NVIDIA Ion platform gets demonstrated at CES

We've been hearing an awful lot about NVIDIA's Ion platform, but up until now, we haven't seen an awful lot. HotHardware and PC Perspective were both able to swing by NVIDIA's booth at CES and get an up close look at the diminutive system. On hand was a half-liter PC that utilized a 1.6GHz Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M GPU, and it was reportedly being used to push some pretty stellar video on the monitors behind it. Have a look past the break for a couple demonstration vids -- if this is the kind of graphical prowess we can expect from nettops of tomorrow, you can color us interested.

Read - HotHardware
Read - PC Perspective

[Aguiluz @ Jan 12th 2009 9:10PM]

Let's see how this stacks up to games.

[Phour ZwanZig @ Jan 12th 2009 10:42PM]

Games......?

This would be great for a CarPC..

Im gunna be keeping my eye on this...

[Aguiluz @ Jan 12th 2009 11:28PM]

Google up "Pico-ITX" and you'll find a less-powered but cheaper and small motherboard.

[JAmerican @ Jan 13th 2009 1:19AM]

@Phour ZwanZig:

Read the article... they played COD4 Story Chapter at 27 FPS.

[eggothewaffle @ Jan 12th 2009 9:11PM]

It fared sort of well on Spore and COD4...But what about Left4Dead/TF2? Netbooks would be the perfect place for "lightweight" games like those on the Source engine.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 12th 2009 9:21PM]

I would think it should do fine at the low resolution the screens have.

I had an laptop with a ATI 200M chipset in it that played those games just about at a higher res, and it was a lot slower than this!

[Shinigami @ Jan 13th 2009 1:17AM]

Good for COD4 = great for TF2
Can't say about L4D but should be the same, both games are made on Source engine.
Yes you can play simple 3D games on it.

The half liter box PC is awesome but now I want to see how well it does when it comes to pricing.

[nik @ Jan 12th 2009 9:16PM]

so I first looked at it and thought "damn, that looks like a huge processor". then I realized that the ports were gigantic.

[KarlW @ Jan 12th 2009 10:29PM]

Parallel ports are coming back

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 12th 2009 11:00PM]

@KarlW

Yuh, it had purplish plastic replaced with white,
wide, trapezoidal interface hammered down to just a narrow rectangle,
and oh, it had its name changed to DVI.


Go to town, pal, go to town.

[Sam H @ Jan 12th 2009 9:19PM]

I feel like nVidia might be onto something here. As low cost is becoming more and more the name of the game it's nice to see that they are not skimping out on the power.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 12th 2009 9:17PM]

The real problem is that there is no info on how using this over the intel chipset will effect battery life.

I would hope that it shouldn't take to much more than the awful GMA950, but you never know.

[fh @ Jan 12th 2009 9:30PM]

*affect

Ion is for SFF PCs. Tegra is for portable devices. Either way, the chipsets should give a huge boost in performance over Intel chipsets at marginal power consumption cost (no point in, say, a 12hr battery if it can't play HD movies, etc).

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 12th 2009 9:50PM]

Well, the only problem with Tegra is that its ARM based, and Linux is a deal breaker for some people.

And I would have to agree, losing some battery for FAR better visual performance is worth it, as long as there's a good balance.

[Silvio @ Jan 12th 2009 9:19PM]

Would love that for a CarPC too...

[mazzthepianoman @ Jan 12th 2009 9:28PM]

You won't be able to push any video that uses Silverlight (like Netflix). Silverlight does not use any graphics acceleration pushing all the processing onto the CPU. Flash video playback uses some video acceleration but my AMD 2.13Ghz was just barely playing Hulu back at the lowest quality setting.

[Joshua Walters @ Jan 12th 2009 9:31PM]

Then your 2.13 AMD sucks.

The current 1.6ghz Atom can handle Hulu with no problems.

[dagamer34 @ Jan 12th 2009 9:36PM]

To be honest, something like instant Netflix should be built as an OS application rather than web-based. It works really well on a Xbox 360, I would shudder to think if Microsoft just used a Silverlight interpreter and called it a day.

[Aguiluz @ Jan 12th 2009 9:44PM]

AMD 1.8 here, no problems.

[Mike @ Jan 12th 2009 9:50PM]

AMD 2.2 playing em just fine.

sounds like you need a reformat after you move in with your autie and uncle in bel-air....

[letstakeawalk @ Jan 13th 2009 1:03AM]

AMD 2.17 plays Netflix just fine for me.

[Gikero @ Feb 11th 2009 7:53PM]

AMD 1.0Ghz and it runs Hulu just fine. (really old)

[Bob @ Jan 12th 2009 9:21PM]

Dual Core Atom (330) too, very nice. I'd love to see a laptop (10-12") with discrete graphics and a dual core atom. Hopefully for

[Stereotype @ Jan 12th 2009 10:06PM]

under $300... :)

[Ian Whelan (JOIN BAND!) @ Jan 12th 2009 10:27PM]

free.

[HomiePC @ Jan 14th 2009 9:54AM]

Yea, put a dual core in in and I'll buy a few.

[Josh Ladella @ Jan 22nd 2009 8:39PM]

Atoms and Ions...I see what they did there...

[lasean @ Jan 12th 2009 9:27PM]

@Angus Hedger

The guy in the video said this reference design is for PCs that use laptop technology. Power efficiency is important either way, but this doesn't seem to be a portable device.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 12th 2009 9:53PM]

Well, that's a bit of a bugger then, I do hate intel graphics, on anything and everything!

Lets hope that they get out a model for netbooks and the like.

[Demonic_pascal @ Jan 12th 2009 9:28PM]

Only thing I don't like is that it says "netTOP". I think most of us here have regular PC's (or Macs) for desk work. This platforms real potential success is in netbooks. The config shown here would have enough power to replace my main laptop

[Chris @ Jan 12th 2009 9:28PM]

Awesome, now as long as it doesn't drive up the price to much, I think I'll be getting a netbook soon.

[Joshua Walters @ Jan 12th 2009 9:29PM]

Wait, your saying that my Wind could potentially run Crysis (Ok, maybe not because of CPU constraints). Still, thats pretty badass.

I forget what the clock is on the 9400M, but its got to be todays average if it can handle 1080p video.

[DBlair @ Jan 13th 2009 10:23AM]

We've been putting Mac Mini's behind LCD TV's in conference rooms, this seems to be a great solution for that. While I love the Apple, clients always want Windows.

Would be good if it had integrated Wireless, but I feel like one of "those" guys who always wants one more feature. HDMI out is great.

[Hineze7988 @ Jan 12th 2009 9:39PM]

There is a typo above its not the Atom 330 which is dual core its probably the 300 which is a single core CPU like the one pictured above, the dual core atoms have two dies side by side.

[Hineze7988 @ Jan 12th 2009 9:42PM]

Sorry I meant to say its probably a 230 not a 330.

[lolwecsan @ Jan 12th 2009 9:48PM]

is this coming to any main stream netbooks? or is it restricted to nettops? this would be great for gaming. and running photoshop or dreamweaver.

[JerkyChew @ Jan 12th 2009 9:51PM]

VDPAU!

Do a google search for it, it's Nvidia's beta Unix driver that offloads the HD decoding to the GPU. The MythTV users list has been on fire about it for the past two months - Users are reporting very stable runs of 1080p H.264-encoded video on very low powered CPUs with Nvidia GPUs attached - Newegg has a little dual core Atom motherboard and adding a $40 Nvidia (fanless!) PCI card enables it to play full HD with almost no CPU usage.

Now that Nvidia has delivered on their promise of an on-board GPU to couple to the Atom CPU, it's a game changer in the HTPC world. If this mobo & CPU comes out at a good price (say, sub $100) you're looking at a fully HD capable MythTV (and Boxee and XBMC if they port to it) device!

[ethana2 @ Jan 12th 2009 10:09PM]

Amen!

I love how the gpu dwarfs the CPU there. The atom is like, huddling over on the side of the mainboard cowering in shame.
...so do they put a heat sink over those components or do they just sit there?

[sbyte1 @ Jan 13th 2009 12:30AM]

Ethana2, check out the hothardware link, the Heat sink covers the whole board.

http://www.hothardware.com/articleimages/item1261/big_sff-reference-design-3.jpg

[79M&M's @ Jan 13th 2009 10:49AM]

Asus n10... Atom + Nvidia 9300M! I love mine!!!!!

[rbovay @ Jan 12th 2009 10:08PM]

Very nice... Will it Run Windows Home Server?
It really seems to be setup nice for an HTPC though, but if the price is right, I could use a few of these for different purposes.

[tonymrep @ Jan 12th 2009 10:08PM]

So, I was about to buy an lenovo s10, should I wait or is it gonna be a while?

[xconan @ Jan 13th 2009 3:20AM]

i wuz thinkin the same thing 2 about gettin the s10... i think i'll wait for a dual core atom with same power consumption along with the 9400m. however the tablet asus t101h may be worth getting...

[Stereotype @ Jan 12th 2009 10:08PM]

Why 7 dot 1? I always say 7 point 1... :P
I want to slap him....

[Mike @ Jan 13th 2009 6:42AM]

Good lord, and here was me about to buy a netbook for when I'm going back and forth between home and university. I will sure as hell be holding off for a good while now after seeing that.
This is exactly what I've been waiting for. A tiny laptop with a reasonable amount of grunt. Can't touch the desktop but for general apps on the road, this is gonna be killer. :D
Can't wait to see what nVidia do with this.

[Wizzard1 @ Jan 12th 2009 10:29PM]

I'd love to see what the cooler looks like: Is it passive, large, small? What's the power use? Is this suitable for a netbook or ultraportable?

I can't wait for the Ion platform to hit the netbooks!! Finally, some decent video acceleration.

Why do all the pictured reference boards have a single-core Atom while it's mentioned that the board uses the dual-core 330 model?

[Justin @ Jan 12th 2009 10:30PM]

Ion will be my first netbook (hopefully) platform.

I think Atom is a terrific processor from a price/performance/energy usage viewpoint, but coupling it with i945 is just abysmal. Ion brings a faster architecture, with the capability to support more than 1 Gb. of RAM, a decent video accelerator, and a greater system bus.

Atom + Ion + 10" Netbook + Windows 7 = Sold.

[Doogs @ Jan 12th 2009 11:08PM]

Make that "dual-core Atom" and add "tablet" and "decent battery life," then I'm sold. And preferably sub-$400 and made by Acer (yes, my love for my aspire one has turned me into an unapologetic fanboy. I'm sorry, I can't help it).

[taciturnforsale @ Jan 12th 2009 11:01PM]

I think I'd be more impressed if the nvidia processor was at least the same size as an intel's atom.

[Sam @ Jan 13th 2009 7:52AM]

Uhh... the little oblong one is the atom. You have it round the wrong way.