HP 2133 Mini-Note

Mini-Note Performance Tests with Windows XP

I know everyone has been really curious to see the performance difference of XP on the Mini-Note, so without further ado here are the results:

Computer Details

Mini-Note #1 = 800Mhz, Vista Business
Mini-Note #2 = 1200Mhz, Vista Business
Mini-Note #3 = 1600Mhz, Vista Business
Mini-Note #4 = 800Mhz, XP Pro SP2
Mini-Note #5 = 1200Mhz, XP Pro SP2
Mini-Note #6 = 1600Mhz, XP Pro SP2
Desktop #1 = 1800Mhz AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1800Ghz), 1GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Nvidia 6200, Windows Media Center SP2
Desktop #2 = 1867Mhz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Nvidia 7600GT, Windows Media Center SP2

Note, that all the Mini-Notes are actually the VIA C7-M 1.6Ghz model underclocked with the power management settings, and have 2GB DDR667 RAM, 120GB 7200RPM HD.

The 1.2Ghz benchmarks using XP are missing because I haven’t found a way to throttle the CPU in XP to 1.3Ghz. The power options only let me have 800Mhz or 1600Mhz.

I didn’t realize there was a newer version of 3DMark when I ran the benchmarks on Vista. I’ll try and get the Vista image restored this weekend and try 3DMark06.

Benchmark Tests

Video Encoding

See the Mini-Note Vista Video Encoding Benchmarks post for full details on the encoding test.

Summary

As I said in First Impressions of XP on the Mini-Note, the 2133’s performance is noticeably better with XP and these benchmarks really prove that.

Posted in performance tests | 4 Comments »

HP Mini-Note XP Movie Playback

Web Videos

I again tried Hulu, YouTube, Metacafe and Break to test Mini-Note’s Flash movie playback in XP. I’m happy to report they’re all much better. YouTube, Metacafe and Break all play perfect or near-perfect in full or screen modes. In small screen Hulu still plays choppy, but it’s watchable if you really want to see something. Hulu’s full screen mode is still pretty bad.

AVI Videos

There really weren’t any major issues with AVI playback in Vista, but it does playback smoother while multitasking in XP now. With the video size at 100% there were hardly any dropped frames while surfing. At 200% it started dropping some more, but you’re not likely to notice while multitasking.

Quick Time Videos

The SD video trailers still played great in XP, and the 480p only dropped a few frames here or there. You still need to wait for it download entirely for best performance though. Unfortunately the 720p and 1080p were still pretty bad with QuickTime.

At Peach1200’s suggestion I tried the K-Lite codes and Media Player classic with the high-def trailers. It was 100 times better using those. The 480p and 720p trailers played flawlessly. The 1080p trailer would barely play at all though. (Get K-Lite Mega Pack w/Media Player Classic)

I also tried web surfing while watching the Iron Man 720p full-size in MPC which did cause it to get a little choppy. I would say it’s a little worse than the Superbad AVI at 200% while browsing.

DVD Playback

This time around I tried PowerDVD 6 as well as PowerDVD 8 to try out some DVDs with. This time around playback was perfect - no skipping or choppiness. (by the way, PDVD6 Isn’t compatible w/Vista)

While surfing DVD playback was heavily affected by it. The audio wouldn’t drop but playback would freeze for a few seconds from time to time and plenty of dropped frames.

Summary

As expected the Mini-Note’s performance is much better with XP on it instead of Vista. The processor is much more capable without a bloated OS slowing it down. Check out the video of it in action.

For details about the AVI files used or to see the Vista results take a look at the HP 2133 Mini-Note Vista Movie Playback Test.

Posted in performance tests | 10 Comments »

Official XP Drivers the HP 2133 Mini-Note

Wikifun happed to see that HP has the official XP drivers up on their site now! Finally no more digging around trying to find what works were. Thanks wikifun!

Update: liliputing.com is reporting that the drivers have been pulled down. (confirmed)

Update: the drivers are back up now

Posted in news | 1 Comment »

Improving High-definition Video Playback on the Mini-Note

Over in the First Impressions of XP on the Mini-Note post, Peach1200 suggested I try the K-Lite Mega Codec pack and Media Player Classic on some high-definition QuickTime videos. I was very impressed by the results. The 480p and 720p QuickTime trailers and some 720p WMV movies played back flawlessly in Media Player Classic. It really is a night and day difference. Thanks for sharing that Peach!

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

First Impressions of XP on the Mini-Note

It really is way better with XP on the Mini-Note. YouTube videos play fine, Hulu is almost watchable in small screen, DVDs look great, and 480p QuickTime Trailers are watchable (still dropped frames, but less than Hulu). In general the performance is way better than Vista with XP on it. The one thing I do miss from Vista though is it’s power management let you set throttle the cpu to a certain percentage. I’m still playing with couple 3rd party apps trying to pick the best one.

XP is definitely way better than Vista on the Mini-Note. I’ll have an official review, some videos and updated benchmarks soon.

Posted in news | 6 Comments »

More Mini-Note Performance Tests

Hi everyone, I have some more fun performance/benchmark tests of the Mini-Note running Vista. This should give you an idea of how well it can (or can’t) run.

Computer Details

Mini-Note #1 = VIA C7-M 800Mhz, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Chrome 9 Graphics, Vista Business
Mini-Note #2 = VIA C7-M 1200Mhz, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Chrome 9 Graphics, Vista Business
Mini-Note #3 = VIA C7-M 1600Mhz, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Chrome 9 Graphics, Vista Business
Desktop #1 = 1800Mhz AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1800Ghz), 1GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Nvidia 6200, Windows Media Center
Desktop #2 = 1867Mhz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD, Nvidia 7600GT, Windows Media Center

Note, that all the Mini-Notes are actually the 1.6Ghz model underclocked with the power management settings. Also I messed up and somehow ended up with 3DMark03 instead of 3DMark06. I will have this updated ASAP.

Benchmark Tests

Video Encoding

See the Mini-Note Vista Video Encoding Benchmarks post for full details.

I’ll be installing XP on my Mini-Note tonight and I’ll those numbers up soon so we can the difference. Should be really interesting.

Posted in performance tests | 2 Comments »

Skype performance on XP

jkOnTheRun has a video of a video call through Skype on XP. It looks good enough and doesn’t seem to drop any frames or audio. This is a huge improvement over Skype’s performance in Vista which is good news for those of you worried about the VIA C7-M processor. It still a little underpowered, but the processor a decent operating system and it will handle the basic stuff well enough.

Check it out: http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/05/jkontherun-geek.html

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Mini-Note Sleeve Case Winner

The winner of our forums contest is skullhead. Congratulations on winning the Waterfield Designs sleeve case!

Check back next week for a new contest!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

HP 2133 Mini-Note Vista Movie Playback

Continuing on with my reviews of the 1.6Ghz Mini-Note (KX870AT) this time I’ll be focusing on video play back.

Web Videos

I tried out various videos on Hulu, YouTube, Metacafe and Break to test the Mini-Notes Flash (FLV) movie playback. Videos from each site, except Hulu, played back watchable but did have some noticeable dropped frames. Nothing too terrible though. Hulu played back awful. The Mini-Note just couldn’t keep up with their videos.

AVI Videos

I was very impressed with the Mini-Note’s performance playing back AVI movies. I tried two different movies which played flawlessly in small or full screen modes. The only issue I ran into was when resizing the Windows Media Player window. The video would seem to get delayed and then rush to catch up. (it looked like it was fast forwarding, but the audio was fine). I was most impressed by the fact they still played perfect with the processor running at 800Mhz instead of 1600Mhz.

While they did play great with no other active apps, when surfing the web or using Word they did start dropping frames or the audio would get out of sync.

Details of the videos used:

Video 1

Filesize: 1.5GB

Frame Dimensions: 720×304

Data Rate: 227kbps

Total Bitrate: 449kbps

Framerate: 23fps

CPU Usage: 45-60%

Video 2

Filesize: 700MB

Frame Dimensions: 608×336

Data Rate: 103kbps

Total Bitrate: 112kbps

Framerate: 23fps

CPU Usage: 30-40%

QuickTime Videos

QuickTime’s high definition video trailers really left something to be desired. The 480p version was the only one close to being watchable, and only then after you waited for it to completely download. The 720p and 1080p versions dropped frames like crazy and were unwatchable (unless you like audio slideshows). Any of the videos in full screen also didn’t not playback acceptably either.

On the SD side of things, the Small and Medium sized trailers played great. The Large sized trailer played very well once it finished downloading the movie. While it was downloading there were some dropped frames and jerky motion.

DVD Playback

To test DVDs I borrowed an internal Lite-on DVD/CDRW drive from one of the desktops and connected it to the Mini-Note with an IDE to USB converter. For playing the DVD I used PowerDVD 8. DVD playback had a lot of dropped frames and audio that skipped in either small or fullscreen modes. Sadly it wasn’t enjoyable at all.

Summary

Overall I think the Mini-Note with Vista handles video playback fine considering it’s not really meant for that sort of thing. Hopefully when 2133 is refreshed with Isaiah or Atom in the coming months we’ll see a big improvement on video playback.

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HP 2133 Mini-Note Vista Video Encoding Benchmarks

I didn’t install XP last night because I wanted to run some more benchmarks so we could have some hard numbers to compare to when I’ve installed XP. Today I ran two video encoding tests:

1. Encoding 173MB QuickTime .MOV file into an AVI file with dual pass encoding using Pazera’s free MOV to AVI Converter
2. Encoding the same MOV file into an FLV file with Riva FLV Encoder

So we have something for comparison now, I ran my two desktops through the same tests. The Intel Desktop has a Core 2 Duo E6300 overclocked to run at 1867Mhz (from 1600) with 2GB of RAM, and 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB cache hard drive. The AMD Desktop has an Athlon 64 3000+ running at 1802Mhz, with 1GB of RAM, and a 7200RPM 80GB hard drive. Each has Windows Media Center Edition on it. The Mini-Note is running a VIA C7-m 1.6Ghz processor, along with 2GB of RAM, 120GB 7200 RPM HD, and Windows Vista Business. I also decided to put the 2133 into Power Saver mode so the CPU would be throttled to 800Mhz and run separate tests at that speed as well. (actually I accidentally left the Mini-Note in Power Saver mode from when I was testing video playback and ran the first FLV conversion with it like that…)

Here are the results of the tests, enjoy:

I’ll have some more videos (once I can get a better camera) and some more reviews soon. If anyone wants to try this with their eeePC, or other netbook, and share their results let me know. I’ll send you a link where you can download the MOV file I used and other info for running the tests.

*UPDATED* Added times for 1200Mhz

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