ASRock ION 330HT-BD Blu-ray NetTop

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 13 January 2010 at 09:09 AM EST. Page 3 of 7. 3 Comments.

For testing out the ASRock ION 330HT-BD NetTop we proceeded to load Ubuntu 9.10 with the Linux 2.6.31 kernel. Running Linux on this nettop was pleasant and relatively trouble-free, but that is no surprise as we have been running Ubuntu on the similarly equipped ION 330 for almost a year with Ubuntu Linux. Using the Blu-ray drive for DVDs works fine with Ubuntu, though with no proper Blu-ray movie support on Linux at this time, this drive will likely not be a major selling point for most Linux users. The ASRock ION 330HT-BD introduced 802.11b/g/n WiFi support that the earlier model lacked and this wireless network support did work "out of the box" via the Atheros ath9k Linux driver. One of the down points about this nettop though is that with the Linux 2.6.31 kernel and Ubuntu 9.10, LM_Sensors was unable to detect any of the onboard sensors for system monitoring support. This though will hopefully be addressed in a forthcoming kernel to find its way into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Ubuntu 10.10. Using the MCE remote control on the ASRock ION 330HT-BD also requires setting up LIRC.

We benchmarked the ASRock ION 330HT-BD with the Phoronix Test Suite and compared its performance to the ASRock NetTop ION 330 and a nettop built around the Jetway NC92 Atom IPC motherboard. Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit was used as the Jetway motherboard only has a 32-bit capable Atom 230 processor. For reference, Ubuntu 9.10 uses the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, GNOME 2.28.1, X Server 1.6.4, GCC 4.4.1, and the EXT4 file-system by default. The NVIDIA driver used on the ASRock systems was NVIDIA 190.42 with OpenGL 3.2 support. This Jetway system had Intel 945 integrated graphics, 2GB of memory, and a 16GB Super Talent STT_FTM16GL25H SSD. Again, the NetTop ION 330HT-BD packs an Intel Atom 330, ASRock AMCP7AION-HT motherboard, 2GB of memory, and a 320GB Seagate ST9320325AS HDD. The ION 330 has the Intel Atom 330, ASRock AMCP7A-ION motherboard, 2GB of DDR2 memory, and a 320GB Seagate ST9320325AS HDD.

The Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks included FFmpeg, x264, 7-Zip, PostMark, PostgreSQL, C-Ray, John The Ripper, GraphicsMagick, Stream, GtkPerf, and QGears2.


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