ZOTAC Introduces Value ION ITX Synergy Platforms

[btarunr]

"ZOTAC is the leader when it comes to performing mini-ITX platforms. With the addition the new ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions, we have the largest line up of high-performance mini-ITX motherboards with over a dozen different models," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International. "We see the demand for small form factors increasing and the future of computing will be mini-ITX platforms."

The new ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions bring a full high-performance experience and features that has won the ZOTAC ION ITX platforms many awards, including the NVIDIA ION graphics processor with NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology for full HD 1080p Blu-ray video playback and high-performance video processing and editing capabilities with NVIDIA CUDA technology.



Energy-efficiency is where the ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions shine thanks to a choice of Intel Atom 230 or 330 processors. ZOTAC ION ITX-E Series receives the single-core Intel Atom 230 while the ION ITX-G Series receives the dual-core Intel Atom 330 processor - both clocked at 1.6 GHz and deliver plenty of power for day-to-day tasks such as web browsing, e-mail, social networking, office productivity and other tasks.

The ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions pack plenty of display connectivity options with integrated HDMI with digital 8-channel LPCM audio and DVI-I for compatibility for digital monitors, high-definition television sets and digital home theater receivers. The ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions can also connect to analog displays using the included DVI-to-VGA adapter as well.

"Our ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Edition motherboards follow the same philosophy as our GeForce Synergy Edition graphics cards by delivering award-winning performance and features to lower price points," Mr. Berger said.

Expansion options is where the ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions deliver with PCI Express x1, mini PCI Express, 4 SATA 3.0 Gbp/s with RAID 0, 1 and 0 + 1 support, and 10 USB 2.0 ports. No matter what your expansion needs are the ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions have it all.
The ZOTAC ION ITX Synergy Editions are ready for Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system. When Windows 7 installed on the ZOTAC ION Synergy Edition powered systems, users receive a premium Windows experience with full support for new visual features such as Aero peak, Aero shake and many more. It's time to play with the new ZOTAC ION ITX-E Synergy Edition and ION ITX-G Synergy Edition.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[newtekie1]

Zotac really has become the mini-ITX motherboard manufacturer of choice.

I just wish they would finally add voltage adjustments to these boards.

 

[Jstn7477]

I'd like to see a model or two with a PCIe x16 slot. These, coupled with a good video card, would seem very good for F@H if you can't afford to power a GPU folding rig with a "big" processor.

 

[Tartaros]

I just wish they would finally add voltage adjustments to these boards.

I don't know how much would cost an atom board for oc. It would need also better heatsinks made of copper and room for better fans. Maybe that would be too expensive for consider it as a oc piece of value.

 

[Jstn7477]

I don't know how much would cost an atom board for oc. It would need also better heatsinks made of copper and room for better fans. Maybe that would be too expensive for consider it as a oc piece of value.

Seeing that this is a value variant of Zotac's ION boards, you do have a point. They do have higher end (and really expensive) models with larger heatsinks that may be better suited for overclocking, but currently lack the ability to adjust the voltage. It would be nice if those higher end models had a PCIe x16 slot for expandability, as I stated earlier.

 

[Tartaros]

I think the problem of intending an atom to be powerful by tweaking it is that would break the price and it could scale to be as expensive as a more powerful pc. But looking at the prices of atom boards I don't think that would be much problem.

The question is, if you are going to overclock an atom, you will need premium parts, if the price is going to go up so much that you can afford a more powerful pc, then having an atom is not so good.

 

[newtekie1]

You don't really need expensive parts to overclock an Atom. Most of the stock cooling is passive, and capable of 2.0GHz+ on stock cooling and volts.

A small upgrade to active cooling shouldn't be too expensive, maybe $5 more cost wise, we don't need huge stinking coolers to keep these little things cool. A small voltage increase, and the addition of a small fan would probably allow the push to 2.6GHz or even 3.0GHz pretty easily. Even a $15 enzotech cooler would do wonders for allowing an Atom to be overclocked assuming the voltage is there.

 

[AsphyxiA]

at least they put a pci-e slot in it!

 

[Mussels]

no SPDIF audio out?

 

[Alv]

there is a version with PCI Express

http://www.techpowerup.com/104888/Zotac_Announces_ION_ITX-F_Motherboard.html

 

[TheLostSwede]

no SPDIF audio out?

What for, it has HDMI which does audio, so it's hardly an issue, especially as this is a budget model.

 

[Mussels]

What for, it has HDMI which does audio, so it's hardly an issue, especially as this is a budget model.

99% of existing home cinema systems dont use HDMI for audio.

also being an nvidia GPU, its likely to have severely limited HDMI audio capabilities

 

[newtekie1]

99% of existing home cinema systems dont use HDMI for audio.

also being an nvidia GPU, its likely to have severely limited HDMI audio capabilities

That doesn't make sense.

The ION platform does audio over HDMI just fine, directs the sound from the sound cards out HDMI, just like the new wave of nVidia graphics cards.

Besides that, you are wanting SPDIF, which makes your comment even less logical. Since before nVidia switched to the new audio handling, SPDIF was passed through to HDMI on nVidia cards, so whever the SPDIF was capable of the nVidia card was capable of...

So it makes no sense to say nVidia GPU's have severaly limitted HDMI audio capabilities right after complaining about not having SPDIF...

 

[Mussels]

SPDIF is passed through HDMI to nvidia, but look at the soundcard they included - with all its paltry output connections, odds are its not going to have any form of encoding and be stuck with 2.0 audio unless you stick a real soundcard in and link it up.

at least the modern ATI cards support 5.1/7.1 audio out of the box, every time - not dependant on whatever random soundcard got paired up with the ION system.


why does it make no sense? i want SPDIF primarily, and without that i'm stuck on HDMI. since its Nvidia, that means the HDMI audio is likely to be crap as well - meaning this system has no decent audio outputs unless i add in a soundcard.
whats so hard to understand?

 

[Lazzer408]

I'd like to see a model or two with a PCIe x16 slot. These, coupled with a good video card, would seem very good for F@H if you can't afford to power a GPU folding rig with a "big" processor.

Like this?

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1597675&posted=1#post1597675

 

[PP Mguire]

I dont understand why anybody would want to overclock the Atom platform anyways. Its meant for LOW power usage. Overclocking just breaks the soul purpose of this platform. If you want an overclockable ITX platform get the 775 or 1156 versions.

 

[Lazzer408]

I dont understand why anybody would want to overclock the Atom platform anyways. Its meant for LOW power usage. Overclocking just breaks the soul purpose of this platform. If you want an overclockable ITX platform get the 775 or 1156 versions.

Because it's cheap, small, and that's just what we do.

 

[Mussels]

because its just that teeny bit too slow for HD video... (without CUDA)

 

[PP Mguire]

Use media player classic and no overclocking needed

 

[Mussels]

Use media player classic and no overclocking needed

yes yes, use its built in codec and suffer the epic fail that its DXVA mode provides.

i wish people would stop telling me to use that, i use the damn player - and i know all too well how bad that codec sucks.

 

[PP Mguire]

You do, do you? Considering its a MEDIA PLAYER. It uses multiple codecs. Try downloading K-Lite. I havent needed to depend on CPU power for HD since ive started using it.

 

[Wile E]

SPDIF is passed through HDMI to nvidia, but look at the soundcard they included - with all its paltry output connections, odds are its not going to have any form of encoding and be stuck with 2.0 audio unless you stick a real soundcard in and link it up.

at least the modern ATI cards support 5.1/7.1 audio out of the box, every time - not dependant on whatever random soundcard got paired up with the ION system.


why does it make no sense? i want SPDIF primarily, and without that i'm stuck on HDMI. since its Nvidia, that means the HDMI audio is likely to be crap as well - meaning this system has no decent audio outputs unless i add in a soundcard.
whats so hard to understand?

That's not the case with their other ION boards. All of them support full surround thru HDMI.


And kLite sucks balls, btw. It has many filter conflicts, especially in the things I need it for. Streaming some of my anime to the PS3 with subs doesn't work properly with Klite, but does with the CCCP without fail. And the Atom itself is not powerful enough to do flawless HD without hardware acceleration. Sorry PP, but that has been proven time and time again. Not to mention, Mussels is right about the built in DXVA codec in MPC-HC. It's ass. The quality is lower than CoreAVC, ffdshow and even MS's built-in H264 codec.

This is coming from someone that has a lot of experience fiddling with codecs and their configurations. I'm not an expert, by any means, but I do know more than most about it.

 

[PP Mguire]

That's not the case with their other ION boards. All of them support full surround thru HDMI.


And kLite sucks balls, btw. It has many filter conflicts, especially in the things I need it for. Streaming some of my anime to the PS3 with subs doesn't work properly with Klite, but does with the CCCP without fail. And the Atom itself is not powerful enough to do flawless HD without hardware acceleration. Sorry PP, but that has been proven time and time again. Not to mention, Mussels is right about the built in DXVA codec in MPC-HC. It's ass. The quality is lower than CoreAVC, ffdshow and even MS's built-in H264 codec.

This is coming from someone that has a lot of experience fiddling with codecs and their configurations. I'm not an expert, by any means, but I do know more than most about it.

The argument is pertaining to offloading the decoding to the GPU. So its being proven that the Atom IS powerful enough and dosent need to be overclocked.

And learn to configure. I have flawless performance using K-lite and always have meanwhile ditching my other codecs. (And i had alot of them before my PC was anywhere near "good")

If the rip sucks, get another one i say. Why my Movie TB drive is almost full because i use nearly all HD videos.

Playing 1080p video barely using this FX62 at stock and k-lite does come with ffdshow........... As well as many other popular codecs. K-lite is a codec pack meant for HD.

 

[Wile E]

The argument is pertaining to offloading the encoding to the GPU. So its being proven that the Atom IS powerful enough and dosent need to be overclocked.

And learn to configure. I have flawless performance using K-lite and always have meanwhile ditching my other codecs. (And i had alot of them before my PC was anywhere near "good")

If the rip sucks, get another one i say. Why my Movie TB drive is almost full because i use nearly all HD videos.

Why should I learn to configure (which I already know how to do, tyvm.), when there's a pack that works flawlessly, out of the box? The point is, I shouldn't need to reconfigure a pack.

If I wanted to cofigure, I would just download all the filters I need seperately. (Which I have done. I quit doing it because CCCP eliminates the need to do a lot of configuring, saving me time.)

And actually, the rips that give problems with K-Lite, are of a higher quality, and used heavily styled subs.

I have over 5TB of storage in my house, just anime alone takes up almost 2TB.

As far as HD movies, I know how to do all the encoding myself. I don't need to download all of my movies. In fact, my rips generally end up looking better than most downloads because I don't need to worry so much about bandwidth, or release schedules.

Again, your aren't talking to someone who's inept. I know a great deal about codecs, filters, subbing and encoding.

And that picture is not accelerated. FFdshow does not accelerate.

 

[PP Mguire]

Because you can do more, make the picture quality better, ect by actually configuring things that work fine. The lazyness on a computer is quite ridiculous. Everybody wanting fresh install i do nothing stuff.

And i dont see the point really in high quality anime. I used to watch cartoons on a tube and it looked fine. What i do care about is 1080p movies and thats all i want. I download because i dont have a blu-ray player. I probably dont see a problem because i dont use subs.

Were not talking about accelerating, were talking offloading. If it wasnt using GPU power to play this 1080p blu-ray video id be lagging balls like i used to on my 3000+