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• In order to evaluate the wisdom of matching a chipset like the 9400M with a processor as… well, “mobile” as the Atom, we compared it with the only competing platform on the market: the Intel reference platform. To accomplish this, we dug out our D945GCLF motherboard. It is also compact, being a mini-ITX format board. But next to the Ion, it starts looking huge. Its design is much more classic—there’s no daughterboard connected via PCI Express, and everything is on the same PCB. What’s “everything”? An Atom 230 processor (the same as in the Ion), an Intel 945GC chipset, the ICH7 southbridge, and a few ports and extension slots. One of the interesting differences between the platforms is their cooling systems. There’s a minuscule passive heatsink on the CPU, but a there’s a large heatsink (with a fan) on the chipset. This is the first sign that something’s not quite right with the chipset, but we’ll come back to that later. Next to these three main ICs is a standard DDR2 DIMM slot (maximum 2 GB), but also two internal SATA ports, one IDE connector, one PCI slot, a parallel port, a serial port (yep, you heard right), a VGA port, two PS/2 ports, three analog audio jacks, a 100 Mbps Ethernet port, and four USB 2.0 ports. There are also connectors on the card for two additional USB ports. So the Intel reference board is no slouch. But its connectivity shows the age of its supporting core logic—instead of eSATA and HDMI, you get VGA and serial connectivity.

• Nvidia's Ion: Lending Atom Some Wings

  Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 launch garnered the company a lot of publicity. After all, the chipset provided exactly what the market had been waiting for: It’s compatible with Intel processors; with all due respect to AMD fans, up until Phenom II launched, these offered the best performance and lowest power consumption. It’s built around modern graphics circuitry that’s as powerful as an entry-level GeForce add-in, and can decode HD video. It does all of this with relatively low power consumption and a small footprint. The GeForce 9400, and its mobile version, the 9400M, offer a lot more than Intel’s mobile chipsets. That’s particularly true in the area of graphics performance, be it for entry-level desktop PCs, multi-use computers, “home cinema” boxes, or laptops/notebooks. Apple, by the way, made its position clear, going so far as to totally abandon Intel’s integrated chipsets in its MacBook line of notebooks. But beyond standard desktops and notebooks, Nvidia is aiming at the netbook and nettop market—a lucrative one in tight economic times like these. To go after that market, Nvidia developed its Ion platform. Unveiled a few weeks ago, the Ion reference platform consists of a case containing a pico-ITX motherboard with an Nvidia 9400M chipset and the de rigueur Intel Atom processor.  Does Atom + 9400M add up to the best compromise between sufficient performance, flexibility, and lower energy consumption? Is the classic Intel platform really outmoded? To find out, we tested the very first Ion platform we could get our hands on, and compared it to the first Intel Atom board: the D945GCLF.

• One of the critical areas in the battle between the 9400M and the 945GC was the overall power consumption of the platform. Unfortunately, we had difficulty measuring power use because the reference Ion platform and the D945GCLF motherboard use very different power supplies. On the Ion, an external power brick converts AC power to 12 V DC, which is then divided into several voltages—3.3 V, 5 V and 12 V—by the motherboard power stage. And since we measure power consumption at the AC outlet, we need to know the output both of the brick and of the power stage on the motherboard. Nvidia wasn’t able to give us any information, and we didn’t have the necessary equipment for taking measurements at the time of the test. Fortunately, though, the brick used by Nvidia has been tested by our confreres at SilentPCReview. To be more exact, they made careful measurements of the brick’s efficiency with a 12 V DC -> 12 V, 5 V, 3.3 V DC converter, so their figures are a good estimate of the output of the Ion’s power supply. The power-use values shown below were calculated based on the results of SPCR’s test. We should make it clear that they should be taken for what they are, since there are many sources of possible variations. But they’re the best approximation we’re able to make at the present time. In contrast, the Intel D945GCLF motherboard employs a traditional ATX AC/DC power supply. We used a low-power PSU in order to ensure good efficiency at very low loads. Our choice was an FSP/Sparkle Power SPI220LE, which we’d already used in our earlier tests of the Atom. This power supply has also been tested by SPCR, using the same protocol as for the preceding components, so we felt it was a good idea to again use their figures, to avoid introducing errors. Efficiency, Sparkle Power PSUEfficiency, Ion Platform Power SupplyConsumption at the AC outlet (W)Efficiency (%)Consumption at the AC outlet (W)Efficiency (%)SPCR Measurement26.37328.377.740.877.74785.6Extrapolation2371.91572.132.775.125.976.7 Consumption at the AC Outlet (W)Actual Calculated Consumption (W)Ion Advantage (%)IonD945GCLFIonD945GCLFNo Load152310.816.5-34.6Peak Load25.932.719.924.5-19.1 The bottom line, granted the suppositions we’ve made, is that the Ion platform proved to be substantially more economical than the basic Intel platform. We estimate its advantage as being between 19% and 35%, depending on whether PC is idle or under load. These results are in line with the theoretical TDPs cited by the manufacturers, but they’re still a little surprising: the GeForce 9400M has a TDP of only 12 W, compared to 25.5 W for the 945GC + ICH7 tandem, so we expected a bigger difference. To be sure of just how much more energy-efficient the Ion is compared to the Intel platform, we’ll need to run tests under conditions that make for better comparison. It shouldn’t be long until we can; Nvidia tells us that Ion motherboards in micro-ATX or mini-ITX formats will available soon, so we’ll get back to you in a few weeks. But we can already say that the Ion is clearly a more energy-efficient platform than the standard Atom platform.