Singapore
Malaysia
Philippines
Indonesia
News
Corporate News
Just Announced
Reads from WWW
SME News
Product Guide
Apps and Software
AV Peripherals and Systems
▶
AV Systems
Headphones
Media Streamers and Hubs
Portable Media Players
Projectors
Speakers
Blu-ray Players
Desktop Systems
Digital Cameras
Input Devices
Mobile Phones
Monitors
Networking
Notebooks
Others
▶
Bluetooth Headsets
GPS Devices
PC Components
▶
Casings
Coolers
CPU
Graphics Cards
Memory
Motherboard
Power Supply Units
Printers
▶
Inkjet Printers
Laser Printers
Storage
▶
External Storage
Hard Disk Drives
NAS
Optical Drives
Solid State Drives
Tablets
Televisions
Wearables
HWZ TV
Articles
Deals
Event Coverage
Feature Articles
Gallery
Shootouts
Tech Guides
Reviews
Blogs
DIY, Tweaks and Mods
From the Rumor Mill
Hot Stuff and News
Miscellaneous
Of Apps and Developers
Social Media
Tech Trends and Commentaries
The Net
Weird and Quirky Tech
Home
»
Product Guide
»
Motherboard
Motherboard Guide
All Articles
All Products
Compare This
Zotac Ion
12 May 2009
Tags:
(none)
Filter by Manufacturers
abit
AOpen
ASRock
ASUS
BIOSTAR
DFI
ECS
EPoX
Foxconn
Gigabyte
Intel
Jetway
MSI
Sapphire
Zotac
You may also be interested in...
HWZ's Overall Rating:
9.0
Articles
Specifications
Latest Price
Gallery
<!-- start /elements/product-review.ctp --> <div id="product-review" class="article"> <h2 class="header-green">The DIY Zotac Ion Motherboard Kit</h2> <span class="byline">Reviewed by Vincent Chang on Tuesday, 12 May 2009</span> <div class="share"> <div id="addthis_div_5adc68a10f5de" class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" addthis:url="http://www.hardwarezone.com/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit" addthis:title="The DIY Zotac Ion Motherboard Kit" > <a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:count="false"></a> <a class="addthis_button_facebook"></a> <a class="addthis_button_twitter"></a> <!-- <a class="addthis_button_slashdot"></a> <a class="addthis_button_digg"></a> --> <a class="addthis_button_email"></a> </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ window.addEvent ('domready', function () { //AddThis thing addthis_share = window.addthis_share || {}; addthis_share.url_transforms = { add: { utm_source: 'addthis', utm_medium: 'referral', utm_campaign: 'addthis', utm_content: 'The%2BDIY%2BZotac%2BIon%2BMotherboard%2BKit' } } addthis_config = window.addthis_config || {}; addthis_config.data_track_clickback = true; addthis_config.data_ga_property = 'UA-166763-1'; //window.addthis && addthis.toolbox (".addthis_toolbox"); }); //]]> </script> <div class="content resizeable"> <div id="page-1" class="page"> <h2 class="page-title">Ion for the DIY Crowd</h2> <h3 class="page_title">Ion for the DIY Crowd</h3> <p>This week, NVIDIA continues its relentless media assault with yet another Ion system. This time, the platform goes DIY, featuring a barebones mini-ITX motherboard from Zotac that uses the NVIDIA Ion chipset together with a dual-core Intel Atom processor.</p> <p class="rtecenter"><img src="http://images.hardwarezone.com/upload/files/2010/03/2e7a42e916.jpg" title="It's a mini-ITX motherboard that's slightly larger than the span of our palm. Zotac will have two versions, a passive version (this) and another version with a fansink. It also comes with either a single core or dual-core Intel Atom processor." alt="" /></p> <p class="rteleft">By now, you should have an idea of NVIDIA's Ion platform. We have covered the <a target="_blank" href="/view/14990">initial engineering sample</a> that wowed the crowds at CES 2009 and recently, even managed to test the first retail Ion, <a target="_blank" href="/view/10296">the Acer AspireRevo</a>.</p> <p>Of course, 'retail' is a bit of a fudge here since we have yet to see the Acer AspireRevo in retail channels and our attempts to get a local retail price in Singapore have not borne fruit. As for the performance of the AspireRevo, the system was predictably impressive for its Blu-ray playback.</p> <p>But whether it was the bloatware installed by Acer (our benchmarks were ran after turning off unnecessary services and processes), or the choice of Windows Vista as the operating system, the user experience was mixed, with sluggish responses when opening or closing applications for example. Your mileage with the Ion's vaunted integrated graphics depends crucially on whether your applications can utilize it fully.</p> <p>We had our suspicions that the single core Atom on the AspireRevo was a major impediment to its performance but could a dual-core version that's likely to be more popular in nettops really help? Well our answer has just arrived in the form of the Zotac Ion motherboard, which comes soldered with a dual-core processor and hence allowing us the freedom to configure it accordingly for benchmarking.</p> </div> </div> <div class="pagination" > <span class="desc">Page 1 of 5</span> <ul> <li class="prevnext prev"><a href="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit" class="disabled">‹ Prev</a></li> <li class="skip"> <form id="PageAddForm" method="post" action="/go"><fieldset style="display:none;"><input type="hidden" name="_method" value="POST" /></fieldset> <select name="data[Page][url]" class="page-selector" id="PageUrl"> <option value="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit" selected="selected">Ion for the DIY Crowd</option> <option value="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit/zotac-ion">The Zotac Ion</option> <option value="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit/test-setup-hd-video-playback">Test Setup & HD Video Playback</option> <option value="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit/performance-benchmarks-10">Performance Benchmarks</option> <option value="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit/conclusion-65">Conclusion</option> </select> <input type="submit" class="submit" value="Go" /> </form> </li> <li class="prevnext next"><a href="/review-diy-zotac-ion-motherboard-kit/zotac-ion" class="">Next ›</a></li> </ul> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ window.addEvent ('domready', function () { var container = document.getElement ('#product-review'), content = container && container.getElement ('.content'), pagination = container && container.getElement ('.pagination'), form = pagination && pagination.getElement ('form'), menu = form && form.getElement ('.page-selector'), links = { prev: pagination && pagination.getElement ('.prev a'), next: pagination && pagination.getElement ('.next a') }, page = -1, desc = 'Page {curPage} of {lastPage}' ; // Tag as Javascript-enabled pagination.addClass ('js'); menu.addEvent ('change', function (e) { var curPage = this.selectedIndex + 1, lastPage = this.length, url = this.get ('value'), pageContent = container && container.getElement ('.page') ; // Disable controls menu.set ('disabled', 'disabled').blur (); if (pageContent) pageContent.setStyle ('opacity', .5); new Request.HTML ({ 'url': url, 'method': 'get', 'link': 'cancel', 'update': content, 'onSuccess': function () { // Update controls menu.erase ('disabled'); links.prev .set ('href', menu.getChildren ('option')[(curPage > 1)? curPage - 2: curPage - 1].get ('value')) [(curPage > 1)? 'removeClass': 'addClass'] ('disabled') ; links.next .set ('href', menu.getChildren ('option')[(curPage < lastPage)? curPage: curPage - 1].get ('value')) [(curPage < lastPage)? 'removeClass': 'addClass'] ('disabled') ; pagination.getElement ('.desc').set ('text', desc.substitute ({ curPage: curPage, lastPage: lastPage})); captureIntraLinks (); new Fx.Scroll (window).toElement (container); }, 'onFailure': function () { // Restore controls menu.erase ('disabled'); if (pageContent) pageContent.setStyle ('opacity', 1); } }).send (); }); $$([links.prev, links.next]).addEvent ('click', function (e) { e.stop (); this.blur (); if (!this.hasClass ('disabled')) menu.set ('value', this.get ('href')).fireEvent ('change'); }); form.addEvent ('submit', function (e) { e.stop (); this.blur (); menu.fireEvent ('change'); }) // Capture all intra-page links and hook to js function captureIntraLinks () { content.getElements ('a[href^="#"]').flatten().each (function (link) { var target = link.get ('href').substr (6).trim (); if (target && target.match (/^\d+$/) && target <= menu.length) link.addEvent ('click', function (e) { e.stop (); this.blur (); menu.selectedIndex = target - 1; menu.fireEvent ('change'); }); }); } captureIntraLinks (); // Trigger initial pagination state var target = location.hash && location.hash.substr (6).trim (); if (target && target.match (/^\d+$/) && target <= menu.length && target != page) { menu.selectedIndex = target - 1; menu.fireEvent ('change'); } }); //]]> </script> </div> <!-- end /elements/product-review.ctp --> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ window.addEvent ('domready', function () { var section = $('tab-product-content-review'), dropdown = section.getElement ('#reviews-list'), tId = 0 ; if (section && dropdown) { var list = dropdown.getElement ('ul'), links = list.getElements ('li a') ; dropdown.addClass ('js'); list.set ('morph', { 'link': 'cancel' }); $$(dropdown, list).addEvents ({ 'mousemove': function () { $clear (tId); }, 'mouseenter': function () { list.set ('morph', {'duration': 'short'}).morph ({ 'opacity': 1 }); }, 'mouseleave': function () { tId = function () { list.set ('morph', {'duration': 'short'}).morph ({ 'opacity': 0}); }.delay (1000); } }).fireEvent ('mouseleave'); links.addEvent ('click', function (e) { e.stop (); //unescape the 'alt' prooperty var o = new Element('i', { 'html': this.get ('alt')}); new Request.HTML ({ 'url': o.get('text') + '&as=ajax', 'method': 'get', 'link': 'cancel', 'update': section.empty().grab(new Element('div') .addClass ('waiter') .grab (new Element ('span', { text: 'Please wait while we load your article ...' })) ) }).send (); }) section.getElements ('.footer .comments a').addEvent ('click', function (e) { e.stop (); new Fx.Scroll (window).toElement ($('tab-product-details')); var href = this.get ('href').match (/#.+$/), target = href && href[0]; if (target) (function () { new Fx.Scroll (window).toElement ($(target.substr (1))); }) .delay (3000); $('tab-product-comments').getChildren ('a')[0].fireEvent ('click'); }) } if( $$('.image-caption-container').length < 1 ) { $$('.article .content img[title]').each (function (img) { // skip if title is empty if (!img.get ('title')) return; new Element ('span', {'class': 'image-caption-container'}) .addClass (['left', 'right'].contains (img.get ('align'))? img.get ('align'): '') .set ('width', img.get ('width')) .replaces (img) .grab (img) .grab (new Element ('div', { 'class': 'image-caption', 'html': img.get ('title').trim () })) ; img.erase ('align'); var link = img.getParents ('a'); if (link) link.addClass ('captioned'); }); } }); //]]> </script>