Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday unveiled a core-logic for netbooks and nettops that is compatible with Intel Atom processor and which promises to substantially improve user experience on ultra low-cost personal computers (ULCPCs). Along with the GeForce 9400M chip, Nvidia also launched the so-called Ion platform to lighten the adoption of the new novelty by device makers. But Nvidia’s road to ULCPCs may be rocky.
Nvidia GeForce 9400M is a single-chip core-logic with DirectX 10-compatible GeForce 9-class graphics processor inside that also supports dual-channel DDR3 memory, PCI Express 2.0 x16 and x4 links, Serial ATA, USB, Gigabit Ethernet and so on. As all modern Nvidia GeForce integrated graphics processors, the novelty features hardware-accelerated high-definition video decoding and post-processing as well as supports various outputs, such as dual-link DVI-I, D-Sub, DisplayPort or HDMI.
Nvidia hopes that considerably better features and potentially higher performance of its core-logic will attract attention to its Ion platform. But while Nvidia is right about tangibly better feature-set and performance, power consumption of the GeForce 9400M (18W) is more than two times higher compared to Intel’s own platform (Intel 945GSE + ICH7-M consume 6W + 1.5W in maximum case scenario). Moreover, Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M requires expensive DDR3, whereas Intel’s platforms for Atom processors rely on affordable DDR2.
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