NVIDIA Ion 2 still on track for this year
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Oct 12th 2009 10:43AM
posted Oct 12th 2009 10:43AM
Don't let NVIDIA's recent announcement that they'll be steering clear of Intel DMI CPUs get you down, man. According to the fine folks at Fudzilla, the company will indeed unveil its Ion 2 chipset before the year's end. The second-generation platform is said to feature much faster graphics, over twice the shaders, a smaller die, and support for the VIA Nano as well as the usual compliment of Pentium 4-compatible CPUs. No word yet from the company itself, but you'll know as soon as we do. Promise.
[Via SlashGear]
[Via SlashGear]
Intel are bastards. Problem is they can get away with it because quite a few companies rely on them.
Get away with what, exactly? Not licensing their technology out? Lots of people get away with that. It's not something they're required to do
Get away with suppressing AMD by forcing manufacturers to use Intel products instead of the much better AMD products in the past (just take a look at the EU vs. Intel process)
Get away with selling single Atom chips for a much higher price than a combination of Intel Atom + Intel IGP.
Intel hasn't outlifed his competitors because of better products but because of more money and illegal or let's say 'not fair' behaviour which gets tolerated because Intel is a too huge company.
So let's hope, for customers sake, that AMD gets back, nVidia destroys larrabee and VIA together with Ion 2 the Atom crap.
I also use Intel products, because, at the moment, the Core 2 is better than an AMD equivalent, but I hope that better competition comes back soon.
@Frank
I'm not saying the Core architecture isn't better than Phenom, it clearly is, but AMD are still competitive.
The $99 Athlon II X4 620 for example, nothing in the price range beats it. AMD also have great motherboards, the combination of Athlon II and 785G would be ideal for most people and costs a whole lot less than an Intel equivelant :)
Also paying retailers to not stock AMD and recommend Intel.
@Aaronage
Still, though, Intel's Core i7 blows everything away. In my opinion these CPU's are the best value for performance, I mean, the lowest-end Core i7 is even faster than the highest-end Core 2..
Can it run android?
At least nVidia is actively steering the company in the right direction with Fermi and ION. Many have tried to compete directly with intel and failed: Cyrix, Centaur, WinChip, DEC Alpha to name a few...
Cyrix! Brings back memories...
RISC architecture is gonna change everything!
RISC has changed everything... Game consoles (N64-Wii, 360, PS1-3, Saturn, Dreamcast...), portables (ARM Processors, iPhone), Linksys Routers (WRT54G)
CtrlBurn
+1 for the Hackers reference!
Think I'll wait for Ion 3 in January/Feb
Ion 2 won't release till 2011 anyway, although it will be often-rumored on Engadget...
how about we get the first one in some shipping products...
We barely have ion in any computers today and they're already announcing ion 2?
That's what I'm thinking...There's like 3 nettops out with ION and what, 1 soon-to-be laptop? That shit's going to be antiquated in several months
ION is based on a Geforce 9400m GPU.
Anyone know what ION2 is based off of?
Ion is mostly used by OEMS and as GT 100 series is for OEMS, GT130/120M I guess.
Awesome, now I won't buy an hp mini 311. Leaks FTW.
is there AGP video card that would enable my p4 2.8G to playback 720p/1080p video?
yes.
Try 8600 GS.......I thinks thats AGP based.
ATI makes powerful AGP cards. They would be mediocre PCI-e cards, but its the best AGP you can get. I hate ATI but there isnt any thing else AGP for you to choose from. So look for the 3850 or 3650 or some thing, HD series AGP card. They can play HD content back on a 600MHz p3 celeron with out any over head assistance from the CPU.
I'm pretty excited about the fact that this chipset will support Via Nano. I'm not too convinced about the whole Pineview graphics-on-die thing... it'd be one thing if Intel graphics solutions didn't suck, but historically they have, and rather than man up to the fact that Ion offers the Atom something Intel really can't (or at least, hasn't up until now), they're doing their best to cut Nvidia out and force consumers to use their solution.
What will be interesting to me is, when the dust settles, how an Intel Pineview setup compares to a Nano+Ion setup in terms of dollar cost and wattage per performance. It'd be interesting to throw an ULV+4500MHD into the mix too. A 12-inch Nano+Ion convertible (tablet) laptop for $600-$700 could be a really interesting value proposition.
what'll be interesting is if Intel takes control of the graphics chipset, how long will it take intel to release driver updates for incompatibilities found the drivers for games and applications.
I'd rather have a lame Intel IGP other any Nvidia GPU/Chipset anyday.
The 9400M (Ion before the clever rebranding) in my Macbook Pro failed, the 9600GT runs at least 75c idle, the 8400 GS in my sisters Compaq failed a few days ago, the drivers for my parents 7600LE have still not been fixed etc.
They're dishonest, not in the sense of stretching the truth for marketing, but flat out lies, look at the 8400/8600 mess with previous gen Macbook Pro's and many other OEMs.
Fuck Nvidia.
Well, I don't care enough about Nvidia to make excuses for them, but just because the 65nm 9400M in your Macbook Pro happened to fail, it doesn't mean that there is a systemic issue with the 9400M. A few cursory Google searches don't seem to bring up any evidence that your problem is a symptom of a larger issue.
And even if there IS some kind of larger issue with the 9400M chipset, it doesn't logically follow that the new 40nm Ion 2 -- which is manufactured with a different process and is obviously not just a smaller version of the original Ion -- would have the same (hypothetical) problems, anyway.
nVidia has made a couple mistakes in their graphics chipsets over the years. Intel has made nothing but mistakes in every single graphics chipset over the years.
Strange how that works. I have been using Nvidia since the original geforce 256 series and I never had a problem that I didn't create myself except once when I bought a cheap, no name video solution.
Here here! My 360M is known to have physical defects that cause failure, but.... eh, NVIDIA doesn't think it warrants a recall. It finally died and my Dell warranty covered it. ....Shady company.
"Well, I don't care enough about Nvidia to make excuses for them, but just because the 65nm 9400M in your Macbook Pro happened to fail, it doesn't mean that there is a systemic issue with the 9400M. A few cursory Google searches don't seem to bring up any evidence that your problem is a symptom of a larger issue."
Try "bumpgate"
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/08/21/nvidia-finally-understands-bumpgate/
"Try 'bumpgate'"
Huh.
Alright, well, I stand corrected. Looks like Nvidia booped that up good. I hope they manage to fix that for the new Ion 2 lol. My original comment does still stand, of course; it doesn't necessarily follow that future chips will have the same problem as past chips; in fact, Nvidia better make sure they learn from their mistakes, and fast.
This is a fascinating series of articles; thanks for the link.
@bebop.
If you read through the inquirer information, which I have, it appears the 9400GM chip is fine (which is essentially the ION one). It is the 9600 chip in the 15" macbook pro which has the potential to be defective. So ION should be ok.
Nvidia Isn't the manufacturer of those products. Unless the parts Nvidia SOLD to the board/card makers were bad, which I'm SURE you took the time to expertly catalog and quantify, then its was the PC board makers. For examples: MSI, EVGA, Sapphire, and i believe even Apple, fall under this category. Nvidia only makes reference boards. Which are always solid because they are simple and over engineered. ATI/Nvidia can only be blamed, really, for poor performance in certain cases, or for bad driver support. Not really hardware failure.
There is a higher end TEGRA designed for netbooks/smartbooks with hardware 1080p decoding....How come we have'nt seen any computers out with that chip till now?
And wont Ion 2 compete with this TEGRA?
Not if you want to use Windows 7 or even XP for that matter.
The Tegra solution doesn't support x86 architecture. ION targets 5-30W solutions whereas Tegra is an SOC ARM based solution that targets (much less) than 5W.
So essentially, ION lets you run Windows (and also gives you a more robust and common graphics element), Tegra doesn't.
hopefully this new baby from Nvidia will come out real soon! Looks like Intel try to play push and pull game here, maybe to hold price or to wait for best moment to show off, which is when price level is higher for their chips.
"Pentium 4-compatible CPUs"
I think what you're looking for is LGA775 compatible, not all Pentium 4s were LGA775.
Hm, even faster than G1? so maybe that lonely little atom will be competent for HD media?
Guess I will be waiting for the next netbook purchase then for this instead
how bout putting 2 atom cpu's, (like that company did) and 1 of these. Along with 3 gigs of ram...
I think we would run into battery problems...
it's worth a try....
If your after a better graphic chipset for the sake of getting HD playback out of a netbook, check out the cheap mini-pci Broadcom BCM70012 decoders on ebay. They're ~$30 for the mini-pci version and ~$80 for the expresscard 34 version.
I lucked out with my Gigabyte m912-m netbook (Atom N270 on Intel 945/950 chipset). Gigabyte installed the 2nd second mini-pci connector on the main board even though it ships empty. (1st mini-pci is occupied by the wireless adapter.) I got the card from ebay, installed the BCM70012 drivers and arcsoft theater from HP's support website, and boom, my M912 now has flawless playback of 1080p bluray rips, 720p tv-show torrents, and 720p recordings from my hauppauge 1212 HD-DVR. Now waiting for adobe to hurry up with the broadcom enabled flash support (they announced via press release that they are working on it for first quarter 2010.) I still need that for playback of HD flash-based web streams.
I've got bookmarked instructions for enabling the card under MPC-HomeCinema but haven't tried them yet.
Back when I was researching this, I saw where an Aspire One user was able to use it by sticking it in his one's wirelass lan card slot. And there was some other netbook users that found the empty traces for the second mini-pci and where going to solder on an connector to use it (beyond my ability.. I hate SMT soldering.)
Also, going this route doesn't really affect battery life all that much. My M912 idled at 13 watts without the card, 14 watts with. During bluray iso playback, CPU load (via sysinternal's process explorer) was 52% with 22 watts of power draw (measured via kill-a-watt p4400 by running on ac with battery removed.)
Just a thought vs waiting for Nvidia to make a netbook chip that doesn't require 1.21 gigawatts and a magnetic plasma containment field.
The whole point of ion is to put it in small packages not 11 inch notebooks give me a dual pineview atom and ion 2, 3 gigs of ddr3 ram and im sold.
Couldn't Nvidia just buy VIA for their CPU, update it, and compete with Intel and AMD?
That WOULD be a great idea (well, at least _I_ think so...)
This way there are 3 (pretty) major CPU+GPU competitors :D
Does anyone think the Ion 2, or even the Ion for that matter, could be a viable graphic option for HTPC's when it comes to Blu-ray playback and DVR functionality?
Not only do we think so, we know so.
-The internet.
sooooooo 2011 until we have a craptop/htpc that can run HD hulu fullscreen?
Maybe, if Hulu makes their flash DXVA or CUDA accessible. I had thought you have to basically make your video files in some variant of mpeg 4 to see any benefits hard ware accel on the new 8, 9, or 2xxGTX series or ATI HD series cards. Or have they fixed this and i was not aware because i went out and bought an i7?