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

Had the IONITX-P-E been released a year ago, we’d have been singing its praises at this point. Trouble is, it’s being released today at an $170 MSRP, which puts it within a stone’s throw of an entry-level Clarkdale based mini-ITX build (and around $20 more expensive than "high-end" Atom based IONs). While Zotac’s MSRP fits at a mid-point between the two, the gulf in performance between the ION based systems and Clarkdale in certain benchmarks that fall outside the realms of video playback and web browsing is such that we think the ION systems should be cheaper, period.