Zotac Introduces Atom Motherboard With PCI Express Slot

Hardware manufacturer Zotac has released a motherboard that is not only equipped with Nvidia’s Ion chipset, but also provides expansion options in the form of a PCI-e slot. Intel’s Atom 330 was chosen as the processor.

Instead of a more common PCI expansion slot, Zotac has opted to include a PCI-e-x16 slot on its next-generation Atom boards. This clears the way for users to place their own discrete video card in addition to the built-in Nvidia 9400m-igp for better graphics performance.

The motherboard, in mini-itx format, is named Zotac ION ITX-F received In addition to the PCI Express slot, it features a dual-core Atom 330 with hyperthreading clocked at 1.6GHz. In addition to an Ethernet connection, wireless internet is also possible via a mini PCI-e network card. The motherboard also has three SATA ports and an external ESATA port, ten USB ports and three audio ports.

The image, which of course supports HD video playback thanks to the ION chipset, can be fed to a display via an HDMI, DVI or VGA port. The board supports a maximum of 4GB DDR2 memory, which can be divided over two slots. Zotac has not yet announced prices or a European launch date.