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Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 Review: Next Gen ION is Better & Worse than ION1

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2010 3:51 PM EST
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40 Comments

Final Words

By not including native H.264 decode acceleration in Pine Trail Intel assured NVIDIA another year of success with ION. Compared to a standard Pine Trail Atom nettop you get the ability to play H.264 content and even play some light 3D games at low quality settings. Personally I think it’s a great option for an HTPC.

NVIDIA’s Next Generation ION isn’t exactly the follow on that we expected. While GPU performance has improved, in many cases it’s a bit slower than the original ION thanks to the anemic PCIe x1 connection to the chipset. This isn’t NVIDIA’s fault, it’s simply a reality that we have to deal with.

Thankfully there’s no impact to H.264 playback, so if you’re going to use it primarily a s a HTPC then you’ll get all of the benefits of the original ION with a slightly faster CPU. If you do care about gaming or CUDA performance then you might find yourself disappointed. It’s still way better than a bare Pine Trail platform, but it’s just not an improvement over the original ION.

The obvious argument against NG-ION would be for Pine Trail + Broadcom Crystal HD decoder to handle video playback. The issue there is missing HDMI support from Intel's integrated graphics core. By not taking the HTPC market seriously, Intel has left the door wide open for NVIDIA.

The Flash limitations are also potentially a deal breaker for some. We’ll have to see if NVIDIA can get 1080p Flash acceleration working by June, but for now if that matters to you then you’ll want to hold off.

As for Zotac’s HD-ID11 in particular, I like the system. At $259.99 it’s a little pricey for not including any memory or a HDD/SSD, but it’s got a good size and look for a HTPC. You have to be pretty married to the idea of using a PC as an HTPC though, since you can technically get cheaper boxes to stream content to your TV. The added flexibility and power is nice though, especially if you use a dedicated software stack like XBMC.

The plethora of USB ports as well as the easily accessible internals are nice. I'm worried that the cooling isn't sufficient for any sustained CPU intensive workloads, not without spinning the tiny fan way too quickly at least. For a dedicated HTPC machine this shouldn't matter, but if you're trying to make this a multipurpose box be warned that it may not always go unnoticed.

The industrial design of the ID11 doesn't really work with most HT components, but it does feel right at home on a clean shelf or next to a flat panel. If you don't have a good WiFi or RF remote option you'll be let down by the Zotac's lack of IR support on the ZBOX.

As is the case with any ION platform, you don't really have to be sold on something like the ZBOX. It's either something you've been waiting for or not. I'd say once we get the Flash issues figured out, some more mature easy-install software packages and make sure there are no remaining hiccups, these boxes will do quite well.

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  • Swivelguy2 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    A little typo right up in the title: "Next Gen is ION" should say "Next Gen ION is"

  • shotage - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    I've been waiting for one of these to hook up to my HD TV. This looks near perfect, but the fact the flash playback sucks is going to make me wait. If Nvidia can fix it with an updated driver i'm off to the shop. Otherwise I'll be back... to curse Zotac

  • jvdb - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    They raised the price again? if it's true, I'll wait for the shuttle.

  • Roy2001 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    I need to point out that Broadcom Crystal HD decoder has a 40Mbps limitation and Ion does not have. XBMC would report dropped frames with higher than 40Mbps bitrate. That said, BD spec is less than 40Mbps and you can hardly see > 40Mbps mkv files. But I have seen that. Even XBMC with CPU decoding has the 40Mbps limitation and drops frames with CPU utilization less than 70%.

  • sucram03 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    You've seen >40mbps encoded MKV's? Whoever encoded them must have done a horrible job if they're at 1080p. Nothing should have to be encoded with that high of a bitrate -- that's overkill.

    A 40mbps limitation shouldn't be a problem. One thing that isn't touched on here, though, is CUDA-enabled decoding, which removes pretty much all limitations on H.264 content when done with DXVA. With CoreAVC 2.0, you'll pretty much never have a file you can't play. That would be the nice thing about this new ION, being that it has VP4 PureVideo. But.. as some have already said, this platform is way too expensive for that usefulness.

  • mcnabney - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    I have the original Zotac ION HTPC and am relatively pleased with it. Added more RAM and upgrade XP to 7. The memory upgrade made it run much more quickly and moving to Win7 allowed Mediacenter usage (it is a DVR for an HDHomerun and recorded TV is automatically moved to my WHS box).

    Old ION $200 @ Best Buy
    Win7 upgrade $50
    Upgrade to 2GB $40

    So under $300 complete.

    compare to:

    New ION $250
    HDD/SSD $80
    Win7 OEM $100

    Now we are at $430 when complete. That is a LOT more money for almost identical performance.

  • Bateluer - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link

    This is a poor comparison. The 200 dollar Ion system the Acer Revo R1600, is an Atom 230 based machine. Single core. The new Ion featured in the review is a D510, dual core machine. Performance won't be light years better by any means, but this isn't a good comparison.

    Still, if you already have an Atom 330 Ion system, there's no need to pick up one of these machines unless you have money to burn. Like the Pine Trial platform itself, NG-Ion falls flat.

  • mcnabney - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Why wouldn't it be a good comparison? Under the tests that the new ION does surpass the old (would more memory help the old one?) the difference is moving from 49% of the performance of a slow Core2 to 53%. So there is really a very slight difference in performance. But there is a very clear difference in cost. In fact, the original Zotac ION can be purchased for $170 now.

  • sucram03 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    You missed the point of the poster. The comparison you're making is between ION2 and the original ION with Atom 330 processor (note the difference -- this is dual-core). The $199 desktop at Best Buy is an Aspire Revo1600, as the poster said, which does NOT have an Atom 330 dual-core, it has a single-core Atom 230. If you want to talk about performance, go ahead and take a look at the benchmarks again, instead now looking at that last-place ranking with the Atom 230 processor which falls short in every benchmark. Not by a huge margin, but enough to make a significant impact, which is exactly what that poster was trying to say.

    It was a very valid argument. Just make sure you're backing up your claims with solid proof, links, or other general information instead of throwing together $'s and manipulating the outcome.

  • shotage - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    This quote "Streaming high definition Internet video on popular sites such as YouTube™, Vimeo™ and Hulu™ render smoothly and flawlessly in full screen with the ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 and Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1. Video stuttering is a faint thought of the past with the ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 with NVIDIA® ION™ graphics technology."

    from Zotacs site: http://zotac.com/index.php?option=com_content&...

    Obviously this is incorrect. Anand; maybe someone should tell Zotac? :p
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