Zotac's Ion-Based Mini-ITX Board For Atom Debuts

MojoKid writes "There have been a handful of NVIDIA Ion-based products with Intel's Atom processor that have been unveiled recently, ranging from NVIDIA's own reference system, to the Acer Aspire Revo SFF PC. Today Zotac announced an Ion motherboard that will be appealing to the DIY crowd. The design of this IONITX-A model board tested and reviewed here in particular, offers some very interesting features, not the least of which is its DC power input with an external power brick. It also is built on Intel's dual core Atom process for a bit more horsepower to back up NVIDIA's Ion integrated graphics chip."

Comments

Re:Lighter, faster & longer autonomy

[Lord Ender]

My Samsung NC10 netbook gets nine hours off of a charge. They cost more than the eees, but they're simply better-quality machines.

Re:WOW Netbook please.

[Anonymous Coward]

"From what I have read the Atom 1.6 just doesn't have the guts to run WOW realistically even at minimal levels."
People seem to like to talk about which processor can run this game or that game, but it's not about the processor- it's about the graphics card. My 5 year old computer with a new graphics card runs circles around my bosses quad-core new system that has a crappy intel-integrated graphics.

Re:WOW Netbook please.

[0123456]

Ion doesn't use Intel graphics. It uses Nvidia graphics.

That was kind of my point: the old Intel motherboards can't run games very well because of the crap chipset, whereas this one should be able to run them much better. My Atom runs Linux so I haven't really tried 3D games on it, but the Intel chipset graphics are similar to the one in my Windows laptop and that struggles even with old games.

Re:Yeah, still awaiting ARM

[onkelonkel]

I'm not really disagreeing with you, but there does seem to be two mutually exclusive ideas of "what is a netbook?" out there.

One is what you describe, an iPod touch with a 7' - 9" screen, basically an oversized PDA. It might have an ARM cpu, run Linux or Android. Does any such device that actually exist?

The other is a fully functional PC, just smaller. Intel Atom Cpu, winXP, 4+ hour battery. This is what is actually being sold as a netbook.

I own an eeePc, I paid $350, it runs MS Office (feh, work), Autocad (if you squint a bit), and all my older games (Homm 3, Diablo 2, Starcraft...). The 9" iTouch wouldn't meet my needs, I wouldn't buy one. I'm wondering how low you would have to price one to compete with the eePC. I think it would have to be well below $200 to sell.

Re:FINALLY!

[obi]

Here is what you want: Atom 330 + ION + PCI-E/16

http://www.techpowerup.com/93687/Point_of_View_Releases_its_First_NVIDIA_ION_Mainboards.html

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13577&Itemid=37

139.00 EUR it says.

How about comparing it to a real system?

[Vigile]

This review compares the same motherboard to an AMD-based system that is micro-ATX not mini-ITX, but does have the same price: $189 or so.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=708&type=expert&pid=4

If power consumption doesn't matter to you, the AMD X2 7750 + 780G + 400w PSU is a much better performer.

Re:How about comparing it to a real system?

[Gadget_Guy]

If power consumption doesn't matter to you, the AMD X2 7750 + 780G + 400w PSU is a much better performer.

Sure, if the size, silence and low power consumption are not important to you then you should not even consider a mini-ITX based system. But based on the linked that you provided, I think that the Zotac system performed well in some of the tests - especially in terms of performance per watt.

It is simply a case of working out what your priorities are.

Re:Yes, but XBMC Linux?

[itzfritz]

The hothardware review indicates that it has a 9400M, which is on the vpdau supported platform list... I would def. like to see how something like myth or boxee performs on this board. it could make a killer nix htpc.

Re:Yeah, still awaiting ARM

[LWATCDR]

The merits are that it can handle HD Video and is low cost.