NVIDIA Ion 2 coming in early 2010, compatible with Pine Trail

Well, here we go: NVIDIA just gave us the heads-up that the next generation of Ion chips (which we'll be calling Ion 2 until it gets a proper name) will be compatible with Intel's new Pine Trail platform and arriving in Q1 of 2010. That's good news, seeing as the Pine Trail-based Eee PC 1005PE we just reviewed didn't offer much of a performance benefit over the older Diamondville chips and definitely couldn't bust through the first few seconds of a YouTube HD clip. Though we got NVIDIA to confirm that it'll improve some of the battery life concerns we've had, we couldn't get much out of them in terms of how Ion 2 will play with the Intel GMA 3150 GPU that's now integrated into the Atom N450 die. NVIDIA also didn't hold back when it came to Intel's reliance on third-party HD accelerator chips for video duties -- they think customers want richer gaming and multimedia experiences on netbooks than Atom alone can offer, and they don't seem to care that Intel keeps calling Ion "overkill." All drama aside we're looking forward to just getting some YouTube and Hulu HD playback on our netbooks -- we'll see what NVIDIA has to show off at CES.

[daytripper Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:10PM]

@(Unverified)
No way man, OctoSLI is where it's at.

[rhollister Posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:23PM]

Anyone care to fill me on on what the third comparison from the left is? the little tach looking icon where the Ion is 5-10x faster and the Atom is Basic.

[fatslug Posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:32PM]

@rhollister

Probably general performance of the computer/processor doing minimal tasks?

[jon Posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:46PM]

Am I missing something, where the hell is Hulu HD?

Are you guys talking about the single episode of Seeker, or whatever that show is called?

[Fanfoot Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:13PM]

@jon On Hulu you can watch certain things in "High Resolution". It shows up on the right hand side as a control on some episodes. I assume that's what they mean. I don't think there's actually ANY HD on Hulu at all. Just different bit rates and resolutions of SD...

[jon Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:56PM]

@Fanfoot

There doesn't seem to be any HD on Hulu currently.
They had an HD Gallery, it had an episode of 3 or 4 different shows.
Nothing interesting, low bit-rate 720p. Still, better than the "480p high quality" available for most shows.

I know the difference, I assumed Engadget did too.

[etcetra Posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:52PM]

I am not sure just how well Ion 2 will do in terms of 'mainstream gaming'. I've read reviews on Ion 1, and most of them seem to say that the atom processor is this biggest bottleneck when it comes to gaming.. I am guessing it's going to be the same with Ion2+Pinetrail combo. I wish Ion2 was compatible with core 2 duo and everything else.

[daytripper Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:13PM]

@(Unverified)
I wonder why they don't modify it for core2, hell even core solo.

[etcetra Posted Dec 23rd 2009 4:40AM]

@daytripper

yea me too, does that have to do with Intel manipulating the market? I read an article here about how they got into trouble for that.

[etcetra Posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:55PM]

I wonder if Ion2 is more cost effective than a dedicated gpu on a larger notebook..I read somewhere that Ion2's gpu performance is equvilent to 9600m .. it would be nice if that level of gpu became a standard for most laptops out there.

[TheSmartOne Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:43PM]

@(Unverified) 9600M? What the hell? Do you mean 9600M GT? The DISCRETE GPU you find on a MACBOOK PRO? LOL!
WOW...that's sad how it will be that fast, yet it's the most highest end on the MBP.
Apple should refresh all laptops with ION 2 in them (as lowest; discrete whatever)

[etcetra Posted Dec 23rd 2009 4:38AM]

@TheSmartOne

I guess no one knows just powerful Ion 2 is in terms of performance.. it could be.. 9600mgt, 130m, 230m, or 240m.. but in any case it's going to be much better than Ion 1. It would be nice if all laptop came with 130m level gpu as a standard, and I wonder if Ion 2 would make that feasible, if it could be used on better cpus..but I guess I am asking for too much.

http://twisted-reviews.com/next-gen-nvidia-ion-2-could-be-the-almighty-geforce-gt-240m-or-more-likely-230m/

[spin cycle Posted Dec 22nd 2009 11:11PM]

I cannot imagine how annoying it would be to try to play Sims 3 with an Atom processor. I'm sure the graphics in Ion are fine, but you're going to run very poorly due to the slowness of Atom.

[artshark Posted Dec 23rd 2009 12:09AM]

shouldn't they be comparing it with Intel's GM450, not Atom? atom is a processor-Ion still needs atom.
Neo for example is an atom competitor

[jakjak9210 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 2:02AM]

It would be awesome if they allowed the integrated intel graphics to run in a power saver type of mode for simple mobile browsing and word processing, but then booted up the ion for multimedia. that way you get the best of both worlds, it appears to be that the chip is there anyway, why not use it?

[etcetra Posted Dec 23rd 2009 4:50AM]

I think the cpu is going to severely limit the potential Ion 2 has for "mainstream" gaming. Ion 2 has the potential to run pretty graphic intensive games, if it wasn't for the slow atom/pinetrail cpus. So in that respect Intel is right about Ion 2 being overkill...

[mtah Posted Dec 23rd 2009 8:51AM]

I love how they're being completely vague about battery life in that slide. I'm doubtful that Ion 2 will be able to challenge Pine Trail in this regard, and this makes it IMHO pointless in the netbook space since netbooks are all about power efficiency (keep it cool, keep it quiet, keep it running). People getting all riled up about this seem to be forgetting two things:

1) You're not going to be able to fully enjoy HD content on a device with a display resolution that small, and you're probably not likely going to hook your netbook up to a 1080p-capable device anytime soon.

2) The system hog known as Flash will hopefully die a quick but painful death at the hands of HTML5 and, ideally, Ogg Theora.

I can definitely see this being interesting for nettops and homebrew media centers though, where power efficiency is somewhat less critical. Portable machines, not so much.

[inu Posted Dec 23rd 2009 1:32PM]

@mtah
This depends on how smart they are gonna be in using the ION2 power.
If they make the laptop use the GMA3150 while in battery mode and the ION2 when connected to the wall the computer will have both great graphics when you need them and great battery life as the GPU part of the ION2 would remain "turned off".

[inu Posted Dec 23rd 2009 1:36PM]

@mtah
And it's not like dual GPU's is something new, take the great ASUS UL30Vt for example.
I think the whole "Intel atom with built in GPU" think might end up beneficing nVIDIA greatly.

[blueboy09 Posted Dec 31st 2009 12:16PM]

I like definitely Asus ION platform, but if Ion 2 is right around the corner, I might just wait until those netbooks come out and do some serious research on them. Better to be safe than sorry, since most of the intelligent posts in here think that Ion 2 isnt worth the wait. - BLUEBOY