Comparative review of the motherboard on the platform nVidia ION
The author of this article is a user (not yet a habr) Inc , who is counting on your help in getting an invite.
In the comments to the previous topic, many habrachelopeks compared the board from ASUS with similar products from other manufacturers. This prompted me to think about the publication of this comparative review, in which the boards announced on the nVidia ION platform, which have been announced and are already on sale, will be described in detail. In order to add objectivity, the Intel D945GCLF2 board will dilute this ION-ny family.
')
This diagram presents the technical capabilities of the platform. Of course, the mini-ITX form factor imposes significant restrictions on the layout of the boards and each manufacturer tries to give its product a personality drop. This is exactly what allows us to compare these, in general, very similar boards.
List of boards under consideration:
Zotac has a whole line of motherboards on the platform in question. For consideration, I chose the most "charged" and the most simple board series. The main differences between them are Atom 330 vs Atom 230, built-in power supply, Wi-Fi 802.11n with external antenna, fan included.
From the expansion slots, only miniPCI-E is present on the board, which can be occupied by a Wi-Fi adapter (in the case of the A-series), an SD card reader or an adapter for a PCI-E 1x. The most innovative solution of this series of motherboards, of course, is a built-in power supply designed for 19 volts. This allows you not to go broke on specialized mini-ITX case, and using the available tools to make it yourself.
The heatsink that comes bundled with copes well with the cooling of the processor and chipset. In the case of the Intel Atom 230, when the processor is fully loaded with synthetic tests, the core temperature reaches 110 ° C, which is very close to 125 ° C stated in the specification. With the Intel Atom 330, the situation is similar, adjusted for two cores. However, with such heating of the cores, the temperature of the radiator does not rise above 70 ° C. In normal mode, the system behaves even more calmly.
Zotac was the first company to make a good bet on a fresh platform and presented motherboards to the general public.
Now you can buy boards in Moscow at prices: $ 150 for the B-series and $ 250 for the A-series.
This board was relatively detailed in the previous topic . For some reason, ASUS abandoned the D-Sub connector and left only HDMI. The highlight of the board is the built-in Bluetooth adapter, which is soldered next to the usb connectors and has a nice blue plug.
According to gromka , the red USB connectors should support USB 3.0 technology, but I did not find any mention of this in the board reviews. IMHO, they just have one plastic insert with an eSATA port.
There is a full-fledged PCI slot on the board, which allows the system to expand its functionality as anyone. There will be a TV tuner, an additional network card, and even a RAID controller. Thus, on the basis of the board, you can build not only an HTPC, but also a router or a full-fledged NAS.
Since the fee will go on sale only at the end of September, you need to talk about prices carefully. However, on Ebay there are at least 3 stores selling it at a price of $ 155 . Apparently on pre-order.
Quite an interesting fee from the company Point of View. As a cooling system for the Intel Atom 330 processor and chipset, different radiators are used. The chipset radiator, unlike the processor, if necessary, is also cooled by the fan. It is not clear why this possibility was not left for the CPU ... Apparently, the engineers decided that the board would be used only as a basis for HTPC.
The slots for RAM are implemented in the SO-DIMM format, which made it possible to free up some space on the board for a PCI-Express 16x slot. Also, 4 SATA2 connectors with declared support for RAID 1 and 0 are divorced on the board. Strange, but other manufacturers did not declare support for RAID in their boards. Sound 7.1, standard for ION boards, replaced by 5.1.
The estimated price of the board in retail is $ 200 .
Under the Pegatron brand, the same motherboard sells for $ 150 . I never thought that Point of View is such an expensive brand. =)
Things are easy. It remains to consider the budget competitor for non-HTPC-shnye tasks, manufactured by Intel. By the way, its price is significantly lower than the platform on ION, largely due to the overpriced prices of Intel Atom processors, if you buy them without a 945gc chipset. On this occasion, nVidia even rolled a barrel on Intel.
It's all a little easier. The chipset from Intel does not support hardware video decoding, and does not allow the board to engage in battle with the boards on ION for superiority as the basis for HTPC. Then there are other applications - gateways, NAS, home low-powered servers. It is especially convenient to use this model as a thin diskless client using CompactFlash cards.
There is nothing much to boast about the board - a Gigabit network, a PCI slot, two SATA2 connectors, one IDE and one DDR2 slot. The radiators on the chipset and processor look rather weak, I can’t believe that they can cool the Intel Atom 330 normally. It’s like the top Intel board for this segment, the rest are completed with Atom 230 processors.
Price in Moscow retail - $ 100 .
At the moment, these are all participants in our review. It's time to start a comparison.
Summary table of the characteristics of the boards under consideration.
Well, respectively, the tasks that can be solved with the help of these boards.
That's probably all. The above is my IMHO, and I hope that your comments will allow you to complement the review and make it more objective.
If the topic is like, the next series will be an overview of the mini-ITX package for various tasks.
upd: zar0ku1 shared an invite ... But something didn’t grow together with his invite. Invited himself - meet Inc
Introduction
In the comments to the previous topic, many habrachelopeks compared the board from ASUS with similar products from other manufacturers. This prompted me to think about the publication of this comparative review, in which the boards announced on the nVidia ION platform, which have been announced and are already on sale, will be described in detail. In order to add objectivity, the Intel D945GCLF2 board will dilute this ION-ny family.
')
This diagram presents the technical capabilities of the platform. Of course, the mini-ITX form factor imposes significant restrictions on the layout of the boards and each manufacturer tries to give its product a personality drop. This is exactly what allows us to compare these, in general, very similar boards.
Overview
List of boards under consideration:
- ZOTAC ION ITX A Series
- ZOTAC ION ITX B Series
- ASUS AT3N7A-I
- Point of View ION330 - aka Pegatron IPX7A-ION
- Intel D945GCLF2
1-2. ZOTAC ION ITX A Series and ZOTAC ION ITX B Series
Zotac has a whole line of motherboards on the platform in question. For consideration, I chose the most "charged" and the most simple board series. The main differences between them are Atom 330 vs Atom 230, built-in power supply, Wi-Fi 802.11n with external antenna, fan included.
From the expansion slots, only miniPCI-E is present on the board, which can be occupied by a Wi-Fi adapter (in the case of the A-series), an SD card reader or an adapter for a PCI-E 1x. The most innovative solution of this series of motherboards, of course, is a built-in power supply designed for 19 volts. This allows you not to go broke on specialized mini-ITX case, and using the available tools to make it yourself.
The heatsink that comes bundled with copes well with the cooling of the processor and chipset. In the case of the Intel Atom 230, when the processor is fully loaded with synthetic tests, the core temperature reaches 110 ° C, which is very close to 125 ° C stated in the specification. With the Intel Atom 330, the situation is similar, adjusted for two cores. However, with such heating of the cores, the temperature of the radiator does not rise above 70 ° C. In normal mode, the system behaves even more calmly.
Zotac was the first company to make a good bet on a fresh platform and presented motherboards to the general public.
Now you can buy boards in Moscow at prices: $ 150 for the B-series and $ 250 for the A-series.
3. ASUS AT3N7A-I
This board was relatively detailed in the previous topic . For some reason, ASUS abandoned the D-Sub connector and left only HDMI. The highlight of the board is the built-in Bluetooth adapter, which is soldered next to the usb connectors and has a nice blue plug.
According to gromka , the red USB connectors should support USB 3.0 technology, but I did not find any mention of this in the board reviews. IMHO, they just have one plastic insert with an eSATA port.
There is a full-fledged PCI slot on the board, which allows the system to expand its functionality as anyone. There will be a TV tuner, an additional network card, and even a RAID controller. Thus, on the basis of the board, you can build not only an HTPC, but also a router or a full-fledged NAS.
Since the fee will go on sale only at the end of September, you need to talk about prices carefully. However, on Ebay there are at least 3 stores selling it at a price of $ 155 . Apparently on pre-order.
4. Point of View ION330
Quite an interesting fee from the company Point of View. As a cooling system for the Intel Atom 330 processor and chipset, different radiators are used. The chipset radiator, unlike the processor, if necessary, is also cooled by the fan. It is not clear why this possibility was not left for the CPU ... Apparently, the engineers decided that the board would be used only as a basis for HTPC.
The slots for RAM are implemented in the SO-DIMM format, which made it possible to free up some space on the board for a PCI-Express 16x slot. Also, 4 SATA2 connectors with declared support for RAID 1 and 0 are divorced on the board. Strange, but other manufacturers did not declare support for RAID in their boards. Sound 7.1, standard for ION boards, replaced by 5.1.
The estimated price of the board in retail is $ 200 .
Under the Pegatron brand, the same motherboard sells for $ 150 . I never thought that Point of View is such an expensive brand. =)
5. Intel D945GCLF2
Things are easy. It remains to consider the budget competitor for non-HTPC-shnye tasks, manufactured by Intel. By the way, its price is significantly lower than the platform on ION, largely due to the overpriced prices of Intel Atom processors, if you buy them without a 945gc chipset. On this occasion, nVidia even rolled a barrel on Intel.
It's all a little easier. The chipset from Intel does not support hardware video decoding, and does not allow the board to engage in battle with the boards on ION for superiority as the basis for HTPC. Then there are other applications - gateways, NAS, home low-powered servers. It is especially convenient to use this model as a thin diskless client using CompactFlash cards.
There is nothing much to boast about the board - a Gigabit network, a PCI slot, two SATA2 connectors, one IDE and one DDR2 slot. The radiators on the chipset and processor look rather weak, I can’t believe that they can cool the Intel Atom 330 normally. It’s like the top Intel board for this segment, the rest are completed with Atom 230 processors.
Price in Moscow retail - $ 100 .
At the moment, these are all participants in our review. It's time to start a comparison.
Feature Comparison
Summary table of the characteristics of the boards under consideration.
| Features \ Fees |  ZOTAC ION ITX A |  ZOTAC ION ITX B |  ASUS AT3N7A-I |  PoV ION330 |  Intel D945GCLF2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | 250 $ | $ 150 | $ 150 | $ 150-200 | $ 100 |
| CPU | Intel Atom 330 | Intel Atom 230 | Intel Atom 330 | Intel Atom 330 | Intel Atom 330 |
| Oper. memory | 2x DDR2-800 | 2x DDR2-800 | 2x DDR2-800 | 2x DDR2-800 SO-DIMM | 1x DDR2-667 |
| Video connectors | HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D | HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D | HDMI, D-Sub | HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D | D-Sub |
| USB | 6x USB 2.0 | 6x USB 2.0 | 8x USB 2.0 | 4x USB 2.0 | 4x + 4x USB 2.0 |
| Network | Gigabit ethernet | ||||
| SATA, IDE | 3x SATA2 | 3x SATA2 | 3x SATA2 | 4x SATA2 RAID 1.0 | 2x SATA2 without ACHI, 1x IDE |
| Expansion Slots | miniPCI-E | miniPCI-E | PCI | PCI-E 16x | PCI |
| Additionally | Wi-fi 802.11n, built-in power supply, | passive cooling | Bluetooth, USB 3.0 (?) | passive cooling, sound 5.1 | sound 5.1 |
Well, respectively, the tasks that can be solved with the help of these boards.
| Features \ Fees | ZOTAC ION ITX A | ZOTAC ION ITX B | ASUS AT3N7A-I | PoV ION330 | Intel D945GCLF2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTPC | + | + | + | + | - |
| Wireless HTPC | + | ± | ± | ± | - |
| Home gateway | - | - | + | + | + |
| Silent system | + | + | + | + | + |
| NAS | - | - | + | + | + |
| Diskless Station | ± | + | - | - | + |
That's probably all. The above is my IMHO, and I hope that your comments will allow you to complement the review and make it more objective.
If the topic is like, the next series will be an overview of the mini-ITX package for various tasks.
upd: zar0ku1 shared an invite ... But something didn’t grow together with his invite. Invited himself - meet Inc
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/67986/
All Articles