Nvidia is dead serious about low-cost PCs
Hardware
By Wolfgang Gruener
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 12:04
Santa Clara (CA) – Nvidia took another important step to play an important part in the sub-$400 and sub-$300 PC game: The company announced that it received Windows Vista certification for its ION platform and promises that $299 PCs based on this technology will be able to run Blu-ray movies and Microsoft’s Windows Vista Aero interface.
According to Nvidia, Microsoft has validated Ion with Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) drivers for Windows Vista Home Premium, opening the gate for actual systems based on the platform. First Ion PCs as now expected to debut by summer of this year with prices as low as $299, while others will break through the $500 barrier, according to industry sources.
Nvidia’s Ion is based on Intel’s Atom processor, but provides a substantial “visual computing upgrade” as it combines the CPU with its own 9400 GPU, which is generations ahead of Intel’s Atom graphics solution – the “System Controller Hub”, which is a 130 nm graphics chipset based on the old i915 chipset. Nvidia promises that the 9400 provides about ten times the graphics horsepower of the standard SCH, runs resolutions of up to 2560x1600 as well as 1080p video - and Blu-ray movies as a result. Considering the fact that very few graphics cards were able to run Blu-ray just two years ago, that feature alone is impressive.
The 9400 also includes support for HDMI as well as up to 12 USB ports. The power consumption of teh entire platform - CPU+GPU – is about 18 watts, Nvidia said. |
