NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 3, 2009 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Blu-ray Playback: The Big Feature
Intel’s US15 chipset (codenamed Poulsbo) supports full hardware MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264 decode acceleration. It’s necessary because Atom is too slow to decode high bitrate video encoded in these formats. Without this hardware decode acceleration, Atom wouldn’t be able to playback Blu-ray or HD video.
Most desktops, notebooks and netbooks based on Atom don’t use the US15 chipset; they use 945G and 945G lacks this hardware decode acceleration support.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M addresses the problem using its PureVideo HD engine, providing support for full hardware decode acceleration of all three of the aforementioned codecs. In other words, you should be able to watch Blu-ray movies on an Ion based PC.
On a Core 2 Duo machine, CPU utilization will be in the single digits (double digits for a single core) while playing a Blu-ray movie on a GeForce 9400 motherboard. Despite the hardware accelerated video decode, the initial handling of the data to be decoded is still done on the CPU. Not to mention that getting the encrypted data off of the disc and decrypting it also happens on the CPU. As important as the GPU is in this situation, you still need a fast CPU to watch a Blu-ray movie. But a fast CPU, the Atom processor is not.
Would the 9400M be enough to let you watch a real Blu-ray movie on an Atom based machine?
NVIDIA included a clip from The Dark Knight Blu-ray on the Ion system’s hard drive for us to test CPU utilization. No thanks. As much as we trust NVIDIA to have selected the most balanced content representative of all Blu-ray movies, and included it on the hard drive it shipped with the Ion reference platform, we thought we’d stick with our own content.
Blu-ray Casino Royale on an Ion
We took our Casino Royale Blu-ray disc and ran it through AnyDVD HD. We ripped the disc and copied the resulting ~46GB ISO to the Ion’s hard drive. We didn’t have an external Blu-ray drive so this was the best method of being able to watch a Blu-ray on the machine.
As expected, hardware acceleration worked. Casino Royale was encoded in H.264 and the Ion platform decoded it flawlessly. CPU utilization was high averaging between 40 - 50% on a single-core Atom machine with Hyper-Threading enabled:
There were some scenes where the CPU utilization peaked to over 90%. While we didn’t see any dropped frames, keep in mind that we’ve already decrypted the disc; the CPU is actually doing less here than if we were playing a Blu-ray disc directly from a drive. I suspect that playing back encrypted content it is possible for the Ion platform to drop frames if CPU utilization jumps out of its comfortable 40 - 50% average.
It’s worth mentioning that the Ion machine rarely jumped up that high in CPU utilization, but it definitely did at a few points while playing Casino Royale. A standard Atom platform with the 945G chipset couldn’t even attempt to play a Blu-ray movie. While there may be some cause for concern that Atom, even paired with the 9400M, won’t always be enough to watch Blu-ray movies on it’s too early to tell. At worst I wouldn’t expect to drop more than a few frames every now and then based on how often I saw the CPU spike above 90% utilization.
I tried enabling both cores on the Atom processor (NVIDIA shipped the Ion reference with a dual-core Atom 330, but with one core disabled) to see if that could alleviate the CPU utilization concerns. Unfortunately I seemed to have run into an NVIDIA or Cyberlink software issue because I couldn’t get smooth Blu-ray playback on Ion with both cores enabled on the Atom 330.
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sikahr - Thursday, February 5, 2009 - link
It'2 not about money.It'2 not about weak INTC's chip combo.
It's about platforms. AMD&Intel have whole platform to sell.
NVidia haven't.
Soon there will be no entry level processors from Intel&AMD without integrated GPU in CPU.
So, to resume it:
Nvidia is out of chipset business very soon.
You can call me nutjob or moron, but that is how things really are.
Look, I don't hate Nvidia, all my 3d video cards till now are Nvidia, but this is reality about future of chipsets.
chrnochime - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
You've just made yourself a fanboy by calling someone a moron.So what if they have 1.3b? Intel has tons more money and they can crush Nvidia anytime they want.
Hrel - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
What the hell is going on with that guy's face in the Casino Royal picture??!! It looks like his face is morphing with male genitalia???yyrkoon - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
"The GeForce 9400M is a far better chipset than Intel’s 945G. It should be, it’s a good four years newer. But I do wonder if we’ve taken things a little too far here. I wonder if Ion actually has too much GPU and not enough CPU? Don’t get me wrong, I like Ion; I’d like to have it over a standard 945G platform. I’m just not sure what I’d do with it."I'd use it on our RE system ( renewable energy; Solar/Wind ), and worry less about how much power I am drawing while watching SD video at night. Also perfect for many other applications such as low res gaming, IRC, Photo editing with CS2/CS3, web browsing, and the list goes on and . . .
Bottom line; Whether you're on grid, or off grid ( RE, or utility power ) you're going to use less power and worry less about either your battery bank going down too far, or paying too much for power for doing most mundane tasks.
Right now, I use a AM2 mini ATX board with nv 6150 graphics, an AM2 1210 underclocked to 1Ghz, and undervolted to .80v, and still use ~75W with a 19" WS LCD. It'll play some modest games well @ 1024x728, it'll run CS3 well enough. However, I suspect an ION system would handle all this just as good or better while cutting another 20-30W power consumption.
Now . . . here is to hoping that "we" will see some good ~100W 80Plus power supplies around the corner. That is, assuming OEMs give us a desktop/barebones options.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
As mentioned, these power numbers don't seem exactly impressive. Assuming the quoted numbers are correct, plenty of laptops can match/beat those. Plus, they already include the power supplies. Assuming your monitor draws around 30W, you could easily use that with a laptop and get 40-45W total at idle, and maybe 60 W at load. Plus, it would probably not be nearly as painful as Atom to run Photoshop on.iwodo - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
Am i the only one who thinks there is something wrong with that Idle Power?You mentioned 1 Atom Core being disabled, is that re enabled during other benchmark?
I cant wait to see how a 40nm Geforce 9400 will do.
Only If Atom is 64Bit Capable. I could see new Mac Mini coming.
Honestly I think Ion is capable of doing 95% of what i do day to day on my computer.
sprockkets - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
The Atom is 64-bit capable and is hyperthreading enabled. Going from a C2D to an Atom is a downgrade for the Mac Mini.But that won't stop Apple from putting a positive spin on that...
Casper42 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
You guys crack me up."We didn’t have an external Blu-ray drive so this was the best method of being able to watch a Blu-ray on the machine"
1) Grab a SATA to eSATA converter that comes with every Gigabyte Mobo you have reviewed in the last 3 years and use that to connect a SATA BluRay Drive (I dont think they even make PATA Blu-Ray) to one of the eSATA ports on the Ion
2) Hook up a power supply from a nearby ATX machine OR use a single drive power supply like the ones that come with the USB to SATA Adapter most good PC Techs keep in their bag (http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimag...">http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimag...
Problem solved!
anandtech02148 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
we're good to go for summer browsing. decent gpu is perfectly match for widescreen web browsing. sounds like a fun hobby to build one of these little toy.UNCjigga - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Any chance AMD will slip you a full-on Neo "Yukon" reference platform for comparison testing?Also, will the Ion chipset support VIA's Nano?