14 DAY TRIAL // Last last week, Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA released a statement in relation to a recent argument with chip maker Intel, regarding the chipset license agreement between the companies. It now appears that leading chip maker Intel has come up with its own response to the statement NVIDIA released on Wednesday, basically picking on the latter's recently-introduced Ion platform.
According to a late news-article on bit-tech, citing an Intel document called “NVIDIA Ion Competitive Position Guide,” Intel sees the Ion as a product that hasn't been crafted for the netbook and nettop market. The first point of the document claims that the Ion is “rather a SKU of the existing MCP79M/MCP7A chipset family (branded in part as GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9400, GeForce 9300, GeForce 9100M G or GeForce 8200M G.” Intel further claims that the graphics chip maker is using a chipset that is known for its power problems, but brands it as the “Ion Platform.”
Intel maintains that NVIDIA is “attempting to re-use an integrated graphics chipset designed for the notebook and desktop system price points into the netbook and nettop system price points. This in turn leads to higher costs as well as high power consumption.”
Chip maker Intel continues its statement in the report by citing a number of tech sites that have criticized NVIDIA's Ion platform for its chipset manufacturing issues and the specifications of the chip's power consumption and performance. In addition, citing an article on Tech Report saying that “Preliminary press reviews indicate Nvidia’s Ion HD playback may not be as good as Nvidia claims,” Intel states that its Mobile Intel GN40 Express chipset is capable of providing a full Hi-Def video decoded with HW acceleration.
The global leading chip maker closes its argument against NVIDIA's Ion platform by claiming that the Ion's superior transcoding and gaming abilities aren't relevant to netbook and nettop users. Intel also adds, “Don’t buy the hype around Nvidia Ion—it offers no advantages that an Intel platform cannot provide relevant to the Netbook and Nettop market segments.”