Conclusions

We’ve spent quite a lot of time with Nvidia’s Ion platform and we have to say that we’re mostly impressed with what we’ve seen. Ion delivers on the promise of HD video playback – including Blu-ray movies – and also offers enough power for some light gaming as well.

Because the Ion platform is based on Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M, which in turn supports CUDA, OpenCL and elements of the DirectX 11 Compute Shader as well, there is the opportunity to take advantage of some of the CUDA apps coming to market. We’re talking about applications we haven’t necessarily tested here - apps such as video encoding with BadaBoom and Nero MoveIt and distributed computing software such as Folding@Home or Seti@Home, are all accelerated by CUDA. Given the push behind OpenCL, we imagine there are going to be a lot more applications that can run well on a device of this class without the need for much intervention from the CPU.

Despite all these positives, we do have some concerns about Ion – the biggest being the platform’s rather obvious imbalance. Because of what Ion can do, there are times when we found ourselves feeling a little disappointed at what it can't quite do. Ion does a good job of presenting what Nvidia would like us to call a premium computing experience. Sadly, it’s not quite there, but it is a lot better than the experience you get with the existing Diamondville platform with its Intel integrated graphics.

This problem really became apparent when we tried to play a seemingly harmless game like Half-Life 2 – we really weren’t expecting it to be Ion’s undoing, that’s for sure. The lack of CPU horsepower prevented us from playing the game at an acceptable frame rate, whatever the resolution or detail settings we tried.

There are also issues with tasks such as image editing. Nvidia says you can use Adobe Photoshop CS4’s GPU accelerated functionality but it's painfully slow because the Atom processor just isn’t fast enough. To be fair though, Atom wasn’t designed for these kinds of loads and it’s unfair to lay into it for that reason. However, if the next version of Photoshop Elements or an open source image editing programme jumps on the GPU-accelerated bandwagon, this situation might change.

Finally, we were a little disappointed about the fact we couldn’t watch YouTube HD files, especially given the fact that Ion is able to play even high bit-rate Blu-ray movies almost effortlessly. We hope that this is something Nvidia thinks about addressing – the company makes claim to the fact that you can watch “the HD Internet” on Ion, but YouTube HD curiously isn’t a part of that. When we asked for clarification, Nvidia said that it meant high-definition videos and trailers downloaded from the Internet and not Flash-based video.

Final Thoughts

The GeForce 9400M complements Intel’s Atom processor well and even flatters it on quite a few occasions. As HD video playback is handled effortlessly and because things feel a little bit snappier, you often come away thinking that Atom, when combined with a GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset, is a truly capable processor. The reality is quite different though, but then it wasn’t designed to run compute-intensive tasks – Intel’s intentions for Atom have always been to shrink it down so that it’s a competitor in the smartphone market and anything else it can do in the meantime it’s a bonus. Of course, at the moment it’s not small enough or frugal enough when it comes to power to fit into anything smaller than a glorified UMPC (or MID as they’re now known).

Given Intel’s plans for Atom, we’re not sure how long the Ion platform has to grow – at least, when combined with an Intel processor – but there are plenty of opportunities for Nvidia to team up with VIA (or even ARM) to create something even more formidable. Moreover, the fact that Nano is generally a much more capable processor than Atom means it will better compliment the GeForce 9400M’s capabilities and maybe we’ll be able to play Half-Life 2 on a netbook.

Ultimately though, Ion does great things for Intel’s Atom processor and it expands the computing experience quite considerably. Tasks that were well outside of Atom’s remit when it was part of the Diamondville platform are now most definitely possible thanks to the GeForce 9400M. As long as Nvidia’s partners hit the expected price points, which are forecast to be around $50 to $100 higher [closer to $50 than $100, we’re told] than current Atom-based products, we simply can’t wait to see products based on the Ion platform to arrive.