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• Zotac's Ion Board On Windows 7: Nvidia Re-Arms Intel’s Atom

  We’ve done a ton of Atom-oriented content, from reviewing the processor’s merits on its own, to pitting it against Athlon and Nano, to testing it in a ready-made machine and evaluating performance under Windows Vista. When we say the CPU is an enabler in the netbook market, but sorely lacking as a solution to your desktop needs, we’re basing that judgment on almost a year’s worth of power and performance data. Of course, we’re also grouping Intel’s accompanying 945G-series chipsets in with that opinion, since they have been, up until now, the only core logic accompanying Atom processors. Earlier this year, we were able to take a sneak peek at the first platform with Atom support able to go up against Intel’s own anemic Atom-oriented chipsets: Nvidia’s Ion. First encountered at this year’s CES, we were impressed by just how much modern connectivity and GPU muscle the company had crammed into its proof-of-concept design. We were told to expect more Ion-related news in the months to come. Now, almost six months later (and after the announcement of Acer’s AspireRevo nettop), we’re seeing the first mini-ITX motherboard based on the Ion concept, which means the do-it-yourselfers out there now have their own path to pursing an Ion-based platform. Will they want to, though? That’s the question we’re setting out to answer here. Nvidia’s Ion: Stepping Out That first Ion concept was truly stacked. It included lots of USB 2.0, analog 7.1-channel output, optical output, DVI, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, and SATA storage connectivity. As you already know, that box’s capabilities come from the Nvidia GeForce 9300 chipset, which the company is now calling its Ion Graphics Processor (IGP—get it?). As a quick recap, the GeForce 9300 (or IGP as we’ll call it from here on out) is a single-chip solution that combines the functionality common to most northbridge and southbridge chipset components. Exceptional I/O includes support for up to five PCI slots, six SATA 3 Gb/s ports, a total of 20 PCI Express 2.0 lanes across five links (1 x 16-lane and 4 x 1-lane), integrated Gigabit Ethernet, 12 USB 2.0 ports, and HD Audio. The northbridge-y features include a dual-channel memory controller able to accommodate either DDR2-800 modules or DDR3 at speeds of up to 1,333 MHz. Nvidia claims front side bus speeds of up to 1,333 MHz, supporting Atom, Celeron, Pentium 4, and Core 2 processors. Temper your excitement about those modern memory and bus settings, though. The Atom 330 soldered onto Zotac’s board sports a 533 MHz FSB and communicates with DDR2 modules-only. And then there’s the integrated graphics. Derived from Nvidia’s G86 GPU, the IGP sports 16 shader processors and relies on shared system memory. The graphics core runs at 450 MHz while the shaders operate at 1,100 MHz—down a bit, actually, from the GeForce 9300 we reviewed last October. With the chipset specifics out of the way, let’s take a look at how Zotac has turned Nvidia’s IGP into a mini-ITX motherboard.

• In addition to Skype 4.0, bundled software includes Sun Microsystem’s OpenOffice-based StarOffice. StarOffice includes word processing, spreadsheet, database, presentation and drawing applications. StarOffice apps are able to save files in Microsoft Office 97-2003 format. If you and/or your users can overcome any Microsoft Office related biases, StarOffice or other free OpenOffice implementations will easily provide more than enough office computing functionality. Add Mozilla’s free Thunderbird implementation for email, and you’ve got a fully outfitted office computer for around $375 at the time of this writing. Well, there is one catch for business computing environments. The 1000HE comes with Windows XP, yes, but it’s XP Home. Computers running XP Home can’t log into or work easily within MS Windows domain networks. I have been able to access workstations and servers on my large, one segment test network, but I have to travel a tangled and winding road to get there. Because single domain logins are not possible, I’ve got to issue passwords for every device I connect to. Because netbook vendors, including ASUS, see netbooks as simple home computers, netbooks aren’t available with Windows business oriented operating systems, such as XP Professional, that give you full access to domain-based networks. Netbook vendors don’t even offer such operating systems as upgrades. I have installed and successfully used both XP Professional and Vista Business and Ultimate, on my ASUS 1000HA. So, it can be done. If you use OS and application image cloning techniques to setup new business computers, you can certainly get XP Pro or another OS on your netbooks with some ease. The cost of upgrading to a business oriented OS, of course, is another issue. If your company has licenses for your OS of choice, costs should be minimal. If not, upgrades could run you around $100 or more. That is, if you can find XP Pro, given that Microsoft has pretty much stopped selling it. Netbook vendors should work out a deal with Microsoft to make XP Pro available for their products, at least until Windows 7 is available. From my perspective, because its days are numbered, Vista isn’t an option for business-based netbooks. There is, of course, another OS option, Linux. With Windows XP grabbing most of the action, fewer and fewer netbooks are available with Linux. My Eee 701 runs KDE’s very nice windows-based Linux workstation client OS. The 701 is bundled with OpenOffice and a ton of other apps, including Firefox and Thunderbird. Its mini-keyboard and small display aside, you can do serious business computing with it. It’s even possible to access MS Windows network resources, but it’s not always easy. If yours is an MS Windows shop, you and your users will probably find Linux workstation clients a bit daunting, at least at first.

• 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.