Asrock ION 330
Finally got my hands on this beastie. And I'm so glad.
Being playing with it for a few days.
Here's what I found out about the hardware.
Overclocking:
I cannot get it stable at 2.1Ghz although some websites reported it stable. I'm using Xtreem Dark 4Gb Dual Channel Kit ddr2 rams in it. I'm not sure how reputable this brand is but since I've already bought it... so no choice but to use it.
There are besides the standard Default Bios setup. There are two optimised mode settings one for SATA and one for AHCI. However, I noted this using this modes will set this option in Bios called Memory Boost. I don't know what this does as its not documented in the manual. I think its a recent addition to the bios for the device. However turning this on, the system WILL become unstable at clock rates above 1.6Ghz.
Bottom line for Overclocking DO NOT TURN ON Memory Boost.
I checked and realised the defaults FSB : DRAM ratio is 11:26 after overclocking . Set it to 4-4-4-12 for better performance , Default are set at 5-5-5-18 . I have set it and ran for a week without prbs , so its stable at that speed .
Due to CPU limitation , the ratio cannot be set to 1:1 . "Best Performance if set to 1:1 "
The best i tried is 1:2 , and you must set the DRAM freq to 667Mhz and CPU freq to 162 .
Temperature reporting:
Okay this is the weird part. Now Nvidia has some monitoring tools that allows you to find out various information parameters of the CPU, motherboard, harddisk and GPU. For the temperature, I always get about 60-70 degrees Celcius for both CPU and GPU.
However CoreTemp reports both cores to be around 30-40 degrees. Now which is right I've no idea.
The temperature is stable with the ambient temperature around 26-32 degrees. I live in the tropics.
OS:
Windows 7 works great. Most of the acceleration is turned on with and is quite responsive. Drivers are automatically available and most importantly, network drivers are working from install. This is because, the network chip drivers are not found on most linux distributions and for other windows, you have to install your network drivers from the supplied CD before it can work.
HD 1080p video playback.
Community codec pack works well for most videos, however it does not use hardware acceleration for some h264 playbacks. I found the paid Core codecs works the best as it can utilise the CUDA engine in the GPU.
XBMC is a debian based media center software. The latest version works well as it automatically detects everything including the graphic drivers. So playback is smooth.
I have it plugged into a Dell 2410 LED backlit monitor. It works great, movies wide screen 24inch. Most importantly it works at low power. The Asrock running at about 30watts, with the monitor running around 20 watts. Every thing is great! Much less power then my gaming system which would run easily 200+ watts. 50 watts for surfing and movie watching is acceptable, 200+ watts is not.
