http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/ Engadget Comments for NVIDIA Ion platform review roundup http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 6:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 8:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
That was my thought too. Touchscreen is a must. An intuitive on screen keyboard is must, also. Getting it working with radio stations would be fairly simple I think. Bluetooth with Skype with make for a pretty cool car phone. Make a car computer distro in Linux is the only way I could ever see this working.

And I don't see why this couldn't be upgradeable. What do you mean?]]>Feb 3rd 2009 10:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/not exactly ion, but its been out for a while, and you won't tell the difference,
plenty of videos of it running crysis on youtube]]>Feb 3rd 2009 8:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
The newer intel chipset for the n280 atom processor hopefully will run cooler, and without the need for the fan. The atom processor itself already doesn't require a fan. Which will be a great improvement. I'm already signed up for the new EEE 1000he pre-order for just this reason. Awesome battery life/low overall power consumption, less heat generated by the northbridge, and hopfully no annoyingly/loud persistent fan.

For a netbook, a new even more power hungry 'ne HOT chipset.. doesn't excite me. But don't worry nvidia, I love you, and I'll be happy to have you in my mini-pc.
]]>Feb 3rd 2009 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
I don't want to watch HD content on my netbook (really, on a 10" screen, SD looks just fine), and 3D gaming is not on my list of important things either.

What I do want for my next netbook is a passive cooling system and energy efficiency above everything else, and maybe a *general* performance boost - all stuff that Ion doesn't offer, while it costs more.

On the other hand, I'd love to see an Ion-based cheap HTPC with a BluRay drive and maybe some CUDA-accelerated video encoding for DVR functionality.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 3:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
Even there I don't care about gaming. But at least the power usage isn't really that important.

But for netbooks, sorry no. I'd be happy to pay the extra money for the better performance, but cutting the battery life in half, e.g. from 3 hours or so to 1.5 hours off a standard 3-4 cell battery, I don't think so. I'm more interested in seeing longer battery life in future netbooks, not shorter. And these things are so space constrained they can't make the batteries any bigger...]]>Feb 3rd 2009 4:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 3:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 6:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
I'm a broken record, but I feel like piping in with VDPAU! every time I see mention of the ION - Offload all your H.264 decoding to the GPU and play full 1080p with under 5% CPU usage! This is the architecture we MythTV users have been waiting for!]]>Feb 3rd 2009 2:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 7:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 6:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
My only peeve with the Nvidia graphics cards is the absence of native HDMI audio. Does the HDMI port on the reference platform pass HD sound / bitstream through? HTPC users don't need multiple cables running from their PC to the AV receiver.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 2:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/"NVIDIA says the platform will tack on about $50 to $100 compared to similarly-spec'd 945GM/E models" So what will be the acutally price of this.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 6:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Intel/AMD(ATI) and even VIA do so.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 4:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
For starters, I had never been a fan of Nvidia (all their cover up on the heat problems with their graphics chips). So, I went ahead with ATI's 3450 for my HTPC graphics card: Result - It doesn't accelerate decode of complex encoded H264 streams (a higher level than standard Blu-Ray streams). Tried to find open source drivers / manuals to enable the decoding (the hardware definitely supports it, but the drivers are crippled). My travails are documented here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=106911

I also purchaes VIA's (S3 Graphics) Chrome 530. What to talk of a open hardware manual, even their own drivers refuse to do any acceleration when interfaced through open source software. The travails are documented here:

http://forums.s3chromezone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=625

I searched high and low, and apparently, Nvidia graphics cards have a nice Linux development project coming along, enabling users to hack and modify the APIs to ensure playback of more number of H264 streams than possible with any other graphics card.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1037625

However, even though I don't possess a Nvidia card, once they get this product out -- read from techpowerup that there will be native HDMI audio with bitstreaming--, I will be definitely rooting for this -- provided the pricepoint for the above configuration is below $300.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 5:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
As for a nettop version, I would be interested to see if it could handle Boxee (and Netflix streaming) before thinking of it as a good HTPC setup.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 3:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 3:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 3:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
But beware, XBMC can't offload processing power to the GPU which is a real shame because this would be a perfect platform for XBMC and 1080p content if XBMC could make the GPU do some work.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 3:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 4th 2009 8:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
That may be true but you forgot to notice that their ion model had the n330 dual core processor and their reference model used a n270 single core processor. This makes a larger than normal difference in the power consumption.]]>Feb 3rd 2009 3:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/Feb 3rd 2009 8:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/03/nvidia-ion-platform-review-roundup/
Thanks god for clearing that up. That seems to be only benchmark people care about these days!

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