Nvidia's new Ion platform gives Intel's Atom processor some sizzle
Amidst the gloom of global economic meltdown and tumbling PC sales, Intel's plucky little Atom processor has provided a glimmer of hope.
For starters, Atom has been the driving force behind the explosively popular new netbook segment. And later this year, it will attempt also to assimilate the smartphone market with the arrival of Moorestown, a massively more power efficient revision of the Atom architecture.
So far, however, Atom has frankly flopped when tasked with more performance-critical workloads.
Whether it's HD video decoding, gaming or heavy duty web browsing, Atom simply hasn't had the necessary chops.
Partly that's a function of the modest processing power of the Atom chip itself. But it also reflects the absolutely feeble Intel integrated graphics with which it's been paired.
You could say, therefore, that what Atom really needs is a new chipset with decent graphics. That's exactly what graphics specialist NVIDIA is betting on with Ion, its new Atom-compatible motherboard chipset.
Geforce 9400M by another name
Actually, Ion is nothing new. It's little more than a repackaging of the firm's familiar GeForce 9400M integrated chipset. That's possible because the Atom CPU uses essentially the same bus interface as the Intel Core 2 processors for which the 9400M was originally conceived.
But that's no bad thing. To take one high profile example, Apple reckons the 9400M is good enough to power a whole range of systems including several MacBook and iMac models.
More to the point, Ion / 9400M is definitely a massive upgrade in terms of 3D horsepower and in particular hardware 2D video decode features compared to Intel's awful integrated graphics.
Anywho, our first taste of Ion comes in the form of this natty little mini-ITX board-and-chip combo from Zotac. On paper, it's a fantastic package and comes complete with the flagship Atom 330 processor. It's a dual-core 1.6GHz chip with 1MB of cache and support for two threads per core.
It also sports a healthy array of video output options including VGA, DVI and HDMI, plenty of USB ports, a trio of SATA ports and even wireless networking, all as standard. It's also a completely passively cooled board making it effectively silent in operation and comes with its own laptop-style external power brick.
In other words, all you need to do it drop in a stick or two of memory, connect a hard disk and optical drive and you have a full featured PC. Hence, for our money, there are two basic usage models for this little mobo.
Firstly, it could be the basis of an occasional or casual secondary PC, perhaps on a kitchen worktop, in family room, that sort of thing. A cheap system that wouldn't be expected to do heavy duty number crunching. The other option is a cut-price alternative for a home theatre PC.
Desktop duties
As a general desktop tool, sadly, even Ion's multimedia prowess can't make the difference. We did our testing with Windows 7 RC-1. When Windows 7 arrives later this year, we think will be the mainstream choice for this sort of chipset.
It's definitely a bit kinder on hardware than the bloat-tastic Windows Vista. But in terms of day to day desktop use, it's still a little too much for even the dual-core Atom 330 to cope with. Responses are sluggish and web pages fail to scroll smoothly, for instance.
Passive
There are no fans on the board, so it runs very quietly
As for outright processing power, well, our benchmarks suggest the Atom chip has about 1/10th the grunt of a high end quad-core chip. It's also worth noting that this board-and-chip combo is a very poor solution for gaming.
Even at a meagre resolution of 800 x 600, it only manages about 15 frames per second in a relatively undemanding game such as Call of Duty 4.
Cinema on a budget
If desktop duties get the better of the Atom-Ion combo, can it achieve redemption courtesy of its hardware video decode capabilities?
To a degree, yes. Generally, we're very impressed with Ion's PureVideo 2D video engine. In our Blu-ray disc test, it puts in a pretty much faultless performance.
Our test Blu-ray movie is Fanstastic Four coded in the demanding H.264 codec. Playback is completely smooth and CPU utilisation during decode is typically around 15 per cent. Incredible given the weakness of the Atom processor.
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