Hardware Nvidia Ion Platform: Atom gets GeForce

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/18/nvidia-ion-platform-geforce-and-atom-revie/1

There's little doubt that Intel's Atom has been a success, but it's been ultimately let down by the high power, and poorly featured graphics of the associated chipset. Looking to right this wrong, Nvidia IONs Intel's Atom into shape.

 

Sounds very interesting, they going to do this in mini-itx or just pico? I always find pico-itx to be prohibitively expensive for my shoddy mods but mini-itx is small enough for me.

 

I would love to see this on an MATX system, more PCIe slots would improve its expandability since every current atom implementation I've seen has one PCI slot only!

 

As Doug says really.
Hopefully this will be out by the time I start thinking of building a nice new media centre, twin it with a dual core atom and you realy do have a winner of a media centre board, though of course for that I would want it in ITX size.

 

If this would be able to run 1080p content without dropping frames, I'd be very interested in this platform for a media center PC.

 

Being in the US, AnandTech was able to get hold of a sample and it does, indeed, run Hd video just fine.

 

Impressive, dual link dvi on something that small.

 

wow, incredible!

i wonder whether Apple will re-release Apple TV with this in it. i really need something to replace my 6 year old PC that's sitting next to the TV downstairs, it can't even decode high bit-rate x264!

 

God! So much modding potential!

I want it sooo much!...

 

If they sell the box as is shown on the right. Then i see a great potential HTPC docking platform. Put a external BR dvd on usb into it. Or get some content from the network. Now only one thing to know if > 10" is actually full HD capability with encoding Full HD content without hiccups...

 

Want Want Want!!!

 

I have an atom in a 945g, now I want this too Damn. The chipset power usage will decide it for me, so I'm waiting with fingers crossed.

 

yeah this has so much potential. love the full HD capability, coupled with a dual core atom, this really could be the HTPC dream machine. small, low power, yet modern and fully capable of using up sonme of those spare parts left over from more recent high end builds (PCI-e, PCI slots, DDR2, DDR3)

yeah i want one, would be ace to replace the little desktop Optiplex i have in the kitchen right now

 

it won't be micro, mini-ITX only. Atom does not belong on micro imo. There's enough space on mini-ITX if companies are inventive.

 

I think this is great news in many ways, very capable media devices etc, but imo the key issue is not performance as much as power. The great thing that goes a long way to make the atom setup so great is it's low power useage as well as small size. the power brick for my eee is only rated for 36w so the entire atom on full performance, it's screen, memory, ram, everything is only 36w max. That would barely run a standard hard drive set up for most of us! if this new nvidia set up maintains the atoms principle of low power consumpsion then we could be on to a winner with more gaming and media versions of eee's and their competitiors coming about. However, if it's not low power consumption then TBH what is the point? you will be cutting of its useability for a big portion of the market the atom is used for.

 

my dream HTPC...................................

 

Ok, i know these things aren't in the slightest bit designed for gaming, but as I see myself in the target audience for these things (skint students), I care a lot more about frame rates on older games than I do about video encoding, even if we are playing on 10'' displays. In my lectures there's about 8 of us with EEEs, we love our Unreal Tournament GOTY ad-hoc LAN matches, but we want to branch out onto other slightly newer games. We have BF1942 Nam working but not fast enough for twitchy multiplayer, Quake 4 would be good if we had a little more power to get it working too. So, less focus on HD video encoding, more focus on older gamesv please Nvidia

 

I would love one of those! think of the modding and media applications

 

NOW we're talking. Good features, decent graphic processing grunt and 12W TDP. Are you learning yet, Intel?

 

This is great news!

But I'm curious... What happened to the nvidia-VIA love? And the joint netbook platform?

I while ago this was taken for granted: