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TEST METHODOLOGY
Test Setup:
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The IONITX utilizes the Intel Atom N330 processor, the dual core version
of the 1.6GHz N270.
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Measurement and Analysis Tools
- CPU-Z
to monitor CPU frequency and voltage.
- Prime95
processor stress software.
- FurMark
stability test to stress the integrated GPU.
- Cyberlink
PowerDVD to play H.264/VC-1/Blu-ray video.
- SpeedFan
to monitor temperature and fan speeds.
- 3DMark05
as a 3D benchmark.
- 3DMark06
as a 3D benchmark.
- Seasonic
Power Angel AC power meter, used to measure the power consumption
of the system.
- Custom-built, four-channel variable DC power supply, used to regulate
the CPU fan speed.
Our main test procedure is designed to determine the overall system power
consumption at various states (measured using a Seasonic Power Angel). To stress
Intel Atom and Core 2 CPUs we use Prime95 (large FFTs setting) to maximize heat
and power consumption. For AMD X2 and Phenom CPUs we use CPUBurn K7 as it seems
to tax AMD processors more. To stress the IGP, we use FurMark, an OpenGL benchmarking
and stability testing utility.
We also test platform's proficiency at playing back high definition videos.
Standard Blu-ray movies can be encoded in three different codecs by design:
MPEG-2, H.264/AVC and VC-1. MPEG-2 has been around for a number of years and
is not demanding on modern system resources. H.264 and VC-1 encoded videos on
the other hand, due to the amount of complexity in their compression schemes,
are extremely stressful and will not play smoothly (or at all) on slower PCs,
especially with antiquated video subsystems.
Our main video test suite features a variety of 1080p H.264/VC-1 encoded clips.
The clips are played with PowerDVD and a CPU usage graph is created by the Windows
Task Manger for analysis to determine the approximate mean CPU usage. High CPU
usage is indicative of poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated
graphics subsystem. If the video (and/or audio) skips or freezes, we conclude
the board's IGP (in conjunction with the processor) is adequate to decompress
the clip properly.
Cool'n'Quiet was enabled (unless otherwise noted). The following features/services
were disabled during testing to prevent spikes in CPU/HDD usage that are typical
of fresh Vista installations:
- Windows Sidebar
- Indexing
- Superfetch
Video Test Suite
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