Second Generation NVIDIA ION GPU Preview

Products Using New NVIDIA ION

There are a number of netbook and nettop manufacturers that NVIDIA would like us to know about as part of the NVIDIA ION launch. But before we start digging through a few of them, here is one more marketing slide.

NVIDIA ION netbooks will likely all come with Windows 7 Home Premium, while standard “Pine Trail” netbooks will likely come with Windows 7 Starter. This way, users will get to take advantage of the Aero look and feel in Windows 7 instead of the Windows Basic look and feel. While everyone can look up the differences between these Windows 7 versions, we’ll also point out that Windows 7 Home Premium also has Windows Media Center in order to offer an easy to use media center solution for a netbook or nettop.

Here NVIDIA offered up the recently released Acer Aspire One 532g specifications. This implementation of NVIDIA ION has a 720p 10″ LCD display driven by the NVIDIA ION GPU with 512MB of dedicated memory. Acer chose to offer 1 HDMI and 1 VGA port in this model, so no display port or DVI-D. While not pertaining directly to NVIDIA ION, the 3G option and multi-touch touchpad features are nice additions, too! ASUS will also have a 12″ model available soon with the Eee PC 1201PN. We expect the Eee PC 1201PN to be similar to the Eee PC 1201N.

Zotac was singled out with their ZBOX as featuring the next generation of NVIDIA ION which has a pretty aesthetic design and looks to make a nice looking nettop HTPC! Other options include the Acer Aspire Revo nettop and the ASUS EeeBox. We look forward to these solutions being available soon!

Last, but not least, many manufacturers are planning to update their All-in-One solutions with the new NVIDIA ION architecture as well. Here we have pictured the ASUS EeeTop 2010PNT. The EeeTop is a very elegant solution and social piece with many practical uses around the home. Some small businesses have even been spotted as using EeeTops for point of sale devices. Also mentioned are the Compaq CQ1 and Lenovo C200.

Standalone ION GPU!?

It appears NVIDIA has plans to release a standalone GPU with the NVIDIA ION graphics which is a bit of a shock to the industry. This could be a viable option for those who have a first generation nettop with an Intel Atom N2xx or 330 and want to upgrade it to an HTPC with discrete graphics! We will keep our eye on this card and provide more information as we get it.

Legit Bottom Line: The new generation of NVIDIA ION promises to fill a performance void left by the standard Intel “Pine Trail” systems with better graphics and dedicated GPU memory without sacrificing much battery life. We look forward to getting our hands on a new NVIDIA ION system and running it through the paces!