- Saturday, 7 November 2009
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It's time for the human race to enter the solar system - Dan Quayle
Nvidia Ion 2 rumours abound
RUMOUR HAS IT the next version of Nvidia's Ion platform will pack a much stronger performance punch and come with twice the number of shaders.
The first we heard of the plan was at Nvidia's analyst day a few weeks back, when the Green Goblin mentioned it would be releasing two more versions of the modified GeForce 9400M processor it calls Ion, although it stingily neglected to give out either dates or specifications. Our sources expect products based around Ion 2 to be available before the end of the year, however.
New details have tipped up on the tech news site Fudzilla, claiming that the green machine's second generation integrated graphics platform will come complete with a die shrink and twice the shaders of its contemporary. Since the Ion 1 currently boasts 16 shaders, that means the Ion 2 will have 32 shaders, for all of you who forgot your calculators today.
The increase in shaders is apparently aimed at upping the system's 3D rendering capabilities, although why this would be so essential on a netbook or dirt-cheap notebook is a bit beyond us.
But the die shrink should mean that the platform's current low power draw remains unchanged, and it probably also means it will be cheaper to produce, although it seems highly unlikely that price cut will filter down to consumers.
When the INQ asked graphics analyst Jon Peddie about the speculative specs, he heaved a heavy sigh and told us ""We are for better or worse trapped in the mantra of Moore's law," adding "We have to do more, make better, faster, and less expensive machines and components under the guise that if you build it they will come." How very fatalistic.
Elaborating, Peddie explained "someone will see the new capabilities and say, 'Hey, I can use that to...' and then we get new exciting software developments. It's an act of faith, not a consumer demand."
The fact of the matter is, continued Peddie, that no punter buying integrated graphics would ever expressly ask for them to be improved enough to play first person shooter games, because consumers who buy IGPs don't usually play FPSs. Well, perhaps they do, but on another machine.
What Nvidia will probably use when it tries to flog these extra shady Ions is that it's not only about gaming, but also about Windows 7 and the acceleration Ion will offer users there. Not to mention all those Cuda accelerated apps Nvidia wants you to believe you just cannot live without. For those to work properly - or, even more properly than on Ion 1 - you will need Ion 2. Yep, we can almost hear the phoney marketing sales pitch now.
Still, with Intel's upcoming, purportedly much improved IGPs for Atom in the pipeline, using powerful graphics from Imagination Technologies, Nvidia is probably looking for any way to stay ahead in the game. That means at least having to make a show of pushing performance levels up.
Ultimately, if the TDP of Ion 2 is the same as Ion 1, then there may be a small benefit from doing some baseline gaming, but we still reckon that since they're not exactly gaming platforms, the value seems rather negligible.
It will give Nvidia a good excuse to push loads more Cuda ready apps at us though. µ
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Since AMD still not capable to offer more competitive platform, I hope this chipset will help consumer to see this advantages and benefits with AMD microprocessor. AMD currently have lack a competent people in the chipset development to push their product faster to market.
They have been loose the intelligent engineer like Raja Koduri and several other people.
Remember that whilst Intel's graphics chipsets are crap by Nvidia's standard they're low power and can still handle accelerated DVD and Aero. It's when games and hi def video enter the arena that it becomes important.
Hi def on a netbook? Useless. Just about useful for a media centre PC. Therefore it really *is* users trying to run some of the older games on a netbook.
The X3100, for instance, can't even handle something like Morrowind at much better than 10fps but is otherwise completely functional in Vista/Windows 7.
That's the real market Ion is looking to capture.
Once you have a small, cheap box capable of playing your videos, your games, and connecting you to the internet, why do you need the vendor lock-in of Sony and XBox?
If you're lucky enough to have a service like Hulu or Digital Netflix, you can skip the Blu-Ray nonsense all together and just stream stuff right off the internet.
Will Ion 2 be compatible with VIA Nano, though? I would have thought that would be an item of interest, surely.
It's not like current Ion isn't held back by the stupidly slow cpu... upgrade the damn CPU and possibly shrink the GPU chip. No need to make it faster :-/
Will probably become possible on an ION2 powered machine. Not to shabby I think, so I for one will not sniff about it.
Gaming is not only First person shooters, you know...
M.
Ion (9400GT) is CPU limited. I saw benchmarks in Anand's Ion article, and there was an increase in performance when going to 9400GT with a better CPU (I think it was a Celeron). So I don't know how this shader increase is going to help the platform at all. Except perhaps in CUDA apps? I don't think you buy a netbook to do GPU programming.
If it can handle Quake3 and games of similar graphics requirements nicely then that's great. If it can convert videos faster (and that CUDA stuff) then that's great too. But only if the price difference is not much between an ION and an INTEL low-power chipset.
Personally, I would rather them focus on power savings with a next generation part. I would like enough GPU power to offload 1080p decode, but thats it, for the next ~2years I dont see any 'real-world' benefit to increasing the compute power of Ion, as it already does what it needs to do.
I dont need/want the ability to play WoW or whatever at higher settings, but I do want to be able to surf the web for longer.
So please, focus of battery life, not eyeball-shredding graphics. Id rather have a nettop with 8hr battery life that can game at 640x480 than one that can game at 800x600 with only 6hrs battery life, especially since I wont be gaming at all! (Its called a desktop, people...)
ChemC
I want powerful graphic card like the coming ION 2 on my nettop. Must be great to use as a mediacenter coupled with the file-server which is hidden in the basement.
I hope that the suport for better prosecers(I know I cant spell but you know what I mean)can be used with netbooks and not just cheap notebooks.