Introduction

Now that it's been nearly 6 years that ZOTAC has been in the motherboard business, it has certainly set itself apart from others in the industry, slowly building itself up as the company to go to for mini-ITX motherboards and mini-PC kit. Although we've recently seen a lot of fanfare about Intel products, AMD has some pretty decent solutions as well, and once again we have a HTPC-oriented mITX board from ZOTAC, this time based on AMD's A75 chipset for the FM1 socket. FM1 and A75, paired with the right APU, offer pretty decent IGP performance for the HTPC market, even capable of doing some light low-resolution gaming, and when that ability is paired with ZOTAC engineering, it's sure to be a winner.

Specifications

AMD A75 Chipset

With the closing of the second quarter of 2011, AMD launched their latest platform based on Fusion technology, which brings high performance GPU capabilities and CPU functionality together in the same socket, for modest cost. Featuring AMD's first sampling of 32 nm technology from Global Foundries, the new APUs from AMD mate with the AMD A75 chipset, which not only features built-in SATA 6 Gb/s drive connectivity, but also USB 3.0, simplifying board design for manufacturers, while allowing greater functionality for the end user.


Toeing up the power consumption at a limit of 100W, the new AMD APUs offer fantastic video performance not seen anywhere else, with a Radeon 6550D GPU nestled right next to a full quad core CPU in the A8 APU models. For those needing a bit more performance, but still focused on budget performance, the addition of specific affordable discrete GPUs, matched in performance to the APU's onboard Radeon cores along with CrossFire functionality, brings the complete platform to incredible performance levels for little cost, setting the stage for the next era of office desktop functionality, while offering enough grunt for a little bit of gaming entertainment, too.

I've had the opportunity in the past to play with quite a few ZOTAC parts, and I have to say, they really offer something that you won't find elsewhere easily, especially in such a small package.