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Acer Announces First NVIDIA Ion2-Based Netbook
MojoKid writes "Acer has just taken the wraps off the new Acer Aspire One 532G netbook at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The machine is the first netbook with dedicated next-generation NVIDIA ION 2 graphics acceleration. The new Aspire One is also enabled with NVIDIA's recently announced Optimus technology to balance multimedia performance when needed, along with battery life savings, seamlessly switching to integrated Intel Atom/Pinetrail graphics when it's not required. Word is Ion 2 is going to be outfitted with twice the number of shaders for even more graphics horsepower as well."
Back to my fish for a minute. The tank has a volume of 11 gallons. But I hardly ever put that much water in it because the fish ends up bumping its head against the cover and it makes an annoying sound. So I thought about other ways I could keep the tank full without always adding more water, and I came up with a system of adding gravel every other day to raise the level of the water. If the water level falls too far, it becomes a problem for the external water filter. So by adding more baseline gravel, I can pretty much keep the water at a safe level.
When I change the water every other week, I remove some of that gravel so that I have a lower baseline to start from. If this were a larger tank like my old 50 gallon, this system of adding and removing gravel wouldn't work at all. There's just too much volume to make up in the larger tank.
So if the display size is only 10 inches, how much graphics horsepower is really needed? With a decent low-end decoder chip, you can pretty much get WXGA @ 30fps decoding. The additional polygons that the graphics chip can compute seems like it would be under utilized due to the small screen discouraging hardcore gameplay. I've got a netbook like this (an older version) and the ladies are duly impressed when I whip out my big 10 inch display.
I travel a lot on business and for relatively extended periods of time (couple of weeks are not uncommon).
I also like to play "advanced" games. I just recently completed Dragon Age: Origins.
The problems is, that if I want a decent gaming performance I don't usually have a choice of a small laptop. I'm currently lugging around a 17" HP which works great, but is a bit heavy and eats batteries like candy :-)
Something smaller would be a nice change.
I so want one... but no doubt it will be done with a ridiculous straight dollars to pounds when, if ever, we see it in the UK...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
3D web content? playback of movies? the GPU is to offload the video decoding
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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Meh. Who needs graphics on netbooks anyway. It's not like you're going to use photoshop/CAD or play games on them...
I play games on mine! :) My current netbook plays stuff like GTA Vice City and Aliens vs Predator (1999) really well.
I'm about to replace it with an Alienware M11x so I can play modern stuff like Mass Effect 2 on the go. Basically it's a portable Xbox 360 for me. It should have the horsepower for most emulators too.
I also like to play "advanced" games. I just recently completed Dragon Age: Origins. The problems is, that if I want a decent gaming performance I don't usually have a choice of a small laptop. I'm currently lugging around a 17" HP which works great, but is a bit heavy and eats batteries like candy :-)
Not to piss on your chips, but you can't have battery life AND powerful graphics, not yet at least. Decent GPU is a power hog. If you find a netbook that runs DA:O, for example, the battery isn't going to last 9 hours like the high battery-life ones do now. Can't have it both ways - sorry.
Well they could but no company has the balls to build a notebook with a 20 pound battery!!! (not to mention the fire hazard...)
Sure, portable game platforms are so unusual anyway...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Well, actually it seems here that I could have it both ways.
Qute from TFA:
NVIDIA® Optimus Technology intelligently, automatically, and seamlessly transitions between the powerful NVIDIA® ION GPU, and battery-saving integrated graphics
To me this sounds optimal. While playing games I'm usually stationary and have an access to the power source. On the other hand, while I'm on the go I don't need high-end graphics. I need Powerpoint, Wword, Excel. If this thingy can go into low power mode for such applications and keep me running for a few hours, I'll be quite happy. :-D
Hell, my current laptop is so power hungry, I can't even use power sockets on airplanes, because it draws to much power, while it's running
The only thing that I'm really waiting for now is for this chipset to appear in either HP or Lenovo laptops, since those are my company's preferred vendors. I'm due for a new laptop this year ;-)
Well, actually it seems here that I could have it both ways. Qute from TFA: NVIDIA® Optimus Technology intelligently, automatically, and seamlessly transitions between the powerful NVIDIA® ION GPU, and battery-saving integrated graphics
Call me a cynic, but this just sounds like the normal GPU manufacturer PR puff. Besides, when have you ever played DA:O for an hour? It's a 5 or 6 hours session kinda game, at least when I've played it. Swapping back and forth between dedicated GPU and onboard is fine in theory. "Plugging it in" is is fine in theory. THe question still is: are you going to get 5 or 6 hours of current generation 3D gaming out of it when you are on the go? The answer is no.
Well they could but no company has the balls to build a notebook with a 20 pound battery!!! (not to mention the fire hazard...)
That'd be funny. Kevin Smith would buy one
Kevin shoves 20 pound laptop battery down the front of his pants
Kevin approaches check in
[Attendant] Please put all your hand luggage on the scales to be weighed, sir.
[Kevin] Certainly...
That'd be funny.
I'm sure that sounded really funny in your head, but do us all a favor and stick with whatever it is that you do that isn't involved in the entertainment industry.
kthxbye
A netbook that ticks all my boxes. ION was almost there and now ION2 is going to fit the bill.
I suppose I really wanted one of those >£1,000 10 or 12 inch laptops, but was too put off by the price.
Thing is, the Atom processor is more than capable of running everything I want it to run. I didn't need a ULV Core2Duo (which seems to be the only defining factor between netbooks and uber-expensive mini-laptops).
Graphics - well, I do like my HD content and as for gaming... I like my indie titles. Some of them do 3D stuff that looks nice and simple, but still needs a bit of GPU grunt behind it.
This little Asus will fit in my rucksack (I do cycling to places to get some peace and quiet whilst working), can plug into my HD telly and has just enough screen real-estate to let me run the IDE's and editors I like.
If I see somewhere to pre-order, Job Done.
You're completely right and I wasn't disagreeing with you at all.
I said that on the go powerful graphics are not a requirement and battery life is. While spending time in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere can be usefully spent with a nice game. And here battery life is irrelevant and graphics are not.
I also agree that the "seamlessly switching" part might be marketing, however let's give the thing a benefit of the doubt and see how it turns out in practice. We should have some faith in technology, right? :-)
Shutting off internal graphics cards when not in need is a trick that has been in use for a while now, though usually it requires a reboot.
Considering this is specifically targeted for the low-cost, low power netbook market, don't expect anything approaching acceptable graphics performance, however. The current highest-end Nvidia notebook graphics card just hit 38.4 GT/s fill rate, whereas the current ion is at 3.6. That's just 10% of the full "notebook" cousin performance. And that's assuming that your games aren't being bottlenecked by the main processor speed (hint: they are).
This GPU seems like it's better suited to watching DVD's than playing Team Fortress 2. 17" laptops can get away with much more intensive chipsets, frequently using standard desktop parts for laptop applications. That's why they're good. Get into fully laptop chipsets, and you sacrifice power for size and portability. Get into netbooks, and that tradeoff is magnified tenfold.
The ______ Agenda
believe it or not we have CAD on our hp netbooks, slow as hell to start the app but it starts and works. I haven't tried any 3-D modeling but the 2d works fine.
Does any netbook screen support 1920*1080 resolution?
NVIDIA® Optimus Technology intelligently, automatically, and seamlessly transitions between the powerful NVIDIA® ION GPU, and battery-saving integrated graphics
Let's put things into perspective, shall we. The original ION chipset used an integrated 9300/9400 GPU, and was being touted by NVIDIA as being 'powerful'. Now let's see where that falls on the Tom's Hardware Graphics Card Heirarchy chart. That's it way down there roughly comparable to an FX5900 or an ATI 9800. Sure it has some newer features (DX10, HD video decoding, etc), but in terms of general power, it's incredibly weak, even for 5-6 year old games. Now, assuming they've managed to bump things up a bit with the ION2, it still will only move it up a few levels on that chart. So in a nutshell, don't expect to be able to play games like Dragon Age: Origins on a netbook anytime soon.
You can get a decent balance though. Have you seen the new alienware? C2D 1.3 CULV, GT335M,
say 3 hours with a midrange card. Or more with switchable, like macbook pro.
The Asus U30Jc looks particularly tasty for the lighter option + with the new optimus switchable feature from Nvidia (supposed to be seamless, no need to manually toggle). Hopefully more models with powerful GPUs are on the way
http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/01/08/asus-u30jc-hands-on-review-at-ces-2010/
If cash is no issue and you want small/light the new Alienware looks wicked. 11" but proper midrange card! They claim over 6 hours battery life when not running games.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/alienware-m11x/pd.aspx?refid=alienware-m11x&cs=19&s=dhs
And that, good folks, is the saddest part of technology. OP was (correctly) talking about how woefully underpowered an ATI 9800 or FX5900 are...yet at the time when they were released, they were considered the best value for the money, able to run just about any game on the market, and run it smoothly...kinda like the 8800GTs. ::sigh:: oh technology of years gone by...how we lament your passing. I suspect I will feel the same way when my 4850 gets replaced, considering its value when it was new.
Living With a Nerd
I still dont get why it is needed to have a dedicated GPU
Because name-brand PCs with Intel CPUs tend to come with Intel GMA. This includes netbooks. And as you pointed out, GMA in practice stands for Graphics My Ass.
I'm still a bit iffy on how video card hardware support for HD decoding is so dependent on driver/codec issues.
For example, you can't do a lot of it on linux (osx?).
Because the six major motion picture studios apply stronger digital restrictions management to HD video than to SD video. Steve Jobs doesn't want to put Blu-ray support into Mac OS X because the DRM is so draconian. Neither do desktop Linux distributors.
And no I don't want a media playing appliance because w/ a good card in it it doubles nicely as a virtual xbox.
Then use an xbox. At least its games are designed to run on a TV in that they let more than one player connect a gamepad.
DA:O isn't a very demanding game to be honest.
Besides if you really wanted to play it you could get the Alienware m11x with a GT335M, claimed 6-8 hours of battery life with the GPU off. Or you could get one of the ASUS UL series with discrete GPUs, a GT210/310 will easily run DA:O since they score ~3-4k 3D Mark 06. Especially at the lower resolution of the laptop displays.
These are both laptops that will get well over 6 hours of battery life for under a grand and are sub 13".
If you are willing to turn down the graphics settings, then you'll be able to get a smaller laptop that will also last you longer on battery.
Stop the brainwash
Can someone who knows these products tell me if these laptops will work well with free software, or are they are disaster like the Intel GMA500(right?) based laptops?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Not all netbooks have 1024x600 screens.
I was under the impression that manufacturers of ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) couldn't get a discount on the Windows license unless they kept the screen resolution under some bar set by Microsoft. When has this changed? Or do ION netbook makers pay the full laptop price for each copy of Windows?
Or more with switchable, like macbook pro.
The smallest MacBook Pro you can get with the switchable graphics is a 15", which isn't much of a space saving over the OPs current 17" laptop when you consider they were thinking about netbook sized machines.
Because fast CPUs or graphics cards are what's going to make the netbook/tablet market take off, am I right?
The way I see things this is not a netbook. The pricing I was able to find is over $400. That makes this a small notebook. As far as I am concerned a netbook is a 10" or smaller screen and under $400. This market was created with computers in the $250 to $300 range. This is the second "netbook" I have seen in the last month that is approaching $500. The manufacturers don't seem to understand that a large part of what created the buzz around netbooks was the price.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Anyone know how am I supposed to connect this Ion2 chip to my ATtiny85? Is it with duct tape or crazy glue?
Q: What are some things you don't need in a netbook?
A:
>> its 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, GMA 3150 GPU graphics, 2GB of RAM and 320GB hard drive will be joined by a discrete NVIDIA GPU
Okay, what is this "is enabled with" crap? Try "is based on" or "comes with" some other non-obfuscated form... I can't stand marketspeak any more.
I just bought an HP Envy. That thing chews up games (Radeon 5830, i5/i7 CPU choices), and with the extra slice, it'll go 6+ hours on normal-ish usage, maybe 3+ hours gaming. I can't complain a bit about it. And it's a 15.6", so a bit smaller than yours, as well as being a fair bit lighter.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I don't think it will be completely un-noticable when switching... but I do think it's far better than the shutdown, flip switch (physical or programatic) and boot up under other GPU option of some prior hybrid graphics approaches. I won't be using this for an HTPC (already happy with my current solution), but have been considering a new laptop/netbook... I don't care too much about screen size 9 to 11 inches is fine for me, my bigger issues have been the resolution (1024x600 isn't enough, 1280x800 should be), and with playing flash video.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
My netbook already runs Ion3. And it sure as hell saves some graphics resources and battery.
Netbooks sell because they are cheap. How much will this ION 2 netbook cost? Too much and you just push yourself out of the market, as you can just get a better equipped (if not as small) laptop.
I am intrigued however. If they create a low cost netbook, that can run a game like WOW (I said run, not barely function), I might buy one just to have a portable WOW device for on the road (as well as all that other stuff like email, internet, etc...).