Kingston ssdNow 64GB Performance

The Kingston ssdNow V series Solid State Drive is a 2.5" replacement for the original 160 GB, 5400 RPM drive that was originally installed into the Acer Aspire One. This drive has been called a 'consumer level SSD' meaning that it has good performance, but not workstation class performance. The drive use the JMicron controller which in earlier SSD has been reported to cause stuttering when multi-tasking. The firmware in this drive has been optimized to eliminate the stuttering issue. During testing, I haven't come across this issue.

The Kingston SSD will be compared to the original 5400 RPM drive. The SSD has been shown in benchmarks by other sites to not perform as well as most mid to high end 7200 RPM drives. The performance jump from the OEM drive to the SSD is readily apparent. From power-off to Windows login takes 28.7 seconds. From login to Windows desktop takes 4 seconds. From hibernate to desktop takes 26 seconds.

The results from HDTach 3.0 shows the SSD to have a sequential read access rate of 114.7 MB/s. This compares favorably to the Vendor stated specs with Sequential Access stated as Read 100MB/sec and Write 80MB/sec.

The addition of the SSD made for a very nice performance upgrade. At $133.00 retail, it is much lower cost than other competing drives such as Intel's new SSD line in which it is $100 higher in price than the Kingston SSDnow V-series.

Broadcom BCM70012 Performance

Most netbooks sporting the GMA950 graphics processor have had to live with not being able to play 720P video smoothly and 1080P video playback at all. Playback of Adobe Flash 9 content is also not smooth. The Broadcom HD Video Accelerator is set to change all that. The mini PCI-e card allows off-loading of video decoding and scaling to its graphics processor. This reduces the load on the CPU and allows full screen smooth 1080P playback. Currently the BCM70012 is sold as an upgrade to select Dell and HP netbooks. These come bundled with a modified version of ArcSoft Total Media Theater (TMT). The retail version of TMT 3.0 currently doesn't support the Broadcom accelerator. The video player software has to support the Broadcom accelerator for it to be used by the system. I tried the retail versions of PowerDVD9, WinDVD, VLC and Windows Media Player (current releases as of 07/25/09) and they all showed poor playback of the blu-ray encoded video trailer 'I am Legend'. The best I could achieve without the Broadcom accelerator card support was 10 FPS. Windows Media Player didn't support the Blu-Ray encoded format (MP4 container H.264/AVC).

The testing was performed using the ArcSoft Total Media Theater version 2.1.19.128 which is optimized for using the Broadcom HD video accelerator (HP installer name SP43732.exe). Full screen playback of the 1080P content was remarkably smooth. Without the acceleration, CPU was close to 100%. With the accelerator active, CPU load varied between 18 - 25%. This is a remarkable improvement. One can actually check their mail while a video is playing which is typically hard to do with the low powered netbook.

UPDATE 12/06/2009: Broadcom released drivers for the accelerator card. You can download from Broadcom.com or follow this link. Theis driver doesn't support Blu-Ray (Broadcom states to see OEM), but does now support Adobe Flash Player 10.1, ArcSoft TotalMedia™ Theatre (OEM edition) and CyberLink PowerDVD (OEM edition). Hopefully support for TMT and PowerDVD retail version will be available at some point.

Many are thinking... what good is 1080P (1920x1080 pixels) when the netbook screen is only 1024x600 pixels. If you watch on the netbook screen, the accelerator will do proper sizing and you'll get a very nice clean video. For 1080P you'll need to output the video to a monitor capable of handling the resolution. In this case for testing, I hooked the Acer to a I-INC 28" monitor capable of 1920x1080P. The screenshot below shows that the Acer is capable of outputting video from the VGA connection at 1080P.

This shows that you can use the netbook along with a media server that can provide the 1080P content, Blu-Ray drive or on a the local hard-drive and output this to a HD capable monitor or a High Definition television with VGA input or using a VGA to DVI to HDMI converter.

The videos below show playback of the 1080P content using the TMT video player optimized for the Broadcom card against VLC Player which doesn't use the Broadcom card. My apologies for the shaky video camera and the resolution, but you'll 'get the picture' when you compare videos.

Conclusion:
The hard-drive to SSD, Broadcom BCM70012 and memory upgrades were successful and made for a very capable netbook. The video accelerator opens new avenues for the netbook as a media center. Broadcom is working with Adobe to put BCM70012 optimization in an upcoming release of Adobe Flash Player (est first half, 2010). I would recommend the SSD and Broadcom accelerator.

Costs (as of 07/25/09)

• Acer AOA150-1706: $259.00 on sale
• Broadcom BCM70012: $40.00 (EBay)
• Kingston SNV-125-S2BD/64GB: $129.00 on sale
• 1 GB DDR2-5300 DIMM: $14

Total cost for the upgrade/mod: was $442.00. The cost of a similarly equipped HP Mini 110 XP is $444.00, but you only get a 32 GB SSD and 1 GB memory.

Updates:

08/04/09 - Reader Reports

V.Caro reports that he successfully installed the Broadcom BCM70012 in his Acer D250 using the second mini-PCI-e slot and firmware 1.07 running Windows 7 RC1 using the HP driver for the Broadcom card. He was able run a 1080P video smoothly. He does report that the modified TMT 2.1.19.128 doesn't support playing a video directly from an external Blu-Ray drive.

G.Lin also confirmed that modified TMT 2.1.19.128 doesn't support playing a Blu-Ray disk directly.

08/08/09 - Terracode update

I installed Windows 7 release version (RTM) on the Acer AOA150 which installed smoothly. The HP driver for the Broadcom accelerator installed properly as did TMT 2.1.19.128. When launching TMT, Win7 gives a compatibility warning, but you can tell it to start anyway. The blu-ray trailer ran without issues and had an average of 30% CPU utilization which was about 10% greater than the average CPU utilization I was getting with XP. This didn't cause any issues with playback.

11/20/09 - Terracode Update

The beta version of Adobe Flash 10.1 is out that supports 1080P content. You will need to install the newest version of the Broadcom Accelerator driver from HP (filename sp44958.exe). The older driver doesn't work quite well with the new Adobe flash 10.1. I played 1080P flash content from YouTube smoothly using the new driver. Amazing difference from the previous Flash version.

12/05/09 - Broadcom released drivers for the accelerator card. You can download from Broadcom.com or follow this link.