<span class="content"> <p><font size="2">Of all of the technologies VIA introduced over the years, I never expected a form factor to be its lasting legacy on the PC industry. The most ubiquitous of VIA&rsquo;s technologies were its chipsets which are all but gone now - used only by VIA for the most part. VIA&rsquo;s form factor however, lives on. </font></p> <p><font size="2">The form factor is ITX. Originally introduced by VIA to accompany its line of low-power microprocessors, long before Atom, ITX was designed to deliver much smaller computers than what was defined by the micro-ATX spec.&nbsp;<br /> <br /> I</font><span class="content"><font size="2">ntel was actually first to market a mini-ITX Atom based motherboard: the D945GCLF. Based on a single-core Atom 230 running at 1.6GHz, the D945GCLF is a relatively simple motherboard.<br /> </font><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">It has a single DDR2 DIMM slot supporting up to 2GB of memory (DDR2-400 or 533 only). There&rsquo;s no support for a modern day GPU, there&rsquo;s only an old 32-bit PCI slot on the motherboard. You get two SATA and one PATA connector on board, four USB, no DVI/HDMI output (only VGA) and a standard set of three analog audio ports.<br /> </font><span class="content"><br /> <span class="content"><font size="2">As its name implies the D945GCLF uses Intel&rsquo;s 945G chipset and correspondingly slow graphics. However if you don&rsquo;t need a ton of performance, Intel&rsquo;s desktop Atom solution is quite attractive as it sells for under $70 - CPU included (it&rsquo;s soldered onto the board).<br /> </font></span></span></span></span></p> <p><font size="2">With the quiet introduction of the dual-core Atom, Intel released the D945GCLF2. Nearly identical to its single core predecessor, the D945GCLF2 uses a larger heatsink on the CPU and a smaller one on the GMCH (although it is still cooled by a fan). The board also uses a 24-pin ATX power connector instead of a 20-pin connector, adds S-Video out and a Gigabit Ethernet port (the D945GCLF only has a 10/100 port).&nbsp;<br /> </font><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">The biggest difference is obviously the inclusion of the Atom 330 processor, which is simply two Atom 230 die on a single package - both running at 1.6GHz.<br /> </font><span class="content"><font size="2">The faster CPU raises the total price up to $80, still very affordable.<br /> </font></span><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">The Intel desktop Atom boards both work just fine but they&rsquo;re a bit boring. They are reminiscent of Intel&rsquo;s older motherboards, before it took competition from the tweakable Taiwanese motherboards seriously. </font></span><br /> </span></p> <p><font size="2">Zotac is the first manufacturer to produce a mini-ITX motherboard based on NVIDIA&rsquo;s Ion platform. Take Intel&rsquo;s Atom processor, pair it up with NVIDIA&rsquo;s Ion chipset (which is basically a GeForce 9300 chipset) and you have the Ion platform.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3562">Read more...</a></font></p> <p><font size="2"></font></p> </span>