Three Slim Atom/Ion 2-Based Nettop PCs Compared

Features
By published

We put Giada’s Slim-N20, Jetway’s Mini-TOP, and Zotac’s ZBOX to the test. Does Intel's Atom D500-series offer smooth performance in these nettops when it's paired with Nvidia’s ION 2 graphics, or does the platform fall short of entertainment excellence?

Networking Benchmarks

All of these nettops come equipped with gigabit Ethernet controllers and WiFi capabilities, so let’s see how much bandwidth we can squeeze out of them. Remember, more bandwidth is better.

Here, gigabit performance is similar, likely as a result of a bottleneck not associated with the networking throughput. But the two Atom nettops with antennas integrated in their cases suffer from relatively low performance, especially the Giada Slim-N20

Unlike bandwidth, when it comes to latency, less is better. In this case, the ASRock Core 100HT-BD leads the LAN benchmarks with the Atom-equipped nettops close behind. For wireless performance, these products are all in the same playing field, except the Giada Slim-N20, an option that is somewhat less responsive here.

Don Woligroski
Contributor

Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.