Atom Netbooks to get an Nvidia boost

Darius Chang | Dec 18, 2008

The Atom-based Netbooks may be cheap, but they contain enough processing power to deal with most productivity tasks like Internet surfing, working with office documents or even a little movie viewing. However, Nvidia wants to extend the functionality of these low-cost laptops to include graphic-intensive tasks such as high-definition movie viewing and even gaming with its latest Ion platform.

Nvidia's plan is for Netbooks to do away with the anemic Intel Graphics Media Accelerator found in current models and include its GeForce 9400 integrated video card instead. This graphics platform was first unleashed at the launch of the new MacBooks and claims to offer up to 10 times the rendering performance compared with its competitors.

However, this is not the first Nvidia/Atom hybrid in the market. The ASUS N10 (pictured) uses the Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS chipset. As it is a discrete graphics card, it also comes with its own video memory. However, this model comes at a hefty cost in terms of price and battery life, though the N10 allows switching to the integrated Intel graphics solution for longer uptimes.

There is no confirmed information on which vendors will be coming out with Ion-based Netbooks, but we are willing to bet that at least one prototype will be popping up in next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.

Filed under: Notebooks
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