The ASUS Eee Box B206 is a great little nettop PC with HDMI output and ATI Radeon 3450 graphics. As the Asus Eee Box B206 features a HDMI output and dedicated graphics, as opposed to VGA and low powered standard graphics chipset, it seems looks great for used as a HTPC / media center.
The small unit features an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and a 160GB SATA HDD.
The tiny unit features the low power Intel Atom N270 CPU as found in many netbooks, and a powerful 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU, along with 1GB of RAM, 160GB SATA II HDD, 802.11n Wi-Fi and gigabit Ethernet.
As the ATI Radeon graphics features a Unified Video Decoder, the Asus Eee Box B206 can used the graphic card to decode HD media such as blu-ray and x.264 content, leaving the CPU mostly idle.
Reghardware reviewed the Asus B206, giving it a 75% rating, but I feel they somewhat missed the point. They state that it dropped frames when playing back 720p content in VLC and Quicktime, so 1080p was a no go. But you have to make sure you use a player which can use the graphics decoding power, such as PowerDVD, Media Player classic, or Windows Media Center. They said, “If you’re looking at the B206 as a cheap home theater PC then, unless your requirements are fairly specific or you’re happy to stick to standard definition, you’ll likely be disappointed. HD output is achievable, but it’s not incredibly flexible.”
If you are very interested, but want extra power, the setup Asus Eee Box B208 features the dual core Intel Atom N330 CPU, along with the more powerful ATI Radeon HD 4350 series graphics.
Fri, May 8, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Asus Eee PC