Been researching for the perfect media/game device and discovered this ZBOX HD-ND22... ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ND22 Only problem, can't get it in this country! Looks to be a pretty much perfect device with dual core culv processor and ION to boot. Assume this gotta be a GS40 chipset? Game wise do you reckon this could push enough pixels for Alien Swarm?
Your link is broken. Maybe at a low enough resolution with all/most of the sauce turned off. From what I gather Atom based Ion platforms can just about handle source engine based games. Would the better processor help with framerates? It'd be interesting to see bit-tech review this one.
Link works this end old boy! I found a French website and translated the review somewhat thanks to Google... http://www.revioo.com/articles/a14641_0.html Obviously HD content is no problem, however they do manage some Left 4 Dead even at higher resolutions in 1080p! If it were a straight conversion of dollars to pounds then this would cost around £170. I've e-mailed Zotac to see if they have any plans for a UK release. Otherwise it'd make an excellent net-top box with the added benefit of a little gaming.
Ebuyer have the ZBOX HD-AD01 which uses the Athlon Neo X2 L325 (dual-core, 1.5 GHz) and AMD M780G chipset, this could be a good alternative to the Celeron/ION. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/227261
Nice spot! Don't know much about the HD 3200 but the specs look impressive on paper. Also nice to see the Zotac Blu-Ray player come mini-pc under review on the front page of Bit-Tech at the moment.
The original Ion is about the same as the HD 3200. Both '16' shader, DX10 hardware. AMD has simply rebranded this and bolted on 10.1 to call the HD 3200 -> HD 4200 in its modern IGPs. Even the 890GX/880G is a direct derivative.
Thanks for the details. The AMD chip have the same sort of support as ION in terms of hardware acceleration support?
Not to revive a dead-ish thread, but in response to the last post I should be ordering one in the next couple weeks. After it's set up I'll get a post in on my experience. Unlike a lot of folks, I plan on using this as a desktop rather than a HTPC, so I'm very excited to be getting the possibility of even running some recent games: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19507/4
I did eventually get one of these. A £20 off voucher for dabs.com tempted me in for the buy and I picked it up for around £175! Coupled with 4GB (2 x 2GB Sticks) of DDR3 and a 320GB hard drive it works really well under Windows 7. Simply clean install Windows 7 followed by the Motherboard Drivers and then the latest Nvidia ION Graphics Drivers (including HDMI sound!) and you're away. One thing worth mentioning is adjusting the sound to 'radio quality' for whatever reason only this option outputs audio through HDMI. Sounds perfectly good however once up and running. I'm really impressed with this little box and coupled with ION makes it dead easy to adjust for custom desktop resolutions to fit the TV screen directly from Nvidia Control Panel. Played a little Homeworld 2 and it works really well but now and again it enters a garbled sound loop. Then again it is an old game, a few incompatibilities is hardly surprising. I can also recommend the Logitech MK250 for a wireless keyboard mouse ensemble.
Finally finished setting mine up and man, is it great! I found it at Buy.com for about $230 shipped - less than Newegg - and threw in 2x2GB of Patriot DDR3 and a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB hard drive. I got Windows 7 64-bit and it's been such a smooth experience. Windows installed in 30min! (It was a clean installed, I pre-formatted the hard drive.) Installing the drivers was a little clunky, and I will be checking for updates in a little bit. What I really like is that I can mount it on the back of my monitor (new ASUS 21.5"), have incredibly low power usage, and still multitask with ease from such a small machine. When the box is on, the circle on the side glows, which makes for a neat effect, although it's only in the color orange. The options in BIOS are incredible, especially the ability to overclock the system. While the cooling fan and heatsink are obviously not up to the task, it's a great idea. At the same time, I'm not worried about voiding the warranty as it's only one year. The only con I've hit now is that there are only 6 USB ports. After my mouse, keyboard, printer and external optical drive are plugged in (the latter using two ports) I only have one more available. At least I do not plan on leaving my external hard drive plugged in all the time. As a desktop, let along a HTPC, this machine is perfect for my needs - low power, high performance and very customizable. I have not tried gaming on this yet, but I plan to soon.
