NVIDIA Showcases Ion's Capabilities In GPU-Intensive IE9 Tests

If you've managed to glance through any of our recent netbook reviews, you'd know that we're big fans of NVIDIA's Ion. This technology has enabled netbooks to handle multi-media in a way they never could using older integrated GPUs, and we honestly wish there were more options out there just like it. One area that often gets overlooked is just how important a GPU is when browsing the Web, particularly when viewing graphically intense sites like Bing Maps or YouTube HD. Believe it or not, the GPU is becoming a more and more important part of browsing as the Web advances, and that trend isn't slowing down soon.


NVIDIA managed to get an early build of Internet Explorer 9 onto a pair of netbooks, one with Ion and one without. They then ran a series of tests on them to show how much difference the Ion chipset made, and it's all shown in the video just below. They're all pretty stunning. A map zooming test showed the non-Ion machine lagging way behind, while the 3D rendering test showed the Ion machine hitting around 44FPS and the non-Ion machine hitting around 3FPS. A big difference, obviously. The Ion machine in question is actually the Asus Eee PC 1201PN, due out this month in America, and if this video is any indication, it'll be quite the little powerhouse when it starts shipping.