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View Full Version : Anandtech Previews The Nvidia ION

Hooch Tan
02-04-2009, 03:30 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3509' target='_blank'>http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3509</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"NVIDIA&rsquo;s Ion comes in as an alternative two-chip solution. The GeForce 9400M is a single chip, the other chip is the Atom, the two make up Ion. You get a modern memory controller as well, supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 memory (up to DDR3-1066). Graphics performance is better than Intel and you get full HD video decode support."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1233707343.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 0px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Anandtech has their hands on an NVidia ION reference platform and put the wee board through a quick set of benchmarks and tests.&nbsp; NVidia ION looks like it will give netbooks a chance to be more than a light duty computer.&nbsp; The pairing makes it possible to watch Bluray movies and play games, albeit with very low settings.&nbsp; Currently, Atom based netbooks run off of the aging 945G chipset.&nbsp; While capable, it doesn't take advantage of advancements over the past few years like faster memory.&nbsp; The tests Anandtech go through shows how much the Atom is hobbled with its current partner.&nbsp; Is the potential enough to make you wait on your ultra-portable purchase?</p>
Jason Dunn
02-05-2009, 04:11 PM
Poor GPU performance is definitely the biggest problem with netbooks today, so this is definitely a step in the right direction - but if it bumps up the cost of the netbook by too much, it will hurt the category as a whole.

One of the reasons the HP dv2 is so interesting is that it offers real HD decoding, and solid CPU performance (from what I can tell), for $699. A bit more than your average netbook, but so much more functionality from a graphics perspective.

If nothing else, the success of netbooks is forcing laptop companies to push prices downward but deliver smaller form factors - prior to netbooks becoming popular, if you wanted something small, you were paying a high price for it...