Anandtech: NVIDIA's Ion Platform (Atom+GeForce 9400M)
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Ars: "3D gaming, HD video coming to netbooks in 2009&qu
Jon Stokes compares ION to AMD's Yukon & mobile Radeon, as well as VIA's Trinity platform. Claims ION should draw about 18 watts.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... -2009.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... -2009.html
Re: Ars: "3D gaming, HD video coming to netbooks in 200
18W?!? That is going to be really toasty. And also sadly makes it completely useless to medougz wrote:Jon Stokes compares ION to AMD's Yukon & mobile Radeon, as well as VIA's Trinity platform. Claims ION should draw about 18 watts.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... -2009.html
Back to waiting for Moorestown/Mobile ITX I guess
toasty?
... I have some mobile dual core run overclocked and passive, and the thing has a tdp of more than 20 Watts - and that's just the cpu, without the chipset.
My laptop has a pentium m 1.7 GHz, and at the lowest power setting it runs completely passive, at a tdp of 10 Watts - again without counting any chipset, hdd etc.
... I have some mobile dual core run overclocked and passive, and the thing has a tdp of more than 20 Watts - and that's just the cpu, without the chipset.
My laptop has a pentium m 1.7 GHz, and at the lowest power setting it runs completely passive, at a tdp of 10 Watts - again without counting any chipset, hdd etc.
Re: Ars: "3D gaming, HD video coming to netbooks in 200
I think it all depends on the intended usage. ION is clearly not targeted for low power Mobile Internet Devices.|Romeo| wrote:18W?!? That is going to be really toasty. And also sadly makes it completely useless to me
OTOH, HD TV at 18 watts (plus storage devices) is pretty good!
NVIDIA tech to add $50 max to retail price
Source -- http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/2008 ... salesdealsIf you are able to hang tight for a couple of months, do so. If you missed the news about nVidia's Ion platform-based netbooks, affordable machines as tiny as the Aspire One capable of playing 3D games and encoding video could be just over the horizon. The technology may add a little more to the price ($50 max, according to nVidia).
Emphasis added.
VLC Media Player To Receive VDPAU Support
Source -- http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=Njk1NAVLC Media Player To Receive VDPAU Support
Posted by Michael Larabel on December 23, 2008
Back when NVIDIA introduced VDPAU they had provided a set of patches that implemented this video API within the MPlayer and FFmpeg projects.
Since the introduction of the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix, the community has come up with VDPAU support for MythTV and most recently the Xine media player picked up VDPAU support. This afternoon we now have word that the VLC media player will be picking up VDPAU support.
The VLC project currently has two developers working on implementing this video API that currently is only used by NVIDIA's binary driver. The confirmation of this work can be found in the VideoLAN Forums. Implementing VDPAU will allow for HD video playback on Linux even with very low-end hardware.
Re: Ars: "3D gaming, HD video coming to netbooks in 200
LOL!|Romeo| wrote:18W?!? That is going to be really toasty.
Intel insists Atom only for Intel chipsets, does not want to share nVidia's Ion
Anyone else find it supremely amusing that nVidia is upset about this, when one considers nVidia's similar desire to not share SLi functionality with other core logic chipmakers? Maybe Intel can trade Atom for a general unlocking of SLi, but that's probably just wishful thinking
Anyone else find it supremely amusing that nVidia is upset about this, when one considers nVidia's similar desire to not share SLi functionality with other core logic chipmakers? Maybe Intel can trade Atom for a general unlocking of SLi, but that's probably just wishful thinking
Update:
"There is nothing preventing vendors from using the Ion platform. We sell Atom as a stand-alone processor, or as package with chipset," said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman, in an e-mail sent to InternetNews.com. [Source here]
So we should see some Ion desktops (and hopefully motherboards) in March and netbooks in June. [Source here]
Seems like this should work fine with Windows 7 Media Center (once Windows 7 ships).autoboy wrote:What front end are you guys planning on using with this little box?
Boxee and XBMC don't support DxVA acceleration. Those are both excellent front ends but this platform would be nearly worthless with that software. Or at least not any better than a Xbox. SageTV would be a good choice and maybe even VMC. Linux now has hardware acceleration for h.264 with Nvidia cards also.
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No. The Mac Minis have a Mobile Core 2 Duo. That is not any sort of Atom.zapwizard wrote:If you take a look at the newest Mac Minis they are essentially the nVidia Ion platform with a faster Atom on-board.
They claim 13-watts at idle.
I wish you could buy the reference design they sent to all the review websites. It would be great to see just how far you can push one.
Anandtech on ION & Blu-ray
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3526&p=2The problem is that while the Ion’s hardware decode engine can handle the video decode just fine, there’s a lot the CPU still has to do. When playing a standard Blu-ray disc there’s a lot of decryption that the CPU must do in addition to simply streaming the data to the GPU. On a modern day processor this isn’t a problem; on the Atom, it’s a serious workout.
A dual-core Atom is, however, capable of playing back all Blu-ray titles as far as I can tell; at least the most stressful ones out today....
Final Words
NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M chipset alone isn’t enough to ensure problem-free Blu-ray playback with the Intel Atom processor. The problem is, as I’ve said before, that NVIDIA’s Ion isn’t a balanced platform. It uses a GPU that’s much too fast for the CPU it’s mated with.
NVIDIA wants the world to believe that the GPU is all that matters going forward. While the GPU is a very important part of many systems today, it does not eliminate the need for a fast CPU.
If you want an Ion system to serve as your HTPC or if you just want to watch Blu-rays on your Ion netbook, you’ll need a minimum of a dual-core Atom 330.
Ion systems are expected to begin shipping in the next few months.
Re: Anandtech on ION & Blu-ray
The article has been pulled. Anand got a note from Nvidia saying the test data wasn't correct and want to test it for themselves. Anand being a good boy took the article offline.dougz wrote:http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3526&p=2The problem is that while the Ion’s hardware decode engine can handle the video decode just fine, there’s a lot the CPU still has to do. When playing a standard Blu-ray disc there’s a lot of decryption that the CPU must do in addition to simply streaming the data to the GPU. On a modern day processor this isn’t a problem; on the Atom, it’s a serious workout.
A dual-core Atom is, however, capable of playing back all Blu-ray titles as far as I can tell; at least the most stressful ones out today....
Final Words
NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M chipset alone isn’t enough to ensure problem-free Blu-ray playback with the Intel Atom processor. The problem is, as I’ve said before, that NVIDIA’s Ion isn’t a balanced platform. It uses a GPU that’s much too fast for the CPU it’s mated with.
NVIDIA wants the world to believe that the GPU is all that matters going forward. While the GPU is a very important part of many systems today, it does not eliminate the need for a fast CPU.
If you want an Ion system to serve as your HTPC or if you just want to watch Blu-rays on your Ion netbook, you’ll need a minimum of a dual-core Atom 330.
Ion systems are expected to begin shipping in the next few months.
Re: Anandtech on ION & Blu-ray
In the comment thread, Anand saysScoop wrote: The article has been pulled. Anand got a note from Nvidia saying the test data wasn't correct and want to test it for themselves. Anand being a good boy took the article offline.
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=581RE: Will we ever see the original article again? by Anand Lal Shimpi, 2 hours ago
I won't publish NVIDIA's findings, only my own. The thinking is that there was an issue with the version of PowerDVD I was using which has since been corrected. I won't say for sure until I re-run the tests myself but I have reason to believe that NV is correct in this case. I simply didn't want the story to spread like wildfire if there was any chance that my findings were incorrect. I've always been in this for the truth, not the sensation
Anand did the right thing to pull it, pending resolution of the issue. One poster in the thread says
but poster mikesm cites no evidence. http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpos ... 2#commentsI don't doubt ION was a bust given powerdvd was involved by mikesm, 3 hours ago
When are AMD and Nvidia going to learn that they can't depend on the bozos at Cyberlink to write code that takes full advantage of their hardware for playback? Anyone who has built an HTPC knows how disappointing the support for hardware offload is in PowerDVD and how it varies from release to release.
Most of the time the CPU can pull the chestnuts out of the fire, but with ION it just plain doesn't work unless the GPU is doing all it can.
It will be interesting to see how this nets out.