ASRock ION 330HT-BD Blu-ray NetTop

The integrated Intel graphics found on most nettops and netbooks really cannot handle much in terms of OpenGL applications or games, so for this comparison we largely looked at the 2D / X Render performance between the Intel 945 IGP and NVIDIA's ION platform.

These synthetic X Render tests do not carry much weight, but here the Intel hardware and its open-source driver stack came out ahead.

The ASRock ION 330HT-BD NetTop delivers on Blu-ray disc support, 802.11 b/g/n, EuP 2.0 ready for being more energy efficient, support for a second hard drive with RAID 0/1 support, an integrated eSATA port, and an MCE remote controller has also been included. These are nice features added to the ION 330HT-BD, but if you are using the ASRock ION 330 currently or another NVIDIA ION + Atom 330 it really does not warrant an upgrade at this time. Once ASRock releases new nettops with newer Intel Atom processors and an updated ION platform, the performance should be more interesting. The ASRock NetTop ION 330HT-BD, which does work with Ubuntu Linux 9.10, can be found at Amazon.com for about $590 USD or about $530 USD at NewEgg.com.