VIA Epia M10000 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Reviews: Hardware

Motherboards | Power Supplies | Memory | Systems | Video Cards

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Brian Kristensen
Kurtis
VIA
Oct. 10, 2003

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Performance

This isn't a performance board, and therefore, running performance benchmarks and comparing it to performance boards would defeat the purpose. Since this board is in a class of its own, I went with the obvious approach and tested the board by using it how it is intended to be used (with movies and other multimedia junk! YAY!).

As you have read earlier, the CastleRock graphics controller on the M10000 has a built in hardware MPEG-2 decoder. This should allow for better performance while playing media. To test this, I used several different media types and codecs to get an idea of how well this board handles movies and audio. Windows Task Manager was used to gather the overall CPU usage.

The test setup includes:

VIA Epia M10000
512 MB PC2100 Shared memory (64 MB for graphics)
80 GB 7200 RPM Samsung HD
16x Pioneer DVD drive

Software used:

Windows XP Pro
VIA Drivers (off of CD)
DirectX 9
WinDVD 4
Windows Media Player
Quicktime

MPEG1 Playback

I played back a number of different videos encoded in the MPEG1 format, including one of my favorite TV shows, Family Guy. While testing several different bit rates, resolutions, and quality MPEG1 movies, I found the CPU utilization to be minimal at around 15%.

MPEG2 Playback

For MPEG2 playback, I tested two DVDs: The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan with WinDVD 4. CPU Utilization was usually between 35-60% depending on the complexity of the scene. Action scenes usually yielded higher CPU usage.

DivX & MS MPEG4 V3 Playback

Since DivX is an extremely popular format, I decided to see how well the M10000 performs during DivX playback. I played back several videos of low and high quality. Low quality movies (ex: 320x240, ~270 kbps, 24fps) ran around 30% CPU usage while high quality movies (640x480, ~2800 kbps, 24fps) were around 80-90% CPU usage with an occasional slow-down.

Quicktime .MOV Playback

I tested the M10000's ability to play several Quicktime movies in different sizes and qualities. High Quality movies at 640x480 had around 90% CPU usage and there were a lot of hiccups. The frames would constantly freeze while the movie continues playing. Lower quality movies used around 45-50% of the CPU with the occasional skipped frame.

Uncompressed AVI Playback

Finally, I did a little testing with some high quality uncompressed AVI files at 640x480 which ran smoothly, but used up to 90% of the CPU.

Surfing & Office Performance

I did a little subjective testing for doing other common tasks such as browsing the web and using office applications. I used Windows XP's default browser and did a little surfing (And then a shark chomped me in half! Hahaha... okay moving on... right... about... now.). Everything was running smoothly if the majority of the page was text. As soon as I started viewing pages with a lot of graphics and animations, the performance dropped and scrolling became a little choppy. Even the front page of this site caused some slight slowdowns while browsing.

I tested many different Microsoft Office XP applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. All programs ran without a hitch; Office and Excel ran very smoothly. Programs like Adobe Photoshop were noticeably slower than on my other machines.

Benchmark Performance

Just to cure your curiosity, I ran a few SiSoft Sandra and 3DMark01 benchmarks. Here they are:

SiSoft Sandra
CPU Arithmetic
ALU:	1585
FPU:	368
CPU Multimedia
Int:	2333
Float:	2281
Memory Bandwidth:
Int:	580
Float:	360
3DMark01
Score:	761

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Page 6 of 7

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Page 1: Introduction & History
Page 2: From Erza to Nehemiah
Page 3: Board Layout & Features
Page 4: Accessories
Page 5: BIOS
Page 6: Workstation & Office Performance
Page 7: Conclusion

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9 User Comments

1 - Posted by Kurtis on October 10, 2003 - 6:01 pm

i love that thing. can't wait to see what you do with it soon :)

2 - Posted by handrail on October 11, 2003 - 12:45 pm

yeah, put it in a dukes of hazzard lunchbox. that would be cool! i had this one when i was 7!!!!

http://www.cybermad.com/culture/wobble/duke1.gif

http://www.cybermad.com/culture/wobble/duke2.gif

3 - Posted by Kurtis on October 11, 2003 - 1:29 pm

lolol.

4 - Posted by A Person on October 25, 2003 - 2:16 am

Hey Brian, I got a question about the onboard video. I was reading a review of this board on another site http://www.techseekers.net/modules.php?name=Review... and they said that they could boot using the tv output but once the os loaded it switched back to vga. So they had to have a monitor around to switch back to tv. The thing that confused me was that they said, "Once I switched over to TV out, I could remove the monitor from now on." I was wondering if this meant that they could remove the monitor untill they rebooted or if they didnt need a monitor forever after that. Do know anything about this? (The peeps over there didn't respond to my email)

I am working on a project (in the planning stage) to build a pc inside of something portable, like a nintendo or a lunch-box or something cool so I can take it around to other peoples dorms and play old video games with emulators and watch dvds. I am gonna use an m1000 but if I have to have a monitor around everytime I boot then I'll have to buy a seperate vid card which will totaly change my plans.

Also, where did u get yours from? Or did u get it for free?

5 - Posted by Brian on October 25, 2003 - 11:09 am

Funny thing is, I don't have a TV. I'll see if I can snag one and test it out.

6 - Posted by Brian on October 25, 2003 - 11:34 am

To set up TV output, first attach a TV AND a Monitor and select "CRT+TV" in the BIOS and boot normally. Both screens will boot normally, but the TV will go blank once in Windows. (using your monitor) Go to the Display Properties (right click on desktop and click properties), go to the "Settings" tab, then "Advanced" then "S3Display. Then click on the TV icon/image and it should highlight in blue and tick the box below it. Click "OK" and the TV should display again.

Once you have done that, you should be able to shutdown, remove the monitor, and display with only the TV. I will test this out in a few days and keep you updated.

7 - Posted by A Person on October 25, 2003 - 2:14 pm

cool, thanks so much!!!

8 - Posted by ELiTE KiLLaH on October 25, 2003 - 10:28 pm

hopefully its just a one time thing...otherwise thats just fucking stpuid of them lol

:?

9 - Posted by A Person on October 25, 2003 - 11:30 pm

Ya, if its just a one time thing then I dont need any other video card and then I can stick some other fun stuff in it instead.

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