Perhaps you’ve heard about our concept for the Velcro PC: a computer so small, light, and unobtrusive that you could literally affix it to the back of your HDTV.
That concept might have finally arrived in Giada’s i50 PC. Similar to the original Giada Ion-100, the i50 is a serious step up over the original box.
The most noticeable upgrade is in the brains department: The original Ion-100 sported an Nvidia Ion 2 chip coupled with a 1.3GHz Atom 330; this new model features a 1.2GHz Core i5-430UM processor. It’s not wickedly fast, mind you, but despite its 100MHz lower clock, it’s several times faster than the weak-sauce Atom 330 part.
The Giada i50 sports a Core i5 CPU and is small enough to be hidden behind your HDTV.
In graphics performance, however, the Arrandale-based Core i5 falls short. The older Giada with its Ion 2 walks all over the i50 in anything graphics-related. In fact, the Giada is the slowest we’ve ever seen in an HTPC. Some of that is the fault of the older graphics core in the Core i5, and some is the fault of the single-channel DDR3 RAM running at a leisurely 800MHz. For integrated-graphics folks, system RAM speed matters.
But does gaming performance really matter in a box that’s meant to be an HTPC machine? We don’t believe so. The Giada is more likely going to be used to stream content from various websites. The original Giada, despite its faster 3D performance, wasn’t up to that task given its slow Atom chip. The Giada i50 is. We had no issues playing HD video from YouTube, Vimeo, or Netflix. Granted, much of Atom’s performance issues have been mitigated by Adobe’s addition of GPU acceleration to Flash, but unoptimized players such as QuickTime will still trip up Atom systems. We expected the i50 to sail through our QuickTime test—playing a 1080p Iron Man 2 trailer from the hard drive—but were surprised that the 1.2GHz Core i5 didn’t have the chops for it. Is it the machine's fault or Apple’s, though? The trailer played perfectly fine from Windows Media Player and also from the VideoLAN player. We were originally prepared to hold it against the Giada but ultimately decided that it’s probably better to blame the QuickTime Player, which is an even bigger pile of poo than we had suspected.
Gigabit Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and four USB ports adorn the back of the Giada i50.
Is the Giada i50 the best HTPC we’ve ever tested? No, our heart still belongs to Asrock’s Vision 3D with its 2.4GHz Core i3 and discrete GeForce GT 425M part. But then again, the Asrock tips the scales at $800 to $1,000—without the OS. The Giada isn’t cheap at $650 with Windows 7 Home Premium installed, but we’ve seen it for $500 on the street with the OS. The Giada is also quite a bit smaller than the Asrock machine and therefore truly suitable for those who want to mount it behind their HDTV Velcro-style. The i50 even comes with a VESA mount, too. It’s not the fastest HTPC, but it’s the smallest, most-capable-for-its-size machine we’ve encountered to date.
$650, www.giadapc.com
Incredibly small and light; sips power.
Could use a faster CPU and GPU; slight fan whine.
| CPU | Intel 1.2GHz Core i5 430UM |
| Motherboard | Custom using Intel HM55 |
| RAM | 4GB DD3/800 in single-channel mode |
| Graphics | Integrated |
| Soundcard | Integrated |
| Storage | 500GB Seagate HDD (7,200rpm) |
| Network | Realtek Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n, Bluetooth |
| Giada i50 | MSI E350IA-E45 | Dell Inspiron Zino | Giada Ion-100 | Asrock Vision 3D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1.2GHz Intel Core i5-430UM | 1.6GHz AMD E350 | 1.5GHz Athlon X2 3250e | 1.3 GHz Atom 330 | 2.4GHz Core i3-370M |
| GPU | Integrated Arrandale Graphics | Integrated Radeon HD 6310 | Integrated Radeon HD 3200 | Integrated Nvidia Ion | GeForce GT 425M |
| Photoshop CS3 (sec) | 272 | 438 | 449 | 552 | 162 |
| MainConcept (sec) | 4,736 | 4,604 | 7,080 | 8,858 | 2,452 |
| 3DMark 2003 | 1,189 | 6,403 | 2,540 | 3,371 | 17,394 |
| Quake III (fps) | 87 | 193 | 192 | 118 | 537 |
| Quake 4 (fps) | 9 | 43 | 29 | 29 | 112 |
mikeart03a
August 02, 2011 at 3:27pm
For those of you recommending mac minis for the job, I applaud you for your audacity. As for these micro machines, they can keep'em for all I care. For that price, I can build myself a small machine (albeit, much larger compared to these) with power to spare and it would still be as quiet and blend in with my home theatre setup.
I'm not knocking these things, the concept is great, but the execution is a bit lacking. If you're gonna market something to the home theatre crowd, you better put out something that will handle HD content without even batting an eye.
My take on some of the things I've seen:
Intel Core i3 w/Integrated Graphics = Blah, overpriced word processor.
Intel Core i3 w/Cheap Integrated GPU (ATI/nVidia)= Okay, it'll handle HD content without too much headache.
AMD 'APU' w/ATI Graphics Chipset = Crowd stealer
SleepyCatChris
August 03, 2011 at 6:51am
nm
(Why are rich text formatting options not showing up? I misread this post and did a strikethrough of my reply with a correction, but strikethrough didn't show up. Don't feel like trying again.)
t9mike
August 02, 2011 at 7:10am
I bought one of the Mac Mini models a few weeks ago. They run fast but cool. I run my file/backup and Subsonic (http://www.subsonic.org/) server on it. And run iTunes on it to feed an Apple TV.
I am going to sell a Zotac ZBOX HD-ND02 I had. It was slow and put out heat like a jet engine.
I hate alot of what Apple does in limiting choice, but the mac mini makes a very good home server. And it is so quiet and has such good thermals you can also have it be your HTPC (currently I don't use it as such and just have it in my office).
Lighthater
August 01, 2011 at 4:53pm
Does the i50 comes with the remote like the n20 does? The n20 is a pretty sweet machine that works GREAT for a HTPC (I run Win7 with xbmc and it's running near perfect). The fact that you can power it on and off with the remote is icing on the cake. The ASRock, Acer Revo and Mac Mini don't have this, to my knowledge. I paid under $300 street for the Atom 525 (dual core) version with Ion 2, 320gb drive and 2gb of memory.
win7fanboi
August 01, 2011 at 11:55am
I don't get why for the love of god can't we have netbooks/nettops with a powerful intel atom cpu and a fucking ion 2 chip. It's always one or the other... I like to belive it's because of intel's greed but I admit it is pure speculation on my part. As much as we love our uber spec'ed monstor pc, Intel is losing ground to mobile market (ARM), Tablets (Nvidia Tegra) and now AMD's APU series netbooks which can play HD videos without stuttering, unlike the whimpy Atom chip.
ddimick
August 01, 2011 at 12:32pm
The Giada N20 has an Atom 525 and ION2. I use one for my HTPC with XBMC. Works well for 1080p content.
Or did you mean you wanted a Core2 CPU with ION2?
win7fanboi
August 01, 2011 at 12:54pm
Yea that's pretty decent... I am not familiar with their model line up and I know there are others that have dual core atom + ion2... However, at the time I was looking at nettops, gpu acceleration was missing in flash they weren't peppy enough and even now I think it would have trouble playing blu-ray discs. The major fail I think is in the netbook arena... amd capitalized on this opportunity and I just bought a C-50 APU netbook from Target for around 200$. Lot better at video playback but sucks in the cpu department. I knew this going in and for 200$ for a 11.6 inch netbook with windows 7 premium, it's not bad.
hades_2100
August 01, 2011 at 11:51am
<quote>Perhaps you’ve heard about our concept for the Velcro PC: a computer so small, light, and unobtrusive that you could literally affix it to the back of your HDTV.
That concept might have finally arrived in Giada’s i50 PC.</quote>
Didn't this concept arrive over 2 years ago with the Acer Revo?
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