Give Your Intel Atom-based PC Or Netbook A Boast With NVIDIA's Ion

When it comes to gaming or HD videos a netbook or low cost notebook is going to be just about useless. That is where NVIDIA steps in with their recently announced Ion platform.

This box that literally fits in the small of your hand, features an integrated Atom CPU and GeForce 9400M GPU. That together should significantly boost the performance of netbooks, small form factor PCs, and all-in-one PCs.



The new Ion features:

• Full support for Windows Vista Premium as well as Windows 7, Premium DirectX 10 graphics with advanced digital display connectivity,
• CUDA technology unlocks the processing power of the GPU to accelerate video transcoding and run the most compute-intensive applications
• Premium 1080p HD video with true-fidelity 7.1 audio

Connections include VGA, HDMI-out, dual-link DVI, SATA connections, 12x USB 2.0 ports, an ethernet port as well as 7.1 surround sound support.



In their demonstration videos NVIDIA claims a boost of 10x the speed for graphics and video transcoding in netbook and All-in-one PCs with Atom CPUs and integrated video. They also claim Ion will run Call of Duty 4 on lowered setting. As for the rest of the specs you get a max resolution of 2560x1600, gigabyte ethernet support, 128 bits of DDR3 1333mhz memory and a total power consumption of 18Ws.

Pricing and availability are not set yet, however speculation sets the price in the $50range and we shouldn't expect to see it before mid year.