Zotac ION ITX-F Motherboard
Gaming Benchmarks
Published: 16th December 2009 | Source: Zotac | Price: £159 |
Futuremark 3DMark06
Here, we see the ION's 9400M based GPU performing admirably well with an overall score of around 1500. As far as integrated GPUs go, this is one of the better offerings out there. In case some of you haven't spotted this however, there is something rather alarming about the other sets of 3DMark06 results in that our GeForce 8800GT is miles away from it's typical score of 10000-13000. CPU bottleneck? Quite. This GPU dependant benchmark saw large performance gains by overclocking the processor to 2.07GHz.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X
Microsoft Flight Simulator X is a a notoriously demanding game, requiring plenty of poke from both GPU and CPU.
It's more than evident that the extent of the CPU bottleneck encompasses any GPU limitations. The game has shown the embedded processor's weakspot in a spectacular (slideshow based) manner. The game was completely unplayable at 1920x1200 resolution and hence marked as 0.
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty 4 is of a similar age to Flight Simulator X but much unlike the latter it doesn't suffer from an inefficient engine. With this in mind we felt that CoD4 stood a fair chance of running well.
In our particular test conditions, this did not appear to be the case at least with the ION GPU. I'm sure that with settings lowered slightly and at a lesser resolution, it would be much more playable but what's for sure is that from a gaming perspective the integrated solution is only suitable for even older hits. The testbed however came to life once paired with an 8800GT, with considerably more fluid framerates.
Most Recent Comments
Excellent read.
I think the phoneyness of the artificial benchmarks raise their ugly head here and shouldn't be too frowned upon in judgement.
The CoD4 w/8800gt is still impressive for me. Would like to have seen the stock 1.6 w/8800gt, but sneakingly think it'll be as-good, or good enough.
Would be nice to have dropped an AMD HD4xxxx+ card in there too to see how much the cpu effects the driver dependence.
It's certainly a different science than a regular mobo/cpu, and I like what it's achieving as I liked the previous models.
Soon as all the 775 kit I have goes south, I'd certainly consider for a htpc/media front room effort, with a gfxcard that u can keep in reserve. Although by the time that comes, there'll be new kit about I'm sure.
Good stuff, love a comment on the onboard sound.Quote
I think the phoneyness of the artificial benchmarks raise their ugly head here and shouldn't be too frowned upon in judgement.
The CoD4 w/8800gt is still impressive for me. Would like to have seen the stock 1.6 w/8800gt, but sneakingly think it'll be as-good, or good enough.
Would be nice to have dropped an AMD HD4xxxx+ card in there too to see how much the cpu effects the driver dependence.
It's certainly a different science than a regular mobo/cpu, and I like what it's achieving as I liked the previous models.
Soon as all the 775 kit I have goes south, I'd certainly consider for a htpc/media front room effort, with a gfxcard that u can keep in reserve. Although by the time that comes, there'll be new kit about I'm sure.
Good stuff, love a comment on the onboard sound.Quote
@Diablo
You have a fair point about the PCI-Express 16x slot. Even if you don't wish to use a dedicated graphics card, you're free to drop a PCI-E 1x/2x/4x card instead.
@Rasta
As far as the sound chip goes, there wasn't a lot to report. The sound quality itself when paired with a Cambridge Audio 5.1 set was more than acceptable and the cpu utilisation was low and of little concern. During this review, I didn't have access to a Monitor/TV with inbuilt speakers and so sound over HDMI could not be tested however I had no complaints with the onboard sound.
Thanks for the feedback.Quote
You have a fair point about the PCI-Express 16x slot. Even if you don't wish to use a dedicated graphics card, you're free to drop a PCI-E 1x/2x/4x card instead.
@Rasta
As far as the sound chip goes, there wasn't a lot to report. The sound quality itself when paired with a Cambridge Audio 5.1 set was more than acceptable and the cpu utilisation was low and of little concern. During this review, I didn't have access to a Monitor/TV with inbuilt speakers and so sound over HDMI could not be tested however I had no complaints with the onboard sound.
Thanks for the feedback.Quote
I was thinking it would be best to use as a mini fold rig with the pcie, super lower power ect. Or drop a nice sound card in and have it as a high end HTPC.Quote
Very good Mobo for a HTPC machine.Quote
CSS Valid
I suppose you could run a decent home media server with the pcie slot used for a high performance raid card and have all your movies and music piped all over the house?Quote