Gigabyte & Zotac Socket AM2+ Mobo Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Zotac GeForce 8100

Next is the smallest mATX board in the group, the Zotac GeForce 8100. At almost one-third shorter than the rest, this Zotac board has to compensate for the reduced PCB by taking out some features. This means no floppy drive support, only four SATA 3.0Gbps ports, two DIMM slots and two PCI slots in addition to the PCIe x16 slot for graphics.

The board is also noticeably packed with components and the CPU socket looks a bit close to both the heatsink and the DIMM slots. Fortunately, the ATX power connector is not located inconveniently, with it being at its more 'normal' position near the SATA and IDE connectors.

Besides the enforced changes, the Zotac GeForce 8100 uses a similar chipset as the GeForce 8300 mGPU with the same integrated GeForce 8400 GS based GPU. The core and shader clocks are similar to the GeForce 8200, so the shaders are at the slower 1.2GHz. However, there are also quite a few underlying differences that could matter to some consumers. Firstly, some NVIDIA features like Hybrid Power and FirstPacket have been removed. The PCIe x16 slot is also not the version 2.0 found on the more powerful 8200 and 8300 mGPU.

Of more concern for HTPC enthusiasts is that there is no PureVideo HD onboard, meaning NVIDIA's hardware dedicated decoding package is not present. So you can expect significantly higher CPU utilization rates for your HD video playback and basically defeats the purpose of a HTPC setup using the GeForce 8100 mGPU. You'll see more of its capabilities in our test results which is up next.

The Zotac GeForce 8100 is significantly smaller than the other mATX boards here.

Despite its smaller size, Zotac manages to squeeze in the necessary video outputs, though the audio jacks are reduced.

Compared to the standard mATX boards, the Zotac GeForce 8100 is about one-third shorter.

It would have been too much to expect the Zotac GeForce 8100 to have 4 DIMM slots like the other boards. Two slots supporting up to 4GB of DDR2-1066 is the best you'll get.

Space may be at a premium but this board still manages to fit two PCI slots and 1 PCIe x16 for graphics.

There's no floppy drive connector, just 4 SATA ports and 1 IDE connector.



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