Zotac's Atom-based, Ion ready M-ITX motherboards tip up

THE INQ HAS STUMBLED across not just the specs but also some pictures of Zotac's new Atom-based M-ITX motherboards, all set up for Nvidia's Ion platform.

Just weeks after Acer announced its mini-PC , the Aspire Revo - a mongrel with an Atom CPU and an NV 9400 chipset - Zotac appears to be jumping on the bandwagon and releasing two of its own Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard models for the Ion.

The specs and a picture were originally posted on Chinese hardware site Expreview, but were forcibly pulled down by the powers that be.

Now the INQ has managed to get hold of them for your viewing pleasure.

According to the specs, Zotac's Ion ITX-A-U sports an Atom N330 dual core while the Ion ITX-B-E comes with an Atom N230 single core processor. Both boast Nvidia's MCP79 chipset and built-in GeForce 9400 GPU, all the better to support PureVideo HD, CUDA and PhysX, apparently.

The boards are fully equipped with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs and both offer two DDR2 memory slots for a maximum capacity of DDR2-800.

Nvidia may want to make a lot of noise about Ion, but in the name of system silence, Zotac seems to have designed its kit so that the CPU and GPU sit quietly inside a big aluminum cooling rib.

Initial pricing indicates that the Ion ITX-A-U will cost some $303, whilst punters will have to shell out $202 for the Ion ITX-B-E.

Both will purportedly be available first in Japan, before hitting shelves elsewhere in the world.