Nvidia Ion in Netbooks is what I'm excited about

Long time no post guys but just thought I'd stop by and tell you what I'm excited about in the world of netbooks at the moment and what is set to be the next quantum leap for netbooks since Intel introduced the now ubiquitous Atom processor.

The Nvidia Ion. This Intel/Nvidia collaboration chip has been banded around for a while now at CES and other events but we are now at a stage where we are approaching potential netbook product releases with this chip featured centre stage.

So just what is the Ion?
Well it is designed around delivering something that is missing in Atom powered netbooks and nettops today... graphics performance. So why does my netbook suck when it comes to graphics you ask? Well... its because generally good graphics processors are;

1) expensive

2) power hungry (aka not netbook battery friendly) and

3) BIG (technically chips are small but the auxiliary cooling/circuitry can be large).

It is highly likely your netbook has an onboard Intel GMA graphics chip which is basically enough to 'just get by'.

However, Nvidia has now witnessed the insane growth of netbooks and is stepping in to the arena with the Ion - finally modern games, Full HD movies and OS effects will now operate with congruous fluidity!

An Ion is essentially an Intel Atom N230 central processing unit combined with a Nvidia GeForce 9400 graphics processing unit all in a super-small netbook friendly package!

The product page boasts:

• DirectX 10 Graphics (capable of super modern effects, games and other cool stuff!) - they demo Call of Duty 4 on the site and I must say it looks pretty good.


• 1080p HD Video w/ 7.1 Sound!


• CUDA technology to help with graphics processing in OS applications such as Video encoding or photoshop


• Will integrate well with Windows 7/Windows Vista's flashy Aero interface (window transparency and special effects etc)

Below is a marketing-ey type video for the Ion from Nvidia that shows a snippet of what they claim you can do with Ion - not exactly technical stuff but hey I'm a sucker for pretty marketing material when it comes to shiny new products!

vid via [Acer Aspire Revo].

So when can we get our hands on an Ion powered machine you ask? Well... the first commercial machine is an Acer Aspire Revo - however this machine is a nettop rather than a netbook but excitingly Acer claims it will be priced well under USD500, features HDMI out, Wi-Fi N and SEVEN USB ports! Notably, Gizmodo managed to playback a Blu-Ray movie at great bitrates using a demo machine but pointed out that Flash and Silverlight - the technologies that power video sites like Hulu and YouTube - don't utilise GPU acceleration at all, so performance won't improve on this front.

The Acer Aspire Revo

[Update: I found this interesting article which heavily critiques the Aspire Revo - namely Acer's choice of a weak CPU such as an Atom in a machine where power drain isn't an issue. It suggests that the Celeron would have been a better choice for performance vs cost and I have to agree in this case it probably would be. Especially in a Vista scenario the article suggests that the Revo will be anologous to "... something that moves with the speed of a syphilitic water buffalo wearing leg irons.". However, I see the purpose of this machine as more of a collaborative PR tool for Nvidia and Acer rather than a top notch product in that it pushes the Ion and lets Acer have claim of 'first-to-market' while still producing a relatively cheap and effective computer.]

So who will be the first off the block with netbooks carrying an Ion? Well its anyone's guess but possibly Lenovo will be bringing out 11 and 12" ideapads before not too long - we'll just have to wait and see.

For now I am still using my MSI Wind U100 with Windows 7 Beta and I DO love the setup, however an Ion powered netbook would make me change machines faster than you can say "Open and clear".