Conclusions
The MCP7A-ION is clearly the best chipset for Intel's Atom processor, but the very same MCP can also be found in another Zotac Mini-ITX board, the GeForce 9300-ITX. For a penny less than $140, the 9300-ITX offers a PCI Express x16 slot that can accept standard desktop graphics cards and an LGA775 CPU socket compatible with a wide range of Core 2 processors, all while sticking to a small Mini-ITX form factor.

I bring up the 9300-ITX because it nicely highlights the relative weakness of Intel's Atom processor. Fast enough as the N330 may be for desktop tasks, it can't handle games as old as Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4—titles that are easily playable when the so-called Ion MCP is paired with even a budget Core 2 processor. The Atom's modest horsepower is also a hindrance when performing demanding tasks like video encoding. Sure, there are a handful of CUDA-aware applications that can accelerate the process, but your options are limited. If you're going to be engaging in computationally intensive work, you shouldn't be running an Atom processor in the first place.

The Atom does best when it's asked to handle basic tasks while consuming little power, at a relatively low cost. In that context, the Ion platform's casual game compatibility and video playback acceleration are its most compelling features. The IONITX certainly delivers on those fronts: games like World of Warcraft and Quake Live run without issue, and both HD video clips and Blu-ray movies play back perfectly smoothly, provided you're using a PureVideo-aware app like PowerDVD.

With dual memory channels and a dual-core CPU, Zotac's IONITX-A really is as good as the Ion platform gets. The motherboard sports plenty of nice little touches, including support for simultaneous DVI and HDMI output, integrated draft-n Wi-Fi, passive CPU and chipset cooling, and a fanless PSU. The inclusion of a silent power supply is the real kicker for me, not just because it makes building a quiet system easier, but also because it broadens the number of enclosures that one could use—an important consideration given the odd mix of Mini-ITX cases on the market. Putting a PSU in the box makes the IONITX-A's $179 asking price easier to justify, too, since all you need to add is memory, storage, and a case.

Of course, even with a PSU, $180 is a lot to pay for an Atom-based motherboard. 945G-based Mini-ITX boards with the very same dual-core Atom CPU run around $80 online. But those boards are typically limited to a single DIMM slot and analog video output. What's more, they can't play back HD video and are all but useless for gaming. You don't get Gigabit Ethernet, built-in Wi-Fi, or digital audio outputs, either. So the IONITX-A costs more, but it offers more.

Were I looking to build an Atom-based desktop or home theater PC today, I'd use the IONITX-A in a heartbeat. It's easily the best Atom-based motherboard around and thus TR Recommended. However, I'm not so sure I'd pick the IONITX-A over Zotac's GeForce 9300-ITX, if only because I'm an enthusiast who appreciates the flexibility and performance that an LGA775 socket and PCI Express x16 slot can provide. The truth is that both boards are good options, and choosing between them is more a matter of evaluating whether the Atom processor is fast enough for the sort of tasks the system you're building will be asked to handle on a daily basis.