The ASRock ION 330 is a small desktop PC with a low power Atom processor and NVIDIA ION graphics. The other day I published a fairly detailed review of this nettop, looking at its capabilities as a gaming computer and as a PC for everday use. But as several people pointed out, I didn’t delve extensively into its capabilities as a multimedia device. The short answer? It works pretty well and could make an excellent home theater PC (HTPC) for media enthusiasts on a budget.

Thanks to Flash Player 10.1’s support for GPU-acceleration, the ASRock ION 330 can play HD and standard definition Flash video smoothly on a high resolution display. And if you plug in a USB TV tuner, the nettop has more than enough power to watch and record live TV as well.

The only down side is that the Atom 330 dual core processor is still a relatively sluggish CPU which could be a problem if you plan to spend a lot of time using your HTPC to do processor-heavy tasks such as transcoding video. So if you plan to store a large number of recordings on this nettop, you might want to invest in a large hard drive.

My primary HTPC has a faster Core 2 Duo processor and runs Snapstream’s BeyondTV DVR software. After recording HD TV shows, BeyondTV automatically transcodes the files to DiVX to save space on the hard drive. The process doesn’t take that long on a fast system, but it would take ages on the ASRock ION 330 unless Snapstream or another DVR software maker develops a tool for automatically transcoding files that uses NVIDIA’s CUDA technology the way that standalone media transcoding utility MediaCoder does.

You can check out a video of the ASRock ION 330 functioning as a media center after the break.

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The ASRock ION 330 nettop is a small desktop PC that’s not much wider than a typical optical disc drive. It’s a bit chunkier than some nettops from MSI, Asus, and other companies, but unlike many of those models, the ION 330 actually makes room for a DVD burner as well as a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual core CPU, and NVIDIA ION graphics.

ASRock sells the ION 330 nettop as a barebones unit, which means that it comes with everything but the operating system. The model NVIDIA sent me to review came loaded with Windows 7 RC, but I’m not going to spend too much time dwelling on the software in this review.

The model I tested also had 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, Ethernet and HDMI ports, but no WiFi. Other versions of this nettop may be available with media center remote controls, WiFi, Blu-Ray drives, and other options.

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3DMark06

I happen to find myself with a number of rather of interesting computers at the moment with a nice mix of the latest and greatest in low power, decent performance specs. So I spent much of the afternoon running benchmarks on the following computers:

• HP Mini 311 notebook with NVIDIA ION graphics and a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU
• ASRock ION 330 nettop with NVIDIA ION graphics and  a dual core 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor
• Asus UL20A with a dual core Intel SU7300 Core 2 Duo CULV processor and integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics

I ran three different sets of benchmarks on each system. These benchmarks are designed to test CPU and GPU performance. First up, 3DMark06, a widely used graphics benchmark that tests performance for rendering 3D video gameplay. It’s worth pointing out that none of these computers got particularly high scores on this test, but as you can see from the chart above, the two notebooks with NVIDIA ION graphics did significantly better in this GPU-intensive test than the Asus UL20A. Higher scores are better.

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The ASRock ION 330 nettop features a dual core Intel Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics. It weighs just under 4 pounds, and is just barely large enough to hold a hard drive, DVD burner, and a few sticks of RAM. NVIDIA recently sent me a demo unit to test out.

The company recently launched an updated model with WiFi, a Blu-Ray drive and a media center remote control. That’s not the model I’m testing. But that’s OK, because I don’t actually have any Blu-Ray discs lying around anyway.

I’ll have more details to share after I’ve spent some more time with this nettop, but for now you can check out my unboxing video after the break.

The ASRock ION 330 is available as a barebones system (without an operating system) for $349.99 from Newegg.

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ASRock has been putting out tiny, low power nettops with NVIDIA ION graphics for about as long as anyone… which is to say for a few months. Now the company is introducing an updated model called the ASRock ION 330HT-BD. Like the first model, the new computer can handle HD and Blu-Ray video while using very little power thanks to the NVIDIA ION platform. But the ION 330HT-BD has a few new features including a media center remote control, WiFi, DTS audio, and an eSATA port.

The nettop features a dual core 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 CPU, up to 4GB of RAM, and a Blu-Ray drive. The laptop has two 2.5″ hard drive bays and can support up to 1TB of storage. It has 7.1 channel audio, an HDMI port, VGA output, 6 USB ports, S/PDIF, and an eSATA/USB port and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. The computer measures 7.7″ x 7.3″ x 2.8″.

There are also two new less powerful versions including the ION 330HT and ION 330Pro. The former lacks the Blu-Ray drive, but includes a Super Multi Drive. The ION 330Pro has a DVD drive but lacks WiFi and the media center remote. No word on pricing yet.

via Blogeee and TweakTown

Acer may have been the first company to announce a tiny nettop desktop computer sporting the new NVIDIA ION platform, but it won’t be the last. The ION platform combines a low power Intel Atom CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor to offer greatly improved graphics performance in some applications.

The two latest companies to announce ION powered nettops are ASRock and Pegatron. One of the most interesting parts of this announcement is that the ASRock PC will use a dual core Intel Atom 330 CPU instead of the single core Intel Atom 230 used in the Acer AspireRevo. That could provide enough of a boost to help the ASRock nettop excel in areas where the AspireRevo fails, like playing Flash video in full screen. But I haven’t had a chance to check out a dual core Atom with a high resolution screen yet, so I’ll try not to get my hopes up until I see one of these little guys in action.

NVIDIA claims that before the end of the year, 40 different devices based on the ION platform will come to market. No word on if or when we’ll see an ION-powered netbook. Because as cute as nettops are, they aren’t much use when you’re on the road.

via SlashGear