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
Gaming Performance
The gaming performance of Intel’s basic Atom platform is a joke. I’ll put aside debates of whether or not you would want to game on an Atom for a moment. World of Warcraft does a great job of straddling the line between casual and hardcore gaming and thus makes a good candidate for looking at gaming performance of Ion vs. Intel’s standard Atom platform.
I tested by running through a small outdoor section at 800 x 600 (24-bit color, no AA) using WoW’s built in “Good” visual quality settings. This is the same chart from the Pentium 4 section but I'm repeating it here so you have something to look at while we discuss the gaming potential of Ion:
The Ion platform managed just under 18 fps, which wasn’t incredibly smooth to play on but it was close. If I dropped the settings even lower I could easily get a smooth experience. The Intel D945GCLF2 managed a whopping 3 fps. I didn’t even bother benchmarking the single core version; I’m not that fond of single digits.
Most modern FPS games will show worse performance than what we just saw under WoW. Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead will give you under 7 fps for Zotac’s Ion platform, but other, more mainstream titles will perform similarly if not better.
I still maintain that the Atom CPU is not fast enough for a good gaming experience on far too many modern titles, but to NVIDIA’s credit, the Ion platform does make it fast enough in games that it otherwise wouldn’t be.
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KidneyBean - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Isn't it stealing to use Media Player Classic if you use patented decoders without paying for them?If so, I would hope you don't publish such information in articles in the future.
Penti - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Nope infringement is never steeling. It's pretty okay as long as it isn't used commercially. Usually your allowed to use any patents for personal use though. So it's fine. You won't go to jail. Of course he won't publish stuff that discourage the use of homebrew codecs and software that are needed for playing warez and illegally ripping your movies. It would be silly as that's what people use computers for, especially htpcs. It would really be a limited worthless device without it.sprockkets - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
With MPEG4, you only pay what you publish with it, not decode.DXA for nvidia cards is clearly documented on how to use it.
Dolby Digital is another story, but seeing as how you can send the bitstream to your receiver to decode it legally, what's the big deal?
Jeffk464 - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I don't understand what the major need is to have a low power desktop. If it plugs into the wall its not really an issue like it is with notebooks. Its seems like the main focus for a Home Theater PC should be in keeping things quiet. Why not use a notebook processor and focus on making a super quiet heat sink and fan. I like the idea of compact pc's but HP has managed to squeeze a full on systems with a high end cpu onto the back of a lcd display in a nice little package.cosmotic - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
How are Flash (normal animation and (HD)video) and Java graphics performance?For Java, you can install the JDK and double click the jar:
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_13\demo\jfc\Java2D\Java2Demo.jar
The composite and transform demos would be particularly helpful.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I've been meaning to talk about FLV performance, I'll try and include that in a short followup soon.Take care,
Anand
strikeback03 - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
The version of the Intel LF2 board you have here is already being pulled from the channel. It's replacement is the LF2D, which loses the S-Video port. Not a huge loss, as most people who tried to use it could not get what they wanted out of it (does not support different content to both the VGA and S-Video ports).Was Vista the OS for all the tests? I am using an LF2 board in my carputer with 1GB RAM, running a somewhat stripped-down version of XP on a 7200RPM 2.5" drive. Running on the car touchscreen (7", 800x480) or in PIP on my desktop monitor, and it feels pretty snappy in general usage. If I give it the full 1920x1200 though it slows down a lot, especially in my front-end software. Also, the image quality over VGA is not as good as some laptops I have hooked up to that monitor over VGA.
For carputer use I would like to see a better onboard audio codec and more ports. The 3-port thing doesn't give much flexibility on inputs and outputs.
Is the increased power consumption of the Intel boards due to using a standard ATX PSU? Did you consider getting one of the Pico-PSUs (like this: http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-150-XT-102-power-k...">http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-150-XT-102-power-k... ) to try on a more comparable basis? Also, is there any way to test the draw on each rail? The Intel boards are not really compatible with the lower-powered Pico-PSUs due to rather excessive draw on the 5V rail.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Vista was the OS used for all of the tests and I'll second what you're saying, I've found XP far snappier than Vista with these Atom based systems. I just stuck with Vista to keep the results somewhat comparable to other CPU results.I did use a standard ATX power supply on the Intel boards but that's why I also tossed in the Eee Box results to show you what an Atom system with a smaller PSU can do.
Take care,
Anand
Jeffk464 - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I don't understand what the major need is to have a low power desktop. If it plugs into the wall its not really an issue like it is with notebooks. Its seems like the main focus for a Home Theater PC should be in keeping things quiet. Why not use a notebook processor and focus on making a super quiet heat sink and fan. I like the idea of compact pc's but HP has managed to squeeze a full on systems with a high end cpu onto the back of a lcd display in a nice little package.sprockkets - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Look at the prices on logic supply for a laptop socket itx board and how much the processor is and you will see how much cheaper this setup is.Besides, the vast majority of Anandtech readers prefer to build ourselves, not buy OEM crap.