Zotac’s GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi motherboard

The Tata Nano was officially launched last week. India’s newest econobox has four wheels, four seats, 33 horsepower, and a two-cylinder engine with less displacement than a Big Gulp. The Nano is the most basic of automobiles, but it only costs about two grand, which is frankly astonishing for a brand-new car. I can’t help but draw a comparison to Intel’s Atom platform, because as a tech journalist and Top Gear addict, I am inescapably bound to lavish you with automotive analogies.

Intel designed the Atom for mobile Internet devices, but it really caught fire with netbooks and went on to spawn a growing collection of pint-sized desktop systems that inexpensively handle basic computing tasks. The trouble is, the small-form-factor PCs birthed by the Atom’s popularity are hardly exciting platforms for enthusiasts. For our own systems, we tend to want a little better than simply adequate performance and basic functionality.

Nvidia’s Ion platform looks like a promising upgrade for the Atom processor, which gets paired with a potent GeForce 9300 integrated graphics chipset. The Ion is less Tata Nano and more Mini Cooper S or Fiat 500 Abarth. It’s still small and practical, but with a lot more polish, a more generous feature set, and additional power under the hood.

Unfortunately, the Ion concept’s real-world performance is ultimately hampered by the Atom’s general lack of grunt. We’ve seen an Ion-based system have problems smoothly playing back at least one Blu-ray movie, and the platform’s CPU resources are still too limited for speedy media encoding and gaming with the latest titles. The Ion platform is also stuck in a limbo of sorts; Nvidia has produced a solid reference design, but there are currently no shipping products based on it.

As luck would have it, the GeForce 9300 chipset is available on a new Mini-ITX motherboard from Zotac. The so-called GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi lives within the same form factor constraints as most Atom boards, but it swaps the anemic processor for a standard LGA775 socket and throws in a gen-two PCI Express x16 slot for good measure. What we have here, then, is a something with the potential to be entirely more powerful than a mere hot econobox. With this, you could build the PC equivalent of a hot rod if you like, all while retaining the cute, compact form factor of a Honda Fit. Now that is an exciting enthusiast platform.

The whole point behind the GeForce 9300-ITX is its Mini-ITX form factor, which measures roughly seven inches square. Those dimensions allow the board to squeeze into smaller enclosures than Micro ATX offerings, whose footprints are more than twice as large.

Unlike most Mini-ITX boards, the 9300-ITX hasn’t sacrificed performance potential to squeeze within the smaller form factor. The board sports an LGA775 socket with support for not only inexpensive dual-core chips, but also high-performance quad-core models. In fact, the only Core 2 processors not supported by the 9300-ITX are Extreme Edition chips that call for a 1600MHz front-side bus, since the GeForce 9300 only goes up to a 1333MHz FSB.

We should point out that the LGA775 socket doesn’t have much of an upgrade path looking forward. But then there isn’t one for soldered-on Atom CPUs, either. At least with LGA775, there are a wide range of attractive engine options to suit just about every need and budget.

As you might expect, a few concessions have been made in the face of form factor constraints. The 9300-ITX’s socket area, for example, is pretty tightly packed. You can squeeze in a stock cooler without a problem, but larger aftermarket models that fan out from the socket may interfere with the DIMM slots and the tall chipset heatsink. At least the chipset cooler is a silent, passive design.

There isn’t room on the 9300-ITX for more than two DIMM slots, but you can still take the board up to 8GB of memory with the two provided. Each DIMM slot gets its own memory channel, too, so you’ll want to run modules in pairs for optimal performance.

With the Core 2 line perhaps Intel’s last not to feature an integrated memory controller, the DIMM slots hook into a memory controller aboard Nvidia’s GeForce 9300 chipset. This is essentially the same core logic package that you’ll find in the Ion platform, GeForce 9300-based Micro ATX boards, and a whole bunch of recent Macs, including the latest mini. If you’re not familiar with the GeForce 9300, I suggest reading our initial review of the chipset. Today we’ll be focusing on Zotac’s Mini-ITX approach to Nvidia’s freshest MCP, so we’ll just be covering the basics on the chipset itself.

But what a chipset. The GeForce 9300 packs a DirectX 10-class GPU with 16 so-called CUDA processors running at 1.2GHz with a 450MHz graphics core. Those generous pixel-pushing resources deliver the best gaming performance we’ve seen from any integrated graphics chipset, and Nvidia throws in a PureVideo HD video decode engine that delivers silky-smooth Blu-ray playback with even a budget CPU.

The GeForce 9300’s integrated GPU may be able to handle the latest games at low resolutions and detail levels, but serious or even regular gamers are better off with discrete graphics cards that offer substantially better performance and the ability to crank up the eye candy. For those folks, the 9300-ITX sports a second-gen PCI Express x16 slot that had no problems hosting a GeForce GTX 280 for several hours of stress testing. The board also has a couple of Serial ATA RAID ports, although given the lack of IDE connectivity, most folks will probably use the second port for an optical drive rather than a second hard drive.

From here, we have a good view of the 9300-ITX’s Wi-Fi riser, which delivers 802.11b/g networking via an, er, VIA VT6656 wireless controller. Zotac throws an antenna into the box, too. The Wi-Fi card does eat an onboard USB header, but that still leaves two free headers for a total of four extra ports, in addition to the six in the rear cluster.

Despite its diminutive proportions, the GeForce 9300-ITX has a more complete selection of ports than most full-sized motherboards. You don’t get Firewire, but video output is offered in VGA, DVI, and HDMI flavors. The board can also pass uncompressed 8-channel LPCM audio through the HDMI port. If you don’t have a receiver or home theater setup that can handle HDMI audio, you can always use one of two digital S/PDIF outputs or the trio of analog jacks.

The discrete audio ports are backed by a 6-channel Realtek ALC662 codec that looks a little pedestrian in light of the board’s fancy HDMI audio output capabilities. I’d prefer to see the ALC889A instead, if only because it supports real-time Dolby Digital Live and DTS encoding, which would allow multi-channel game audio to be passed over HDMI. The ALC662’s multi-channel digital output capacity is limited to passing along the sort of pre-encoded audio tracks that come with movies.

A Gigabit Ethernet jack and External Serial ATA port round out the rear, and both are fed by the GeForce 9300 chipset. Zotac also kicks in a PS/2 keyboard port for all those IBM Model M fans out there, but you’ll have to run a USB mouse.

BIOS options
Mini-ITX platforms are hardly known for offering tweak-friendly BIOSes primed for overclocking. Zotac doesn’t have a stellar reputation for delivering enthusiast-ready BIOSes, either. Surprisingly, though, the 9300-ITX’s BIOS has a decent array of tweaking and overclocking options.

The bulk of the overclocking and tweaking options look like they’ve been ripped directly from Nvidia’s reference BIOS designs, which is a good thing. There are plenty of front-side bus and memory clock options from which to choose, and the BIOS easily lets you key in arbitrary values. The memory clock won’t always nail your target exactly, though; it pulls from a selection of available memory speeds and selects the one closest to your input value without going over. Bob Barker would be proud.

On the voltage front, the 9300-ITX’s BIOS offers processor, memory, and chipset options to manipulate. The ranges are quite limited here, but you probably shouldn’t be cranking voltages for more extreme overclocks on a Mini-ITX motherboard. The platform has its limitations.

Speaking of platform limitations, we couldn’t get the board running with our memory at 4-4-4-12-1T timings. This is a problem Nvidia has acknowledged exists with the GeForce 9300, and we’ve experienced it on Micro ATX boards based on the chipset. While we’re talking memory, I should also note that the BIOS has an option to enable the GeForce 9300’s Advance Path memory controller feature, which purportedly lowers access latencies.

Given the board’s integrated graphics component, it’s no surprise to see a range of GPU controls built into the BIOS. Users can adjust the amount of system memory dedicated to the onboard GPU between 16 and 512MB. It’s also possible to raise or lower the clock speed of the graphics core and shader CUDA processors.

Those who want their systems to be as silent as they are compact will be pleased to know that the 9300-ITX’s BIOS offers a small measure of temperature-based fan speed control. A passive temperature control can be set between 50 and 65°C in 5° increments, governing the temperature at which the processor fan spins up. Although it’s not terribly intuitive, the “MCP fan control” offers values between 0 and 15 that control the speed of fans hooked up to the board’s secondary fan header.

Specifics on specifications
We’ve covered the essentials on the GeForce 9300-ITX Wi-Fi, but if you’d like all the key specifications distilled into a single chart, here you go:

Our testing methods
For an in-depth look at how the GeForce 9300 chipset performs against its integrated graphics rivals, I suggest reading our full review of the chipset. Today we’re focusing on Zotac’s GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi, which we’ll be testing against Asus’ P5N7A-VM. The P5N7A-VM uses the same GeForce 9300 chipset, but it rides a larger Micro ATX motherboard.

All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged.

All of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

Thanks to Corsair for providing the Dominator DIMMs we used for testing.

Finally, we’d like to thank Western Digital for sending Raptor WD1500ADFD hard drives for our test rigs.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• SiSoft Sandra Standard 2009 15.42

• WorldBench 6.0 Beta 2
• HD Tach 3.03
• Call of Duty 4 1.4
• RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.2
• NTttcp
• CASE Lab Euler3d CFD benchmark multithreaded edition
• Far Cry 2 1.01
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars 1.4
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• CPU-Z 1.41

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

Memory performance
When Nvidia first launched the GeForce 9300 chipset, its Advanced Path memory controller feature wasn’t yet enabled. The 9300-ITX has a BIOS switch for this feature, but unfortunately, the P5N7A does not. Since there’s no reason to penalize Zotac for supporting Advance Path, we ran the 9300-ITX with it enabled.

It’s a good thing we did, because Advance Path appears to be good for not only a healthy improvement in memory access latency, but also a boost in peak memory bandwidth.

STARS Euler3d computational fluid dynamics
Few folks run fluid dynamics simulations on their desktops, but we’ve found this multi-threaded test to be particularly demanding of memory subsystems, making it a good link between our memory and application performance tests.

No doubt thanks to Advance Path, the 9300-ITX boasts a higher Euler3d frequency than the Asus board.

WorldBench
WorldBench uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications. It then produces an overall score. WorldBench also spits out individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each. We’ll look at the overall score, and then we’ll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests.

WorldBench runs a little faster on the 9300-ITX than it does on the P5N7A. The difference in overall performance only amounts to two points, but it nicely confirms that the Zotac board doesn’t give up any performance in common desktop applications.

Gaming
The GeForce 9300 may be the fastest integrated graphics chipset around, but we still had to lower resolutions and in-game detail levels for most titles to get frame rates that we’d consider smooth and playable.

The Zotac board is no faster than the Asus here, which should come as no surprise considering that both use the same integrated graphics core running at the same clock speeds. Don’t get too excited about frame rates in the 30-40FPS range, though. While we were able to run Quake Wars at high detail, we had to drop Episode 2 to medium, Far Cry 2 to low, and turn off most of the graphics effects in Call of Duty.

Power consumption
We measured system power consumption, sans monitor and speakers, at the wall outlet using a Watts Up Pro power meter. Power consumption was measured at idle and under a load consisting of a multi-threaded Cinebench 10 render running in parallel with the “rthdribl” high dynamic range lighting demo. Results that fall under “No power management” were obtained with Windows Vista running in high-performance mode, while those with power management enabled were taken with Vista in its balanced performance mode.

Although the 9300-ITX is just as power-hungry as the Asus board under load, it pulls about 17W less at idle, which is a substantial margin given the total power consumption of each setup. Sure, Atom-based systems have about half the idle power consumption of our 9300-ITX config, but the Zotac setup easily offers more than twice the power.

Overclocking
The 9300-ITX isn’t being targeted at serious overclockers, but the BIOS still has enough bus speed and voltage controls to push a system beyond stock speeds. We already know that the Xeon 3320 used for testing is capable of hitting 3.26GHz at its default voltage, and we couldn’t resist seeing how high it would clock on the 9300-ITX.

Normally, we test the limits of a motherboard’s front-side bus by dropping the CPU and memory multipliers and cranking the FSB. However, the 9300-ITX doesn’t offer CPU multiplier control, so we’re stuck with overclocking the processor. We still kept the system’s memory running at under 800MHz to take it out of the equation (the BIOS’s target memory speed option makes this quite easy). System stability was tested at each tick in our overclocking adventure with a four-way Prime95 load.

I really had no idea how the 9300-ITX would respond to overclocking, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the board cruise up to a 370MHz front-side bus speed without requiring extra voltage. Pushing to a 380MHz FSB required a little extra chipset and processor voltage, but I couldn’t get the system running any faster.

2.85GHz may be well short of the 3.26GHz we squeezed from this processor on a full-sized ATX system, but it’s a respectable overclock given the 9300-ITX’s tiny form factor. Of course, as is always the case with overclocking, your mileage may vary.

Motherboard peripheral performance
Some of the biggest performance differences you’ll find between motherboards come on the peripheral front, where it’s easy to spot where mobo makers have skimped on auxiliary peripheral chips.

Most of the 9300-ITX’s peripherals are fed by the same GeForce 9300 chipset that you’ll find in on the P5N7A. Given their shared core logic component, it’s no wonder that the two boards offer nearly identical peripheral performance—and it’s good performance, too. Gigabit Ethernet throughput is solid with reasonable CPU utilization, USB transfers are quick both when reading and writing, and the SATA controller works as it should—even when running in AHCI mode.

Although they share a chipset, the Asus and Zotac boards do employ different audio codec chips. RightMark Audio Analyzer doesn’t detect much difference in analog output quality between the two, though.

Conclusions
Zotac’s GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi proves that you don’t have to give up performance to squeeze into a Mini-ITX form factor. The board’s LGA775 socket is compatible with a wide range of attractive processors, dual memory channels deliver plenty of bandwidth to arguably the best integrated graphics chipset around, a PCI Express x16 slot provides plenty of expansion potential for gamers, and you even get 802.11b/g Wi-Fi onboard. It’s no surprise, then, that the 9300-ITX is the best Mini-ITX board we’ve ever tested. Heck, it’s better than a lot of Micro ATX boards I’ve seen.

What makes the 9300-ITX so appealing is the fact that it’s quite flexible. Even with a low-end processor, you should have more than enough horsepower to drive a home theater PC that can play back Blu-ray movies smoothly over HDMI. The board has just about everything you’d need for a diminutive desktop, too. With the addition of a discrete graphics card, you could even build yourself a potent gaming rig that’s easy to tote to LAN parties.

Sure, the 9300-ITX has its limitations. The board’s not a great overclocker, Firewire support isn’t included, and expansion capacity is unavoidably constrained by the Mini-ITX form factor’s small footprint. Those are hardly serious flaws, though, especially when you look at other Mini-ITX boards on the market.

The 9300-ITX is currently selling for around $140 online, which is actually a pretty good deal, all things considered. Yes, you can get an Atom-based Mini-ITX board for half that, but the 9300-ITX is really in a different league. Besides, it’s only $20-30 more expensive than Micro ATX boards based on the GeForce 9300 chipset, and about the same price as Mini-ITX boards based on AMD’s 780G chipset.

Naturally, the 9300-ITX’s Mini-ITX form factor won’t be for everyone. But for those looking to roll their own mini PCs, it’s the best platform around. That’s good enough to earn the board our coveted Editor’s Choice award.