Zotac IONITX

Sticklyman · 30 Jun 2009 at 23:15

Hi,

I have a Zotac IONITX-A-B motherboard and I have a few (too many) questions.

When transferring over the Gigabit Ethernet, the sound will often stutter & the (USB) mouse lags/stutters - does anyone else with this motherboard have this problem? What could be causing it? Chipset limitations? Do you think an external USB soundcard would stop the sound stuttering issue, and if so which would you recommend (for a moderate price)? Would a USB-Ethernet adaptor help?

The other question I have relates to the BIOS. There is an option for "Stutter mode" in the BIOS which by default is set to Enabled. It is under the chipset options. Does anyone know what the function of this is as I can't tell a difference if operation with it enabled or disabled?

I have observed the sound stuttering/mouse lag issue with both XP SP3 (32 bit) as well as the 7100 build of Windows 7 (64 bit). I have 2GB of 800MHz RAM & a Samsung F1 1TB hard drive. The motherboard comes with the Atom N330 (Dual core 1.6GHz) processor which I have actively cooled with the supplied fan.

Thanks a lot!

Sticklyman

Speed · 30 Jun 2009 at 23:33

I assume you have all the latest drivers installed?

Sticklyman · 30 Jun 2009 at 23:39

I believe I have the GeForce/ION Driver Release 186 drivers installed which I think are the latest ones.

Speed · 30 Jun 2009 at 23:44

It might be a faulty unit, I assume you have the latest chipset drivers as well, 15.37?

Are the temps ok? What with the weather etc.

Sticklyman · 30 Jun 2009 at 23:52

I actually have the 20.14 drivers as it is currently running XP. I uninstalled Windows 7 to see if the problem went away.

It appears that many programs have trouble measuring the CPU temperature with this motherboard. Some say 70+ degrees C & others say less than room temperature. However, the CPU heatsink is cooler that the hard drive to touch (and the hard drive reports as 34 degrees C).

Speed · 1 Jul 2009 at 00:08

Very odd, I guess you could see what the retailer thinks where you purchased it from. They may do an RMA which would at least rule the board out.

Rroff · 1 Jul 2009 at 00:14

If your using gigabit see if theres an option to use jumbo frames/change the frame size, CPU offloading, etc. in the network card properties.

Sticklyman · 1 Jul 2009 at 10:23

I'm currently messing with my network settings to see if that helps at all. Doesn't seems to make much difference with the mouse stuttering but the sound seems better for the time being.

However, when transferring over Gigabit, I only get about 13MB/s which is only a fraction over 100Mbit speeds. Probably due to me messing with the network settings. If possible, I'd rather not send this motherboard back as I spent about a month waiting for it & it is still in fairly high demand.

Does anyone have any idea what the BIOS option is for?