ASROCK Nettop ION 330-BD, a great tiny HTPC

Tiny Workhorse

source: hardwarezone.com
Intel's Atom may be an efficient and capable performer when it comes to basic computing tasks like word processing and web browsing, but it stutters when it comes to Blu-ray and HD video playback - mostly due to Intel pairing it with a rather old integrated GPU based chipset.

It obviously needed help, and NVIDIA came to the Atom's rescue with the Ion. The Ion, in summary, is a platform that pairs Intel's Atom processors with NVIDIA's very own GeForce 9400 mGPU chipset (mGPU stands for "motherboard GPU" as coined by NVIDIA). With the GeForce 9400 mGPU and its integrated graphics engine on board, this greatly enhanced the Atom based platform's HD video crunching abilities, enabling users to play 1080p HD videos with a caramel-like smoothness.

Unfortunately, Intel did not take too kindly to this initiative and were not supportive of the platform combination and maintained that Atom processors should only be used with their very own 945GSE and 945GC chipsets. Furthermore, Intel claimed that the Ion was an attack by NVIDIA on their chipsets and went on to state that the higher power consumption and costs were against the Atom's philosophy of providing a low cost computing solution.

With Intel expressing obvious disdain for the Ion, it was no surprise then that initial take up on the chipset was slow. No matter though, soon Ion based products starting trickling in. The Acer AspireRevo was the first Ion product we reviewed and while the NVIDIA GPU did bring much needed improvement in HD decoding, its performance was hampered by the meekly powered single core Atom 230 processor.

Not one to be left behind, ASRock too has jumped in on the Ion bandwagon and what we have here today is their Nettop Ion 330-BD. The Ion 330-BD is equipped with the more powerful dual-core Atom 330 processor and as the "BD" tag in its name suggests, it comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive. Before we take a closer look at this tiny nettop, as usual we tabulate its detailed specifications below.

The design of the ASRock ION 330-BD is fuss-free and it comes equipped with a dual-core Atom 330 processor, 2GB DDR2-800 RAM, 320GB HDD and even a Blu-ray drive.

ASRock Nettop ION 330-BD Specifications

Processor and Chipset	Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz) with 1MB L2 Cache NVIDIA Ion (GeForce 9400 mGPU)
Operating System	None Installed
Memory	2GB DDR2-800 Support for up to 4GB memory
Storage	2.5-inch Seagate Momentus 320GB 5400rpm
Audio	HD Audio 5.1 channel
Networking	NVIDIA Gigabit LAN controller w/ FirstPacket Technology
Video	NVIDIA Ion (GeForce 9400M GPU) 450MHz core, 1100MHz shader Up to 512MB shared graphics memory
I/O	6 x USB 2.0 ports 1 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port 1 x SPDIF connector 1 x HDMI output 1 x VGA output
PCB	Mini-ITX form factor motherboard, 171 x 171mm

The ASRock Nettop ION 330-BD

The ASRock ION 330-BD is undeniably larger than the Acer AspireRevo, and compared to the AspireRevo, the ION 330-BD looks sadly dull. However a couple of points to note here is that the integrated Blu-ray drive readily endows this ASRock machine as a perfect HTPC sidekick right out of the box. As a plus, due to its compact box-like design, it is also easy to upgrade and service components like the hard disk and optical drive in the Ion 330-BD.

At the front of the unit, all you will find is a power and disc eject button. Everything else, from USB ports to audio output jacks are all located at the rear and are clearly labeled and easily accessible. Our unit came in black and its casing was given a high-gloss finish (gloss seems to be all the rage these days), lending it a more up-market look. All in all, the physical outlook for the ION 330-BD is nothing to get excited about, but it is certainly functional.

The front panel of the ASRock ION 330-BD is bare, save for the power and disc eject buttons.

Coming to the rear, we find six USB 2.0 ports, a RJ-45 Gigabit LAN port, S/PDIF connector, HDMI and VGA video outputs, audio jacks, and a DC-IN.

You can access the internals of the ASRock ION 330-BD by removing these two screws here.

Removing the casing cover, this is what we see. A drive cage holds the slim optical drive and 2.5-inch HDD. Below it lies the mini-ITX form factor AMCP7A-ION motherboard.

The drive cage houses the slim form factor Blu-ray drive and a 2.5-inch 320GB hard disk. If you are wondering, the hard disk is a 5400rpm Seagate Momentus.

The Blu-ray drive is a Sony Optiarc BC-5500S. It reads Blu-ray discs at 2x speeds and is also capable of reading and writing DVDs and CDs.

Removing the drive cage, we finally see the AMCP7A-ION mini-ITX motherboard in its full glory.

ASRock has cleverly designed these SATA cables which help reduce clutter within the small confines of the casing, leading to better overall ventilation.

Test Setup

We'll be comparing the ASRock ION 330-BD closely against Zotac's DIY Ion kit and the Acer AspireRevo. To spice things up, we've also added NVIDIA's Ion prototype and Intel's very own D945GCLF2 Atom kit. As it stands, we expect performance of the ION 330-BD to be very close to that of the Zotac DIY Ion kit. However, we expect it to be a tad slower because of its slower 5400rpm hard disk versus the Zotac DIY Ion kit where we've used our own standard Seagate 7200rpm hard drive. Do note that for a select few benchmarks, we'll also be throwing in comparisons with a beefier desktop-class IGP motherboard and CPU which we'll point out where applicable. Here's how the ASRock ION 330-BD comapares against the competition in tech specs:-

Comparing the ASRock Nettop ION 330-BD

Specifications/ System	ASRock Nettop ION 330-BD	Zotac Ion Motherboard	Acer AspireRevo	NVIDIA Ion	Intel D945GCLF2
Processor	Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz, dual-core) with 1MB L2 cache	Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz, dual-core) with 1MB L2 cache	Intel Atom 230 (1.6GHz, single-core) with 512KB of L2 cache	Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz, dual-core) with 1MB L2 cache running a single core	Intel Atom 330 (1.6GHz, dual-core) with 1MB L2 cache
Chipset	NVIDIA ION	NVIDIA Ion	NVIDIA Ion	NVIDIA Ion	Intel 945GC
Memory	2GB DDR2	2GB DDR2	2GB DDR2	2GB DDR3	1GB DDR2
Video	NVIDIA Ion (256MB)	NVIDIA Ion (256MB)	NVIDIA Ion (256MB)	NVIDIA Ion (256MB)	Intel GMA950 (128MB)
HDD	Seagate Momentus 5400.6 SATA	Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA	Hitachi 5400RPM SATA	Seagate Momentus 7200.2 SATA	Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA

Also, The ASRock ION 330-BD comes with no operating system installed, we proceeded to install Windows Vista SP1 to ensure parity in our tests. We also installed the same ForceWare 185.55 drivers that were used on the Zotac DIY Ion kit and ensured that the onboard GeForce 9400M GPU was assigned with only 256MB of frame buffer. The following are the benchmarks that we'll be using:

• PCMark05 (ver. 120)
  
• PCMark Vantage
  
• 3DMark06 (ver. 110)
  
• Unreal Tournament 3 (version 1.1)
  
• CyberLink PowerDVD 8.0 (for Blu-ray playback testing)

Blu-ray Playback Performance

To measure the systems' Blu-ray playback performance, CyberLink's PowerDVD 8.0 (build 2021) was used and we played a sampling of Black Snake Moan Blu-ray disc (H.264 encoded) while using Vista's built-in Performance Monitor utility to record CPU utilization figures.

Both the ASRock ION 330-BD and the Zotac DIY Ion kit are equipped with the same GeForce 9400M GPU. Therefore, we expected performance to be on a par. The ION 330-BD surprised us, however, recording a markedly low reading of 26.2% as compared to the Zotac DIY Ion kit's 35.8%. Considering the nearly identical specifications on both systems, our speculation is that it is the ION 330-BD's internal Sony Optiarc Blu-ray SATA drive that is contributing to this lower reading. The Zotac kit was using en external USB based Blu-ray drive. Acer's little machine didn't fare as well as the other two here due to its single-core processor.


Just for knowledge sake, we threw in the ASUS and Intel IGP desktop motherboards for comparison. They are based on the NVIDIA GeForce 9300 mGPU and Intel G45 chipsets respectively and were last tested with a Core 2 Duo E8500 CPU. While the ASUS motherboard undoubtedly fared well, you can see that the Intel G45 chipset was quite dependant on the CPU even with a very fast processor. By contrast, the Ion platforms with a simple Atom processor (don't forget to factor in that these have hyper-threading enabled) are able to handle just as well or better, putting the Intel G45 chipset to shame.

PCMark05

We begin our report of the benchmark results with PCMark05 and expectedly, the ASRock ION 330-BD found itself sandwiched between the Zotac DIY Ion kit and the Acer AspireRevo. It was mostly almost neck and neck with Zotac DIY Ion kit, but it was scoring noticeably better on the graphics tests, clocking a good 2288 PCMarks, which is 25% more than the Zotac and also the best score of the lot. And expectedly, ION 330-BD was outdone by Zotac DIY Ion kit on the HDD segment, due to its slower 5400rpm hard disk.











PCMark Vantage

On to PCMark Vantage, the ION 330-BD recorded scores that were once again in between those of the Zotac DIY Ion kit and the Acer AspireRevo. Obviously, it's more powerful dual-core Atom 330 processor gave it the edge over the AspireRevo's single core Atom 230 processor. But unfortunately, its slower hard disk hampered it when pitted against the Zotac DIY Ion kit, which was outfitted with a 7200rpm hard disk.



3DMark06 Results

The ASRock ION 330-BD did respectably well here posted scores nearly identical to that of the Zotac DIY Ion kit. Also, comparing the scores of NVIDIA Ion systems against that of the Intel D945GCLF2, we can appreciate just how much more graphics performance the GeForce 9400M integrated GPU brings to the table.






Unreal Tournament 3

Despite running on relatively low settings, the ASRock ION 330-BD only managed a modest 26fps on Unreal Tournament 3, indicating that while it can crunch HD videos with ease, 3D games are an entirely different story altogether. Still, it did score the best among its class of competitors.



It's Showtime!

In terms of performance, it's hard to fault the ASRock ION 330-BD. In all our tests, we found that it performed well up to expectations, making it an ideal system for web usage, light productivity tasks and multimedia needs. Having said that, the intention of going with a NVIDIA Ion platform and the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive means that the ASRock system is better utilized as a HTPC, and it is a role that the ION 330-BD will surely excel in.

Now while the ASRock ION 330-BD might not be the most fashionable nettop in the market, it is hard to imagine how they could make a smaller one. As you've seen from the photos earlier, the internals of the ION 330-BD is neatly designed. The specially designed SATA cables in particular deserve special mention as they help reduce clutter and improve ventilation within the system.

The combination of performance and simple design makes the ASRock ION 330-BD stand out against the competition. At first, the ION 330-BD's recommended retail price of US$499 (S$720) certainly does not sound cheap compared to its closed nettop system rivals, like the Acer AspireRevo and ASUS Eee Box. In fact, both the Acer AspireRevo and ASUS Eee Box can be had for around US$300 (S$433), and what's more they even come pre-loaded with an operating system. However, let's not forget that the ION 330-BD is significantly better specced than both the AspireRevo and the Eee Box. It gets a more powerful Atom 330 dual-core processor, a larger capacity hard drive, but more importantly, it boasts a Blu-ray drive, making it more apt as a HTPC than either the AspireRevo or Eee Box. In light of that, we think the extra that the ION 330-BD is asking for is well justified.

Although ASRock may not be a household name like its parent company ASUS, it has showed with its Nettop ION 330-BD that it is more than capable of turning out top-rate products.

Furthermore, ASRock has another variant of the ION 330-BD that comes without the Blu-ray drive and that is going for around US$375. Digging around on Newegg, we found that the Sony Optiarc Blu-ray drive that the ION 330-BD comes equipped with costs US$250. That makes the ION 330-BD somewhat of a bargain then.

In summary, the ASRock ION 330-BD might command a bit of a premium, but it is one that is wholly justified. The Atom 330 processor makes it a smoother, faster system, whereas the sizable 320GB hard drive means that it'll store loads of media content. Finally, the onboard GeForce 9400M GPU coupled with the Blu-ray drive means that you will get a pleasurable HD movie experience. As far as full fledged complete HTPC setups are concerned, they don't get much better than the ION 330-BD.