Nvidia unveils next generation Ion chipset

Posted on 2 Mar 2010 at 18:07

Nvidia has announced the much-anticipated next generation Ion chipset and is designed to give Intel's Pinetrail chip a kick up the backside.

The integrated graphics chipsets bundled with Intel's Atom processors have been criticised fairly heavily because they are unable to do anything beyond basic web browsing.

Nvidia says that with its new Ion graphics chip, which has been announced today, a netbook can not only deliver a Windows 7 premium experience, but also accelerate Flash videos on websites like YouTube and Vimeo and even play a few basic 3D games.

There are two versions of this new Ion chip - one with roughly the same performance as the existing Ion chip while the other promises to double performance. Nvidia says that its next-generation Ion chip can deliver more than ten times the performance of Intel's GMA 3150 chip, which is built into the Atom N450.

The basic next-generation Ion chip will be included in 10in netbooks, while the faster version will be used in 12in netbooks and nettops. When we enquired, Nvidia said that this was because of the stricter power requirements in 10in netbooks and it explains why the Acer Aspire One 532G we benchmarked at Mobile World Congress performed almost identically compared to older Ion based netbooks.

The new Ion chip also harnesses Nvidia's Optimus power saving technology, which automatically disables the Nvidia graphics chip when it's not in use, to improve battery life. However, Nvidia did admit that its technology wasn't advanced enough to detect whether or not a browser tab with a Flash video player in it was running in the background or not.

As a result, the graphics chip will be enabled if you're on a YouTube video page in a tab that you've left open from earlier, but it's important to note that Flash banner advertisements on websites are not accelerated by the Nvidia graphics chip. This is a potential stumbling block for the new chip, but potentially worse is the expected price increase.

Nvidia said that its next-generation Ion chip will add between $50 and $100 more onto the cost of an existing netbook, but an Acer representative was quite to point out that this doesn't just pay for the chip. Acer's Aspire One 532G will also come with Windows 7 Home Premium (compared to Windows 7 Starter on basic netbooks) and a higher resolution 1,280x720 display.

Acer said that its most feature-rich Aspire One 532G will have 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive and will be around £399 to £429. The company's representative wouldn't confirm pricing for the entry level 532G, which includes 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive, but a source we spoke to said we can expect it to retail for between £329 and £349 - that's around £30 to £50 more than the basic Aspire One 532h, which makes things a little more palatable.

Author: Tim Smalley

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User comments

pricing could be make or break

At the moment i need to find a replacement laptop for small on the road usage, so a netbook would be useful in this respect, and reading the ion chipset article could make netbooks worthwile pricing option, but this also brings in, if its too expensive, i rather lug a fullsize laptop. the pricing range of the so called netbooks is already within entry level laptops, so its only a matter of size and performance and not price, in that respect if the produces try to sell me a 10" netbook for than 400, i rather get a descent size laptop and skip the netbook as an alternative.

But in some ways, the netbooks systems are being held by OS which add upto or over 100 per unit, same as laptops, but the difference is the laptop generally have more power to run the OS unlike the netbook. So I shall wait and see what you bring.

By mingy13 on 23 Apr 2010