We mentioned yesterday about a killer Mini-ITX base from J&W Technology which would suddenly make the Mini-ITX form factor much more appealing for HTPC builders. We also weren't aware at the time that it had any form of competition on the horizon.

Turns out ZOTAC has a nice little ITX board readied for the market as well. The lads at Expreview have stacks of images and info outlaying the boards characteristics. Unlike the J&W offering with its 780G chipset for AM2+ processors, this model steers over to Intel with its nForce 610i chipset supporting up to 1333MHz FSB LGA775 processors (incl. 45nm Wolfdale).

Where the board is lacking compared to J&W's solution is in the video output options. Although it sports the quite capable GeForce 7050 IGP, it appears ZOTAC have only provided a single D-Sub port and no PCI-E x16 slot for the option of discreet graphics. Nonetheless, it would still make for a great little work/internet box or some such.

It's been said the board will come in as low as $50 USD.

The Zotac nForce 610i-ITX, having been showcased in the Computex 08, is the first ITX motherboard based on the NVIDIA nForce 610i chipsets.

The nForce 610i-ITX features up to 1333MHz FSB, Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme, Pentium series support and GeForce 7050 GPU integrated. The integrated GPU of GeForce 7050 supports DirectX 9 and Shader Model 3.0, Windows Vista Premium ready with full support for the new Windows Aero 3D user interface. The ZOTAC nForce 610i-ITX is ready from the basic documents editing and web surfing to higher-powered tasks such as video editing when paired with a dual or quad-core processor.