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• Ion As A Desktop PC (Nettop)

  There are a number of different scenarios where a small, light, low-power nettop would be ideal. Be it a PC in the kitchen or a Web-browsing/word processing machine in some other common area of the house, the concept of an easy-to-reach terminal that doesn’t need to be super-quick makes sense. This is one of the usage models we’ve seen Ion nudged into and, if you think you’ll really use it for that purpose (and that purpose exclusively), you might actually enjoy using the Atom/IGP combination. Push it too hard, though, and you’ll quickly find yourself frustrated. We’ve been there with the Shuttle X27; it isn’t fun. Case in point: I’m accustomed to installing Windows Vista with SP1 for benchmarking, and then running a complete suite of patches (that’s the downloading and installation) via Windows Update in 20-30 minutes. When I saw this machine sit on the install for a single patch (.NET, I believe it was) for ten minutes, I knew that I was dealing with a different class of hardware than the stuff we’re used to testing in the Tom’s Hardware lab. Ion Under Windows 7 RC In fact, because we knew going into this review that Vista’s weight is in many cases overwhelming for Intel’s Atom processor, we did all of our benchmarking under the Windows 7 release candidate. Boot times were certainly better, and application start-up did seem more responsive. But it was pretty obvious when we would ask the system to do more than it could handle. Multi-tasking, for instance, was not pleasant. It was only natural to sit there, waiting for a DVD decoder to install, grow impatient, and hustle off to the Control Panel to check power settings, simultaneously hitting the processor even harder. Here’s the short of it. When it comes to running multiple apps at the same time, compressing/decompressing large archives, and yes, even transcoding, CPUs are still very much deciding factors in resulting performance. I’d be fine browsing recipes online in the kitchen, answering email on a hallway terminal, or word processing from bed. But more intensive applications will certainly call for a quicker CPU. After all, Atom was conceptualized as an engine for mobile Internet devices—if it were too fast, it’d cannibalize Intel’s desktop-oriented offerings. Thus, even in Windows 7, you’ll want to scale back your expectations of a pint-sized mini-ITX platform with an Atom processor—even if it does show up backed by Nvidia’s impressive IGP chipset.

• Test Hardware And Notes

  We wanted to use a current netbook as our test platform for this review and settled on Acer’s Aspire One D150. Although it is still built around Intel’s aging 945GME chipset, it does use a slightly faster version of the Atom processor, namely the N280 running at 1.66 GHz. Beyond that, the Aspire One D150 is a pretty standard netbook. It features a 10” display, integrated Intel GMA 950 chipset graphics, 160 GB of hard drive space, 1 GB of RAM, LAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, and the usual complement of USB ports. It comes with Windows XP Home Edition SP3 pre-installed. During testing, any tools and utilities installed by Acer were disabled or uninstalled. After ensuring the drivers were up to date, we put the little Acer through its paces in a number of benchmarks. Next, we performed a clean install of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 RC1 from an external optical drive and repeated the benchmarkds. Since Microsoft provides a wide variety of drivers right on the installation disc and via Windows Update, we originally intended to perform testing using those versions. However, it turned out that some of these drivers were badly out of date and were holding back performance. Installing the most recent Vista drivers greatly improved the situation, which is why they were used for testing instead. There is one drawback to this approach, though. With Windows 7, Microsoft has continued tweaking its Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) originally introduced with Windows Vista. Compatible drivers enable certain desktop effects and acceleration features, even providing the basis for GPGPU computing (assuming the GPU features such functionality). Windows 7 uses the most recent version of this driver model, WDDM 1.1. The latest graphics driver available on Intel’s support and drivers page during testing only supports WDDM 1.0. From a performance standpoint, we therefore recommend installing platform and graphics drivers manually and not relying on the versions provided by Microsoft. As newer performance-optimized releases become available for Windows 7, you can always switch to that version.  Windows 7 Performance CheckModelAspire One D150ManufacturerAcerDisplay Size (Resolution)10.2" glossy (1024 x 600), LED backlightHard Drive ( Capacity, Manufacturer, Model)160 GB, Western Digital WDC1600BEVT-22ZCT0, 5,400 rpmBattery Capacity59 Wh / 5,800 mAhCPU (Code Name)Intel Atom N280 (Diamondville), 1.66 GHz (HT)ChipsetIntel 945GMEMemory (Number of Modules)1024 MB DDR2-533 (1 x 1024 MB)GraphicsIntel GMA 950 integratedAudioRealtek ALC272XWebcam (Resolution)1.3 MpixelConnectivityUSB 2.0 (Number and Location)3 (2 right, 1 left)Display Connectors (VGA/DVI/HDMI/S-Video)1/-/-/-NetworkingAtheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 10/100 PCI-EWiFiAtheros AR5007EG 802.11 a/b/gCard Reader (Formats)SD, xD, MMC, MS, MS ProPC-Card/ExpressCard-Slot-Bluetooth (Generation)2.0Operating System And DriversOperating SystemWindows XP Home (SP3) Windows 7 RC 1 (Build 7100)Platform DriverIntel 9.1.0.1012Graphics DriverWindows XP: Package 14.32.4 Windows 7: Package 15.8.3.1504

• Give Me Discrete Graphics

  Reader LuxZg wrote in wanting to see some benchmark results for the Maui platform armed with discrete graphics—and with good reason. In talking to AMD about LuxZg’s request, the company clearly wanted Maui to support an add-in card specifically for the gamers who’d demand greater graphics performance. However, there’s a caveat. The MSI Media Live motherboard is fairly cramped as it is. And although our nMedia chassis has no problem accommodating full-height cards, this combination will only take a single-slot solution, limiting us to something in the Radeon HD 4850 range right off of the bat. Unfortunately, the 4850 also turns out to be too long of a card. It bumps right up against the hard drive/optical drive tray. And this isn't exactly a small case. You probably won't want to go much larger. So we stepped back to a Radeon HD 4670 with 512MB of memory and the card dropped right in. Bear in mind that these tests were run before swapping in the new Phenom II X4 905e. First step: run some benchmarks using a couple of the commonly-tested games here, Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead. Regardless of how well discrete graphics perform in this specific environment, though, the noise added by the reference cooler is simply unbearable. Priority number one in this system is silent running—anything less and I’d rather stick to my A/V equipment. At least as far as the MSI Media Live board is concerned, a single-slot, actively-cooled GPU is likely out. That left us with one last option—Hybrid CrossFire. I had a Radeon HD 3470 256MB lying around from a previous round of 780G testing and plugged that in to the MSI board. Though noise didn’t increase at all (the Sapphire Radeon HD 3470 is passively cooled), it quickly became clear that I was still wasting my time. Frame rates improved, but not to a point of playability. In fact, just looking at the 4670 scores should have been telling enough—those would have been the scores I was looking for, but I needed them in a passive card in order for the addition to make sense. Bear in mind that these are pre-RC results. With the release of Microsoft’s release candidate, ATI’s Catalyst package wouldn't install for the Radeon HD 3200 integrated GPU, so we were either stuck with 8.11 and no Hybrid CrossFire numbers or results from the beta release. Lux, it looks like big-screen gaming is out for this one. If you really want to play on a big screen, you’ll need to either build your HTPC using a different motherboard or tolerate the acoustic output of a single-slot, actively-cooled graphics card. A different board would at least give you space for a dual-slot graphics card, opening the door to one of Sapphire's Ultimate-series cards with passive cooling.