Back in late 2008, we caught a glimpse of NVIDIA’s response to the increasingly popular market for low-power, low-cost computer systems. The Ion is a small-form factor PC platform that basically combines Intel’s highly successful Atom processor with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip, delivering the performance capabilities that could easily rival those of some fully-fledged desktop computer systems. The platform is expected to be used in some of the upcoming netbooks and nettops, boosting performance for those relatively cheap PCs.

 

The Santa Clara, California-based chip maker has showcased its latest Ion platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is where the company also announced its fastest GeForce graphics cards to date, the single GTX 285 and the dual-GPU GTX 295. Fellows over at hothardware were lucky enough to get a hands-on experience and more with the new small-form factor PC from NVIDIA.

 

Drew Henry, NVIDIA's general manager of MCP products, provided a video-recorded tour of the Ion platform, demonstrating the ins and outs of the SFF PC. The Ion is built on a small 3-inch by 4-inch motherboard, offering the computing power of Intel’s Atom 330 processor, clocked at 1.6GHz. The system boasts a GeForce 9400M GPU with 16 graphics cores and full HD capabilities, with support for a maximum resolution of 2500 by 1600 pixels. It also packs SATA 3GBps connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 HD Azalia audio and it even has enough room for a storage solution.

 

The green company has provided a series of benchmark results delivered by its Ion platform in a number of well-known applications, even including the Call of Duty 4 PC game. As you can see in the table below, the Ion offers a pretty decent performance, given its small form factor and its relatively small price tag, which is expected to come in the range of $500.