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

Far Cry 2

Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with 2xAA.

We'll start off with the IGP stuff first:

On lowest details, Far Cry 2 is just about playable at a resolution of 800x600. You'll gain 5 FPS switching from Atom to 1.2GHz Celeron, but end up around 10~15 FPS behind Clarkdale.

Stepping out to a discrete GPU, the ION systems get blasted to smithereens by the i3-540. ION lacks the raw muscle required to handle the GTX 275. 1.875GHz is the maximum stable frequency we achieved on our processor without running out of cooling headroom. You get a 11 FPS return for a near 700MHz hike in frequency, but it's still less than half of what the i3-540 manages at stock.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU.

Warhammer at lowest settings is pretty much off the table for IGP gaming. We encounterd a problem with this game and the Atom 330 where the game failed to run from our Steam account; crashing back to the desktop before the opening sequence started. We reported the problem back to ASUS who tell us it's a problem on NVIDIA's end and that there are some beta drivers available that supposedly fix the issue. Sadly we ran out of time to check them out for this review.

Back to the GTX 275, and it's a familiar story for the ION. That's one of the irksome limitations of opting for an ION based system, there isn't really any room for upgrading to a decent gaming machine at a later date.