Zotac IONITX-P-E Integrated Motherboard Review

ajmatson - February 13, 2011
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Testing:

To test the Zotac IONITX-P-E motherboard combo, I will be running a series of synthetic and video based benchmarks designed to push the limits of the hardware. I will then be placing the scores up against another ION based board that I previously tested to see how it stands up. To keep all tests fair, all hardware will be run at their stock speeds, latencies, voltages, etc. This way, there is no outside interference messing with the scores and comparisons.

Testing Setup:

Processor: Intel Celeron SU2300 @ 1.2GHz
Motherboard: Zotac IONITX-P-E Motherboard
Memory: Mushkin 996744 DDR3 1066MHz 8-8-8-20
Video Card: Integrated NVIDIA ION Graphics Processor
Power Supply: Mushkin XP-800AP 800w PSU
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 750GB SATA
Optical Drive: LG DVD+/-RW
Case: In Win Dragon Slayer mATX Case
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Comparison:

Comparison Board: ASUS AT3IONT-I Deluxe

Overclocking:

Overclocked Settings:

CPU Overclock: 225 x 6 = 1350Mhz

Overclocking the Zotac board was easy. However, one issue I ran into (which was the same with the ASUS ION board) was that any increase in memory speed over 1066MHz or auto setting of the timings causes the system to not boot. I find it odd that this happened on two ION boards. As far as the CPU is concerned, I was only able to squeeze a bit extra bringing up the cores to 1.35GHz each. While not a crazy overclock, any extra speed that is free is definitely a bonus. Since this processor has a locked multiplier I started by pushing up the voltage a bit and raising the FSB until i hit my wall of 225MHz which with a six times multiplier, yielded the 1350MHz overall clock speed.