- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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I think there's a world market for maybe five computers - Thomas Watson, IBM
Zotac's Atom-based, Ion ready M-ITX motherboards tip up
THE INQ HAS STUMBLED across not just the specs but also some pictures of Zotac's new Atom-based M-ITX motherboards, all set up for Nvidia's Ion platform.
Just weeks after Acer announced its mini-PC , the Aspire Revo - a mongrel with an Atom CPU and an NV 9400 chipset - Zotac appears to be jumping on the bandwagon and releasing two of its own Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard models for the Ion.
The specs and a picture were originally posted on Chinese hardware site Expreview, but were forcibly pulled down by the powers that be.
Now the INQ has managed to get hold of them for your viewing pleasure.
According to the specs, Zotac's Ion ITX-A-U sports an Atom N330 dual core while the Ion ITX-B-E comes with an Atom N230 single core processor. Both boast Nvidia's MCP79 chipset and built-in GeForce 9400 GPU, all the better to support PureVideo HD, CUDA and PhysX, apparently.
The boards are fully equipped with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs and both offer two DDR2 memory slots for a maximum capacity of DDR2-800.
Nvidia may want to make a lot of noise about Ion, but in the name of system silence, Zotac seems to have designed its kit so that the CPU and GPU sit quietly inside a big aluminum cooling rib.
Initial pricing indicates that the Ion ITX-A-U will cost some $303, whilst punters will have to shell out $202 for the Ion ITX-B-E.
Both will purportedly be available first in Japan, before hitting shelves elsewhere in the world. µ
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I really do hope the prices of these boards come down a bit with volume. I'd love to get one of these boards for a MythTV box (I gather that MythTV runs better with an NVidia chipset) and something like this would make a lovely little media centre PC.
Rob
At the moment they are a bit too much dollarwise for me to be interested, Zotac are a pretty good builder though I have a few of their products spread over a number of systems and none have given any issues as yet.
Efros
Theres New SetTop out yesterday, too. So micro, designer market may be opening with higher quality of Atom. Not Cheap, yet stick another Intel problem Inside, SSD X-18M, for instance & have thru put that matches 450 Mhz/s well & dumps lot o' Defective crud into OK workable enviorment? Think of those few tranistors, apparently indestructable, somewhere in SSD, Running More Like color of Tungsten Filament, With drastic or illusionary problems that In/Out seem to have. Micro might be best spot too, for real FULL Gain, Workstation level RISC into Gen3 SSD Compartment. Its 7 Thing. drashek
This + mythtv + vdpau = Win
I don't think the price will remain high for long. Either way, these are soooo yummy ...
Zotac's current m-itx Core 2 boards don't power the USB ports whilst in S3 standby mode. Thus making it impossible to wake the machine from standby using a remote.... I hope that they have fixed this problem with these new boards.
Though you guys say price is a bit high, I will says its kinda ok. for 200-250$ (not 300+ though) you get a motherboard + Processor + a wireless card. Moreover Zotac is a good maker. I kinda like their product. This will be great for my HTPC (i like motherboard open and lying out, not in cabinet)