside GPU acceleration, since I find that rather iffy and perhaps best not counted on at this point)?
Jello1o - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
I have an older Atom dual-core (the 510) server running and while it is capable of playing back standard-def flash, there will be a bit of choppiness in the video. Without GPU acceleration I would not recommend any Atoms for flash playback at the moment. Even my Core 2 Duo(technically Pentium) E5200 desktop is usually at %60 with flash video and sometimes up to %80 with the high quality flash video.I'm using my Atom D510M0 based system as a web/email and DLNA server. It seems to be adequate for those uses.
schlos - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
hi,i just wanted to check and confirm that, you can still send TrueHD and other DTS variations via the SPDIF optical out, and an AV receiver can decode it instead, correct?