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Ion Platform For Atom Tested With Games, HD Video
J. Dzhugashvili writes "Nvidia has already pulled the curtain off its Ion platform, which couples GeForce 9400 integrated graphics with Intel's Atom processor. But how does it perform? The Tech Report has taken the tiny Ion reference system for a spin in games and video decoding to see if the GeForce GPU really helps. The verdict? 1080p playback is actually smooth, and the whole system only draws 25W during playback. Fast-paced action games are another story—Half-Life 2, Quake Wars, and Call of Duty 4 are all choppy with a single Atom core and single-channel RAM, although they do run. TR concludes that Ion is nevertheless a clear improvement over Intel's 945G chipset, especially since Nvidia doesn't expect Ion-based Atom systems to cost significantly more than all-Intel ones." Update: 02/04 09:14 GMT by T : HotHardware is one of the several other sites offering some performance benchmark numbers on the new chipset.
Games performance isn't really the issue for these. These things aren't designed for games.
What these are best used for are Media Centre setups. However it doesn't play all 1080p content smoothly which is a major issue. There are plenty of options for this kind of thing, the Popcorn hour, the WD HDTV box. Those are good to a point but fall down on format support, especially mkv which doesn't have full subtitle and codec support on either.
The current best option is an energy efficient Athlon based setup. These cost about $75-$100 more than an atom system and use a bit more power but they'll play back any video you throw at them without dropping any frames.
Maybe with a dual core atom and using dual core optimised codecs this will reach the goal of never having to notice a dropped frame, regardless of format and bit rate but this atom solution still isn't the Media center beast it could be.
Looks like I didn't wait long enough to get the netbook.
You can never wait too long to get the ultimate configuration, but there is only so long you can wait to have something to use.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.