Power Consumption

Being the bigger board it's no surprise the Zotac has a higher idle power consumption, and it's greater than the Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H (Nvidia GeForce 7100) with Intel's Core 2 Duo E4300 because the CPU is more powerful. Unfortunately we don't have the Gigabyte board or E4300 CPU to derive a direct comparative. Both Intel set ups are greater power than the AMD's, although we will retest once our 45nm E5200 processor arrives which should again be lower power than the E6400 tested here.

Despite the fact the idle power consumptions are higher, because the CPU performance is greater, general productivity tasks are likely finished sooner and there is on average lower CPU overhead when playing back media so less power is used. If you have a system that you want to leave on and doesn't do much all day though, you might still want to opt for the AMD option and save yourself 20W, or have it shut itself down after a certain period of inactivity which is generally the most power saving all round.

Neither the Zotac or Intel boards have specific power efficiency hardware either, it's left to the CPU and its C1E state to clock down the multiplier.

Stability

We set up the machine with a QX9650 and reset the BIOS to its default value before booting into the OS and started a Prime95 torture test on all four cores first of all to get it warmed up, then later adding 3DMark06 looping over the top to stress the mGPU as well. We came back a day later to find everything running perfectly responsively and the heatsinks were barely even hot. A great result for Zotac.

Value and Experiences

When we stack up the features against other boards it lacks a fair amount - there is no dual BIOS support or CPU power phase regulation like is featured on many Gigabyte boards. Zotac has an unproven track record for BIOS support, and given other motherboards by graphics companies like XFX and EVGA it's down to Nvidia through these people, which just makes the whole process slower. Having said that, for now, we'll give Zotac the benefit of the doubt because at least the BIOS provided was perfectly stable and could overclock the GPU nicely. Overclocking the CPU is another thing entirely and the Zotac fails miserably as it's completely inadequate, lacking CPU voltage and proper memory options relevant to DDR2.

On the positive side, compared to other integrated graphics motherboards it's advantages are obvious: dual digital video outputs, great HQV and a perfect HD HQV score, solid reliability from the chipset that shouldn't even need fan providing the environment is cool enough. The bundle maybe limited and there's no DisplayPort but who cares? Yes, we would have liked optical S/DPIF out and only a few more USB 2.0 on rear I/O, but overall it looks good and certainly has great options for a HTPC. The actual Nvidia PureVideo HD itself is very impressive but it literally just needs to improve its deinterlacing performance compared to Intel's ClearVideo.

General productivity performance is lower than the competing Intel G45, however it's still better than the alternative AMD, but that greatly depends on what CPU is used in both accounts. AMD may have 45W CPUs up its sleeve, but Intel's £55 E5200 looks like a real cracker too. In comparison, the Intel "Fly Creek" G45 board is a little more expensive, but it is mini-ITX compared to microATX. From what we've heard, most GeForce 9300 motherboards will be around the £70-90 mark making them generally more expensive than AMD's 780G, less than the 790GX's, but comparative to many G45 boards.

It enables an extra jump in performance for not much more power consumption that some AMD set ups will find hard to compete with. We've no Hybrid Power option, and the Hybrid Graphics appeal is limited because often the completing AMD solution is cheaper.

Final Thoughts

Zotac's board isn't the fastest or most capable out there, but for just being stable and for HTPC playback it's the best Intel solution currently available. The Nvidia GeForce 9300 gives it an underlying boost to be something great with dual digital displays, perfect HD HQV numbers (that we've not seen before) and Blu-ray playback that the Intel G45 can't match.

We do feel it underperforms in general productivity and in the hands of more capable Tier-1 manufacturers like Asus, MSI or Gigabyte we'd expect much greater potential to challenge the Intel G45 in core performance figures, BIOS options and overclocking. However for doing what it says on the tin the Zotac GeForce 9300 does work well and we haven't had a problem with it (certainly more than can be said for others), so while it's not perfect, it should make for a very compelling HTPC purchase.

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