ZOTAC IONITX-P-E: Can Intel's CULV Processors Reinvigorate Interest in NVIDIA's ION?

Had the IONITX-P-E been released a year ago, we’d have been singing its praises at this point. Trouble is, it’s being released today at an $170 MSRP, which puts it within a stone’s throw of an entry-level Clarkdale based mini-ITX build (and around $20 more expensive than "high-end" Atom based IONs). While ZOTAC’s MSRP fits at a mid-point between the two, the gulf in performance between the ION based systems and Clarkdale in certain benchmarks that fall outside the realms of video playback and web browsing is such that we think the ION systems should be cheaper, period.

Before we continue further down the path of negativity, we’ll weigh-up the potential positives in favor of ZOTAC’s IONITX-P-E. The first is a certain aspect of its low power consumption; it betters Atom’s by a few Watts during very light loads and offers more computational power in the process. In that respect, the CULV+ION combo can be considered somewhat of a success.  Against Clarkdale though, things aren’t as clear cut because a 10 Watt idle/light load power saving considering the Celeron runs at less than half the operating frequency  isn’t that impressive.

That leaves one more weapon in IONs current repertoire that may factor in swaying a purchasing decision; XBMC support - it appears Clarkdale is not currently/well supported by Linux for such use. If looking for full media center functionality, ION remains the better choice.

To ZOTAC’s credit, we found the IONITX-P-E stable and functional for everyday use, presenting us with no peripheral issues to speak of. So it’ll make a fine ultra-low power file server or media center that you can tuck away quietly in the corner of a room.

However, for us to unreservedly recommend the IONITX-P-E in today’s desktop marketplace, ZOTAC would have to do two things; one as we mentioned eariler is drop the price to around $150 and secondly, add more features. On the feature front, perhaps the ability to run the ION GPU and a discrete GPU in tandem (on-the-fly power switching between both as needed), Bluetooth connectivity, a bundled PSU and maybe even remote control functionality would sweeten the deal.

Without these additional features, we can’t imagine a situation where we’d gravitate towards the IONITX-P-E at the current MSRP instead of a better all-round Clarkdale system. Hence our closing advice is that you spend a little extra, and give the $170 IONITX-P-E a miss. Or shoot for something suitably lower priced based around Atom (or the single core Celeron 743)  if all you need is a simple functional media player, as arguably, that’s all ION can do well regardless of which processor is at the helm.