14 DAY TRIAL // Albatron has just announced a new Mini-ITX motherboard that will enable system builders to create higher-performance Home Theater PCs (HTPC) using some of the latest technologies currently available. The company, which is also one of NVIDIA's many board partners, has just introduced the new KI780G, a Mini-ITX motherboard that is equipped with one of AMD's latest desktop chipsets, the 780G.
As some of you probably already know, the 780G chipset comes with integrated graphics. What this translates to is that it enables all users to benefit from the computing power of AMD's AM2+-ready processors, combined with the graphics capabilities of a built-in Radeon HD3200 graphics engine. This should deliver an impressive performance level in a relatively small form factor, enough to fit the requirements of a high-performance HTPC.
The board can support AMD's latest quad-core or triple-core Phenom processors and a maximum of 4GB of DDR2 memory. To keep the low-profile of the board, Albatron has equipped the KI780G with two SO-DIMM slots, instead of the regular desktop-ready DIMMs. In addition, the built-in Radeon HD3200 graphics and its 128 MB of side port DDR2 will deliver support for DirectX 10 applications, and provide a DVI, VGA and HDMI slots. The board is also equipped with one PCI-Express X16 slot that can allow for a substantial graphics upgrade.
Other features include one IDE channel and four SATA II ports with support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1, as well as an External SATA port placed on the back panel, which also features six USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, SPDIF In/Out and a PS/2 keyboard port. The onboard 8 Channel Realtek audio codec also provides the necessary backpanel connectivity options.
Unfortunately, the company has not disclosed any details regarding the board's pricing and availability. Keep an eye on this space for more.