ASRock NetTop ION 330

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ASRock NetTop ION 330

Over the years we have looked at dozens of ASRock motherboards, and as we have noted in recent reviews, over the past year or so they have really ramped up their efforts on providing feature-rich motherboards while still delivering them at very low prices, as they have long been known for their budget status. Two recent motherboards we had looked at that illustrate this trend is the M3A780GXH/128M and the X58 SuperComputer, both of which motherboards had bolstered a nice set of features, were priced well, and carried other unique advantages. ASRock has not only been focusing upon driving innovation into their motherboards, but now other products too. In conjunction with Pegatron Corp, ASRock has released its first Atom-based nettop computer. We have our hands on this new ASRock NetTop ION 330 product and to say the least it is a wonderful system using Intel's Atom processor with NVIDIA's ION platform.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14026

[M1AU]

This is good. At least there coming a few really interesting HTPCs to the market.

EDIT: Let me add that again you completely forgot to test the audio connectors (or at least I simply missed it). It really is important to know if and how well the digital audio connectors work on Linux. I want to know if the digital SPDIF audio connectors work with 5.1 surround sound and also if HDMI audio works with 5.1.
As this devices are meant to be HTPCs, you should include this into your tests.

Thank you for the performance and general compatibility tests. Hopefully you will add a test of the three audio connectors (and 5.1 of course) and probably with software such as XBMC.

[myxal]

what.tv

Am I missing something or is there neither a TV tuner nor any way to add one (apart from USB)?

Just looked at local eshop and it appears there are analog USB tuners after all. Anyone with experience with those?

[deanjo]

This is good. At least there coming a few really interesting HTPCs to the market.

EDIT: Let me add that again you completely forgot to test the audio connectors (or at least I simply missed it). It really is important to know if and how well the digital audio connectors work on Linux. I want to know if the digital SPDIF audio connectors work with 5.1 surround sound and also if HDMI audio works with 5.1.
As this devices are meant to be HTPCs, you should include this into your tests.

Thank you for the performance and general compatibility tests. Hopefully you will add a test of the three audio connectors (and 5.1 of course) and probably with software such as XBMC.

The ion chipset has no problem running passthru digital connections either through hdmi. Spdif shouldn't be a problem either.

[M1AU]

The ion chipset has no problem running passthru digital connections either through hdmi. Spdif shouldn't be a problem either.

Good to know, thank you. HDMI audio throughput should do it, but do you also know if at least 5.1 is supported? I probably have to wait till any user experience is documented somewhere.

[deanjo]

Good to know, thank you. HDMI audio throughput should do it, but do you also know if at least 5.1 is supported? I probably have to wait till any user experience is documented somewhere.

For 5.1 the connection is just a plain AC-3 or DTS stream which is again passthrough. So yes it does work. Same as on the 8100/8200/8300 based boards with hdmi connections.

PS 8 channel LPCM support over hdmi was commited to alsa Git June 1st.

http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-kmirror.git;a=commit;h=3999e9e2b3d652e3524668fbce54b1d3979dd4fd

[M1AU]

This is what I wanted to hear, thanks again.

[mrgrieves]

reported cpu clock frequency

The article implies the system was overclocked from the BIOS. Did ubuntu report the correct cpu clock frequency after overclocking ? I have the same system but I'm running fedora and I can't get the OS to report/pickup the BIOS changes