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Test Results
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CPU Usage & Power Consumption
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Test
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Mean CPU Usage
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AC Power
Consumption
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Core 0
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Core 1
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Average
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Off
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N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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2W
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Sleep (S3)
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N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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4W
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Idle
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N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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32W
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HD in Full Bloom (H.264)
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23%
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28%
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25.5%
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~45W
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Rush Hour 3 (H.264)
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37%
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38%
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37.5%
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~53W
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Coral Reef Adventure (WMV3)
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40%
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59%
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49.5%
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~57W
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Flight Simulator X (WVC1)
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88%
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88%
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88.0%
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~68W
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CPUBurn
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N/A
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N/A
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N/A
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85W
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The Seasonic
SS-300SFD 80 Plus power supply used is approximately 82% efficient
at 51W AC input and 84% efficient at 77W AC input.
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The CPU was called on heavily during VC-1 playback, while H.264 was less demanding.
All the test clips played smoothly - even the WVC1 clip when CPU usage approached
90% on both cores. The Flight Simulator X trailer was encoded with a mind-boggling
60 frames per second, so this was not all that surprising nor disappointing.
Paired with a decent dual core processor, high definition playback does not
appear to be an issue for the KI690 except for the most demanding and heavily
compressed VC-1 formats. We used Windows Vista on our testbed and experienced
no difficulties, but using Windows XP may be problematic for VC-1 playback.
We received an e-mail from Albatron which in short, stated that due to a driver
issue, VC-1 audio playback is broken when using XP, with no fix in the works.
Power consumption with our run-of-the-mill 3800+ X2 CPU was fairly low: 32W
idle (with Cool 'N Quiet enabled), 85W during CPUBurn, and under 70W during
video playback. These numbers were about what we expected. When turned off or
in Sleep mode (there was no Standby or Hibernate option in Vista when using
S3 suspend) used minimal power, probably due to the high efficiency of our power
supply at lower wattages. We would have liked the opportunity to see if the
system could do better than 32W but underclocking and undervolting options are
absent in the BIOS and there is no way to do it manually in Vista (that we know
of). One of the lower 45W TDP processors from AMD (the 1.9GHz BE-2300 and the
2.1GHz BE-2350) would naturally have helped drop the power consumption; alas,
our single BE-2350 sample was engaged in another project that could not be interrupted
at the time of testing.
HDMI Output
We wanted to utilize the board's HDMI connector to see how well it displayed
on a HDTV. Unfortunately we did not have a proper HDMI cable for testing (strangely
enough we had a HDMI to DVI and a DVI to HDMI adapter) so we cannot confirm
whether audio through HDMI functions properly. The video portion however worked
flawlessly and looked stunning on a Sony Bravia 40" 720p LCD. The native
resolution of 1366x768 was not supported by the driver, but 1280x720 was more
than acceptable.
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The Vista desktop in normal lighting conditions.
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The Rush Hour 3 trailer in normal lighting conditions.
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The Vista desktop in low light.
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HD in Full Bloom in low light.
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