IE9 demoed on Ion-based Eee PC with full GPU acceleration

Although we were a little more focused on Windows Phone 7 Series when we went to MIX 10, Microsoft's other big announcement at the conference was Internet Explorer 9, which offers HTML5 support and support for GPU acceleration throughout the browsing experience. We saw a few demos of the system in action at MIX, but this video from NVIDIA does a little better job showing how helpful that extra GPU boost can be -- IE9 running on the Ion 2-based Eee PC 1201PN smokes a regular Atom-based netbook across a suite of tests. What that's going to mean for battery life is up in the air, especially since the GPU on an Optimus system like the 1201PN kicks in automatically, but it's pretty cool to see a netbook browsing the web at almost desktop-like speeds. Check the video after the break.

[IanCorne Posted Mar 31st 2010 6:26PM]

I'm running and Asus EEE 1000H with ubuntu and google chrome, the svg game worked perfectly...
How can they get it sooo slow on that other netbook, I have no idea

[egodfrey Posted Mar 31st 2010 6:34PM]

@IanCorne
I was having a similar thought. We need to have somebody do these test ons the same hardware with different browsers.

[lxnyce Posted Mar 31st 2010 6:33PM]

I wonder what would of happen if they used something like chrome on the left and compared it to IE9 on the same platform?

I think the banging of the netbook on the left towards the end shows our love of IE in general. Not a smart move showing how great your new unreleased browser is by showing how crappy your current browser performs.

Until chrome gets a good version of adblock, noscript and a way to disable unwanted plugins without turning all off...i'll stick with FireFox though.

[lennie22 Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:56PM]

@lxnyce
give it a try and see how chrome runs them
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

[Sor1 Posted Mar 31st 2010 6:34PM]

Although MS make nice products and i like what they do with their OS..
From Netscape to Opera to Firefox, that were my browsers so far. The times (of need) that i used IE can be described as awful.

[NathanHeil Posted Mar 31st 2010 6:53PM]

anyone else notice that the nvidia pc is using the windows 2000 theme? Now i'm sure that the computer on the right would be faster regardless, but I still think it's unfair.

[rosebowl23 Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:06PM]

so what exactly are those 3 things he demo'd written or created in?

[chiefy Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:48PM]

lol i cant even get that FPS on my desktop for that flying images thing...GTX285 Q6600 etc. wtf

[lennie22 Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:58PM]

@chiefy
lol, which browser are you using? IE9 runs real good, they suck in IE8

[chiefy Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:59PM]

@lennie22

Firefox and Chrome. Must be a IE9 thing :/

[ZinG Posted Mar 31st 2010 7:59PM]

The video does not mention when the 1201PN is on sale, is it out yet?

[Kloc Posted Apr 1st 2010 12:38AM]

I downloaded the Preview and I must say it works way better then previewing it in the normal browser. On the 3D icons rotating IE8 was pulling about 5fps on 36 images while in the IE9 preview I was getting 40 fps with 256 images. Very impressive and I just can't wait to get into HTML5 and see what it can do with me in the drivers seat.

[conyeje2 Posted Apr 1st 2010 2:53AM]

Did anyone else bust out laughing when the guy trying to play asteroids on the left "non ion" computer, banged it with his fist? Haha! I was dying! Reminds me of the slow comps of the 90s!

[SkEvo Posted Apr 1st 2010 7:15AM]

So the video compares a 'new' Ion based laptop and another netbook without Ion. Only Engadget's paragraph describes this pc as having "Ion 2", the guy in the video dosen't mention is being "Ion 2" at all --he only mentions that it's an Ion platform.

So what's the deal? Is this Ion2? or just Ion?
More useful for me would have been to compare Ion on the left, and Ion2 on the right?