NVIDIA Targeting the Netbook Market
NVIDIA's plan is to replace the legacy 3 chip design with a two chip combination of the Geforce 9400M and Atom. The Geforce 9400M, which is currently being used in Apple's Macbooks, will give netbooks a much needed performance boost for many applications, allowing them to offer much of the functionality of a full-sized PC.
Haas believes that while the Atom is a very good processor, it's constrained by the Intel chipset. With the Geforce 9400M chip, things like HD video, full streaming video, and high resolution image editing could be done on a netbook. Although no OEMs have officially announced partnerships with NVIDIA just yet, Haas says "everyone is interested."
"The lightness, the form factor, that's all kind of cool, but people are looking to see what they can do to enhance the user experience", said Haas. But will these newer, "fully functional" netbooks steal some market share from their notebook counterparts? Haas doesn't believe so. He said, "We think it's a good opportunity, we're not scared off by ‘it's a low margin business'. I think it's a great business to be in actually."
Don't start fantasizing about playing Left 4 Dead on a netbook any time soon though. Haas says their ideal customers would be those who "want to download HD video from Itunes, somebody who may be streaming video, someone who may be a light Photoshop user, someone who may be doing transcoded videos". NVIDIA's first demonstration of their combination was a Pico ITX box prototype, dubbed the 'Ion Platform' and Haas was confident OEMs would be whipping up their own versions shortly.
|
I should have held out. Meh I still love my Aspire One |
|
wow thats nice and small... |
|
I saw the pictures of the Ion platform prototype on nVidia's site yesterday. Pico-ITX form factor = awesomeness. Put an SSD in that thing and you have the makings of a very very sweet home entertainment PC in a miniscule box. I hope somebody runs with it. |
|
I can't wait to see a netbook which can actually do something (with dedicated graphics). Too bad AMD/ATI said they're not going to do netbooks, they've probably missed out on a whole new market. |
It would be nice to have a better GPU in the netbooks, but mine runs spore, toribash, N64 emulators, and much more, but to be honest you really don't wanna play games on such a small screen anyway. I used my netbook for like a week without using my desktop. I still use it to sit on the couch and browse, which was the original intent for it, but when I set in front of my desktop I am releaved to have the screen real estate to work and play with. |
tanka12345:|
I know, I wouldn't play games 24/7 on a netbook, but i't still be fun to play games on the go with actual graphics.
|
stuff on Hot Hardware
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
