GPU Acceleration

So here is where we step away from the benchmarks for a change. We can show you dozens of detailed platform benchmarks, but with a device like this... it's all relative. We figured it would just be better to show you two videos demonstrating the difference between regular ATOM 230/330 video acceleration (well the lack of it) and then show you what the GPU in the ION can do to assist.

Small note: the example videos are of poor quality, we'll look into some HD capable recording devices this year. But we felt it would be 10x better to show you the product for what it is and what it's designed for rather than showing you dry benchmarks.

1080P (1920x1080) GPU Acceleration on the ION's GF9400

Our first video shows two stages of accelerating / decoding and post processing a 150 megabyte 1080P trailer from the movie Iron Man. This trailer is h.264 and roughly pushing its data though the pipeline at 20-25 MBit/sec, which is fairly normal for a Blu-ray movie, though some movies can even peak at a 35 or even 40 Mbit/sec datarate.

• In the first stage you can see we try to decode the 1080P content over the embedded Atom 230 processor. It's just not possible. Even 720P content is fairly impossible for this processor. Observe closely the massive amount of frames dropped (stuttering) and CPU load, as it is maxing flat-out at 100%.
• In the second stage of the video we enable PureVideo in PowerDVD, and as such accelerate and enhance the h.264 movie content over the GPU. You'll now see real-time fluent movie playback with very low CPU utilization at roughly 20-25%, this 20+ MBit/sec trailer is shown on a 1920x1080P monitor.

The difference is just amazing. It's the sheer power of the GF9400M chipset/GPU. And yes, we really need to get our hands on an HD recording device, man.

Video Transcoding on ION's GF9400

The second stage of the video shows video transcoding.

We again take the same 150 MB size 1080P h.264 trailer. Now with the help of Badaboom software we will transcode the 1080P video to a much smaller file-format and resolution, MP4, for the iTouch. Normally this process would take 15-30 minutes easily on the Atom 230 processor (depending on the software you use).

Watch and observe, as it's nearly real-time. These were the two examples I wanted to show you to give you an idea of what this little ION PC is capable of.