NVIDIA's ION reference platform reviewed, benchmarked
February 04, 2009

NVIDIA's ION reference platform squeezes a 1.6GHz dual core Atom 330 processor and GeForce 9400GM chipset onto a Pico-ITX board inside a suspiciously ARTiGO-like enclosure.

The keyword here is reference - NVIDIA have built a small number of units to demonstrate the graphics chipset that they would like to see power the next generation of Atom-powered netbooks later this year. Sadly, the world's fastest Pico-ITX isn't going to be available in the shops any time soon (or perhaps even at all).

Intel aren't resting on their laurels, and will be integrating graphics directly into the next generation of Atom CPU in the form of their (codenamed) 'Pine Trail-D' platform. Both technologies are expected sometime from the second half of 2009.

All of this is good news for Mini-ITX, as low power consumption mobile technology is fair game to be repurposed onto Mini-ITX motherboards, and both technologies look extremely promising.

The netbook market is many times larger than Mini-ITX, but we may still see a 9400GM chipset on our favourite 17 x 17cm form factor. Intel have supported Mini-ITX with their own Atom Mini-ITX boards recently and we don't expect that to stop with Pineview.

NVIDIA have crammed the ports into their demo ION units, utilising two sides of the case. HDMI, DVI, Gigabit Ethernet and USB on one side, eSATA, more USB and plenty of Audio outputs on the other. Early reviews of the ION show it to have advantages in the 3D graphics, H264 decoding and encoding departments - exactly as you would expect from NVIDIA.

PC Perspective and Hot Hardware both got their hands on an ION and you can check out their reviews here:

PC Perspective looks at the ION

Hot Hardware looks at the ION

 Permalink

Recent Stories

• Commodore OS Vision 3.0 Released 22 Apr 25
• KUBIC is a Nintendo-themed Mini-ITX case you can 3D Print 15 Jul 24
• MILK-V's Jupiter Mini-ITX Board powered by RISC-V 05 Jul 24
• AMD’s Ryzen 8000G CPUs - the perfect choice for smaller Mini-ITX builds? 17 Jan 24
• Intel Hands Over the NUC Reins to ASUS 06 Sep 23
• NA500 Network Appliances now available 24 May 23
• Expanded range of Dynatron Coolers now available from Mini-ITX.com 08 Feb 23
• The Commodore 64x - modern Mini-ITX inside a retro enclosure 07 Jul 22
• The Turing Pi V2 - now on Kickstarter 16 May 22
• AMD announce Ryzen 4000 "G " Series with Integrated Graphics 21 Jul 20

News Archives

• April 2025
• Full Archive

* Back to Mini-ITX.com *