Zotac GeForce 9300 (MCP7a) motherboard

Zotac Nitro

Here's something a little new for us that Zotac will soon be bundling as a value-add for its graphics products - this neat little LCD unit that plugs into a motherboard via a single USB 2.0 and basically acts as an overclocking dongle for your desktop graphics. It'll overclock on the fly and even in-game should you decide you want some extra FPS in an intense match for example. Profiles can be pre-set to easily flick between them and the temperature easily monitored by the simple slider that goes from white to yellow to red.

It's incredibly easy to read and use, but again it's another application to install and all it really does is provide a gamey shell for Nvidia's own control panel. Having said that, Zotac did point out that having the option easier to see and always in-view will encourage more users unfamiliar with the depths of the Forceware Control Panel to try a hand at overclocking, but we'd still prefer to see a nice clean and simple GUI than the overly fancy pants one currently shown to us.

The dongle is incredibly easy to read and works with any Zotac product - even this integrated graphics processor which we overclocked to its absolute limit while a game of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was running, and the core and shader clocks just kept going the whole time. The memory appears at 0MHz because it's using the onboard memory and the software can only read the Nvidia software, rather than the motherboard BIOS itself.


It's got good ergonomics as the size and weight feel like a solid build in the hand, however this is still an early sample and things could always change between this and the final retail versions. It's a great idea for something different but bit limited in what it can do - there is absolutely no customisation of the LCD and so no option to design extra modules to cover other things you may consider important and want on-hand.

It will not be included in the motherboard package however, although if you do buy the specific Zotac cards when it is released, at least it's worth knowing it will work with any Zotac product - including IGP should you upgrade in the future and keep the Nitro.