Zotac doesn’t get preferential treatment by Intel and thus Zotac doesn’t have to worry about ruffling any feathers by releasing an Ion motherboard. While Zotac builds several Intel motherboards, they are hardly considered a tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. Zotac built the first mini-ITX Ion motherboard. They don’t want to appear too eager and thus Intel’s closest partners wait to see if a product like Ion succeeds before attempting to jump on the bandwagon. Intel’s partners are very cautious when supporting a product like Ion.
Intel doesn’t like being upstaged by anyone. Intel still sold the CPUs but it lost the chipset sale and got upstaged by NVIDIA. This offered better performance and modern features compared to Intel’s 945G chipset, what Intel was bundling with Atom. NVIDIA’s Ion platform, at least when first introduced, combined Intel’s Atom CPU with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9300/9400M integrated graphics chipset. Intel antitrust suit, but that’s not the point of today’s story. How Intel is able to ensure this is the crux of the AMD v.
Jul 5th 2021 ASRock Reveals Windows 11 Compatible Motherboards List (8)Īdd your own comment 5 Comments on ASRock Readies ION 330HT Series NetTop PCs #1 Roph.Aug 2nd 2021 ASRock Unveils its Radeon RX 6600 XT Challenger-series Graphics Card Lineup (2).Jul 29th 2021 ASRock Launches C621A WS for Server and Workstation Application (7).
Oct 27th 2021 ASRock Launches Full Range of Intel Z690 Motherboard Packed with Revolutionary Technology (8).Oct 26th 2021 Pricing of Eight ASRock Z690 Motherboard Leak (8).The pricing and availability of these three models are yet to be known. ASRock also carved out the ION 330Pro, a lite version that is aimed to provide the bare essentials.
While a standard DVD writer is available on the ION 330HT, the ION 330HT-BD has a Blu-ray Combo drive.
On the connectivity front, it has gigabit Ethernet, and WiFi. It is aided by 2 GB of DDR2 800 memory, and offers 500 GB of storage. It is powered by the Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor, and the ION chipset, which embeds an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics. Packed in its compact chassis measuring 195mm (W) x 70mm (H) x 186mm (L), is a full-fledged system based on the NVIDIA ION platform. Also planned is the ION 330Pro, a lite version of the original ION 330. The rest of the specifications remain the same. What set these apart from the non-HT models, is the provision of the Windows MCE remote. To further project it as a home theater product, its makers have decided to carve out two more variants: the ION 330HT, and ION 330HT-BD. It already has a Blu-ray drive equipped model, the ION 330-BD to its credit.
ASRock's ION NetTop series, thanks to its specifications, apparently has what it takes to be a home theater PC in itself.