HP Mini 311 — Flash Video Meets ION
We discussed recently the new 10.1 Beta of Flash, which adds DXVA acceleration for videos. We tested everything from standard YouTube and Hulu videos up through 1080p YouTube videos on the HP Mini 311. We even connected an external 1080p LCD to see how the system would handle scaling to such a high resolution. The results are shown in the following table (repeated from our Flash 10.1 article).
| HP Mini 311 (ION LE) Full Screen 1366x768 Performance |
||
| Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 | |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - Avg. CPU | 98% | 66% |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - FPS | 1.1 | 24.2 |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - Avg. CPU | 92% | 66% |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - FPS | 7.1 | 27.6 |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - Avg. CPU | 90% | 69% |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - FPS (Dropped) | 10.5 (1519) | 24.0 (0) |
While Flash 10.0 struggled with quite a few videos, 10.1 enables ION netbooks (and nettops) to work without skipping. Presumably this will also help out any laptop/netbook with the necessary hardware to handle HD video decoding offload. That means that netbooks using the GMA 500 IGP ought to work (we couldn't confirm this yet), but most netbooks currently use GMA 950. The 945GSE chipset in this case can't help with DXVA, which means that fullscreen HD Flash video isn't going to run on such netbooks. If you like HD YouTube/Hulu/etc., that could be the killer app that makes the ION a must have compared to other netbooks.
Sounds great, right? Let's take a moment to look at the bigger picture, though. GMA 950 is old news… very old news. It's only still around because ASUS decided to make a slow laptop and sell it for $300, kicking off the netbook era. While we like the idea of smaller laptops with good battery life, Atom still leaves a lot to be desired, and the platform as a whole has plenty of shortcomings.
If you can manage to spend a bit more money, laptops like the Acer Timeline series include the much improved GS45 chipset (GMA 4500MHD) and Core 2 Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) CPUs. That combination is able to handle DXVA as well, and even the lower end dual-core Pentium SU4100 (1.30GHz 2MB cache) and Celeron SU2300 (1.20GHz 1MB cache) are significantly faster than the Atom N270/N280.
You can find such laptops starting at $400 (e.g. the Gateway EC1435u), and they make a very compelling argument against Atom netbooks. In terms of video decoding — be it Flash, x264, or something else — ION clearly leads other Atom netbooks but ends up tying the CULV solutions. Gaming would still be in favor of ION, perhaps, though it lacks the CPU power to make that matter. What about CUDA?
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hybrid2d4x4 - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - link
Excellent review! Looks like you hit all the important points and I like how the game selection is more relevant to this class of notebook. IMO, this raises the bar for comprehensive notebook reviews. Kudos!OhHenry - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
How come they don't give smaller SSD like 32GB or 40GB as an option. I honestly don't need 160GB for a netbook; I do not know what to even put on it. They offered a 80GB but it was quite expensive. On a second note, wouldn't a SSD increase the battery life as well?chrnochime - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
Are you sure the samsung nc510 has the DX10 ION? Read elsewhere that the NC510 also has the ION LE, something about keeping the cost down.piroroadkill - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
You end up paying more for Ion, getting worse battery life, and still have completely useless gaming performance.Seems like a lose-lose to me. I guess it's useful for video acceleration, but that seems like a pretty fringe case for a netbook
araczynski - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
looks like exactly the kind of junk HP likes to push at a price point that would leave anyone with half a brain scratching their head, wouldn't have expected anything more from them.Jaggins - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
I would like to see if an older game like Eve online or WOW would run on these ION netbooks.Lunyone - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
I think they would be fine, just only when you get into RAID situations (or where there are alot of people and things going on). I think normal solo/small group playing should be fine. I haven't experienced it myself, but I used to game on WoW with a P3 800 mHz w/onboard graphics (Intel Extreme II, I think). Now mind you this was before the first expansion and the laptop wasn't all that special either, but the Atom would be about equivalent to a p3 at 1.6 gHz (if my reading is right).therealnickdanger - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - link
Great article, I was contemplating buying this, but now I'm not so sure. My ONLY gaming requirement is Halo PC (multiplayer). It's an old game, but has some quirks when it comes to its demands on CPU performance. So I really need to know what the 311 can do with this game. I'll mail you a copy if you'd like.The game also has a timedemo mode. Just add
-timedemo
to the command line. It takes about a minute to rum.
Devo2007 - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
A few days ago when ASUS announced their new dual-core Atom-based netbook, I ended up thinking that a CULV-based laptop would be a better idea (especially since that netbook has a 12" display, and only a 5 hour battery life).Good to see I'm not alone in this line of thinking. :)
JarredWalton - Sunday, November 22, 2009 - link
Exactly. This isn't really for you, but for anyone else reading that's still wondering I've got numbers. The review is still pending, but just as an example:Acer Timeline AS1810T-8679:
"63Wh" battery (11.1V, 5.27Ah/5600mAh)
Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.30GHz)
4GB DDR2 RAM
320GB HDD
Cost: http://www.onsale.com/p/5887001?dpno=7958665">$600
Battery Life
Idle: 592 minutes
Internet: 461 minutes
x264 720p: 259 minutes
Internet Minutes/Wh: 7.42
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CPU Encode: 18.04 FPS
Compare that with the Mini 311:
Battery Life
Idle: 362 minutes
Internet: 290 minutes
x264 720p: 225 minutes
Internet Minutes/Wh: 5.47
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CUDA Encode: 18.04 FPS
TMPGEnc MPEG4 CPU Encode: 7.27 FPS
So here's my point (spoiling my own upcoming article). For $600 you can get a Timeline 1810 that's about 2.5 times as fast in the CPU department, it has twice the RAM, it comes with Win7 64-bit, and battery life is anywhere from 15% to 65% better. Oh yeah, and while the CPU is "10W TDP", you'll note that the HP Mini 311 and the Timeline 1810 both have roughly the same size battery (the Timeline's is about 12% more capacity). For Internet use, the result is 35% better relative battery life.
Sure, the 1810 I just listed costs $600 and the HP Mini 311 I'm comparing it with goes for about $480. (Unless you really want to save the ~$100 and get XP with only 1GB?) If you get the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">Acer AS1410 (or Gateway EC1435u), you're closer to $400 and you still get 2GB RAM and Win7 (64-bit no less, though with only 2GB that's not a huge deal). A 1.2GHz SU2300 is still going to be at least 75% faster in CPU tasks than Atom N280.
You can try to make an argument for GPU performance over CPU performance on other laptops, but with Atom the CPU deficit is just so huge that outside of video decoding (something you get with GMA 4500MHD as well) and perhaps CUDA apps, it just doesn't matter much.