NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 3, 2009 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power Consumption
I measured power consumption of the Ion system while running my WinRAR test and honestly, it seemed pretty competitive:
| Idle Power | Load Power | |
| NVIDIA Ion Reference (Atom 330) | 20.5W | 24.8W |
| ASUS Eee Box (Atom 230) | 14.5W | 19W |
| Intel Celeron 420 Desktop | 58W | 70W |
Under load the system drew around 25W. At idle we’re looking at 20.5W. The closest numbers I could compare to were my single-core ASUS Eee Box results. The Eee Box drew 6 fewer watts at idle and under load, but it also used a single-core Atom 230.
I’d guess that identical configurations would see a 2 - 4W difference in power. NVIDIA estimates that an Ion notebook would have a 12% lower battery life than a standard Atom/945G setup. That’s probably on the conservative end of estimates but we’ll have to see what manufacturers can do with this platform once it’s out.
Final Words
It’d be silly to dislike Ion. Compared to the Atom/945G combo Ion is faster, you can play 3D games on it and you can actually watch Blu-ray movies on it. If the price is right, I’d rather have an Atom CPU paired with the GeForce 9400M than Intel’s 945G. It just makes sense.
Ion addresses one of Atom’s primary deficiencies - poor graphics performance. It can’t, however, make Atom something it’s not. It’s faster to use Photoshop on Ion than on any of the current Atom platforms, but I still don’t want to. It’s better to play games on the Ion than on a regular Atom system, but it’s not fun to. NVIDIA does get points for making the overall usage experience better and faster on Ion thanks to more memory bandwidth and a much better GPU. But then there's the issue of the rest of the hardware in the system.
NVIDIA had an Acer Aspire One setup at the CES Ion demo last month; it took over two minutes to launch Spore on that machine. Ion wasn’t going to make that any faster. The HDD Acer chose for that machine was just awful. Ion or not, OEMs are still going to be putting slow components in netbooks, limiting their usefulness. Ion is luckily versatile enough to be used in other types of systems, but without knowing what the OEMs have planned I can only speculate as to what is coming down the pipe.
The GeForce 9400M is a far better chipset than Intel’s 945G. It should be, since it’s a good four years newer. But I do wonder if we’ve taken things a little too far here. I wonder if Ion actually has too much GPU and not enough CPU? Don’t get me wrong, I like Ion; I’d like to have it over a standard 945G platform. I’m just not sure what I’d do with it. Sure it'd be faster than current Atom platforms. But the applications in which it's most noticeable, I'm not sure I'd actually use a netbook for. As a portable HTPC or other small form factor machine, perhaps. I'm very curious to see what OEMs do with this system. It sure would make for a great Apple TV.
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sprockkets - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Anand reported the GN40 will be mobile only and have no SATA on it. Not the same markets.SirKronan - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I have a car that has a decent-sized LCD screen built into the front of the dashboard (review camera, climate controls, etc.) From the moment I heard about Ion I got excited. I want to build one of those things into my car. I sure hope they are released with good pricing before the summer's over, because that's what my summer project will be. Kits online abound that add an external video input into my car's LCD. With one of those kits, I want to integrate the small Ion PC into my dashboard. I will also connect bluetooth and wireless N to it. I will integrate a USB port right into the dash as well. Using a solid state disk, I'll be able to consume a minimum amount of power, but it will be connected to everything. I'll have music on it, when we park in our driveway we can wirelessly sync content from our home media server, use a bluetooth mouse on the the dashboard, a bluetooth keyboard when we're at a random hotspot to surf the web. I'm so stoked for this. It will be noticeably faster than the 945 in all tasks, and playback video flawlessly. We won't have to pack around the laptop in the car to play videos for my son anymore. And, the project won't cost an arm and a leg ... hopefully.Thanks, Anand. Good review.
Casper42 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
And with the 3D Acceleration, you could use a mapping software that does true 3D rendering as opposed to 2D sprites.SirKronan - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
Absolutely. I plan on installing a USB based GPS as well. Will be a lot bigger screen than our current Garmin.chucky2 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I was thinking along the same lines: This will be great for the Car PC crowd that wants video in their ride.Chuck
Bull Dog - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I thought black was ok, not pretty but ok.White on the other hand is purely hideous.
shmina - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
The GeForce 9400M in the MacBook is spec'd at 16SP, with a core running at 450MHz with a 1.1GHz shader clock.The specs you stated are for the desktop GeForce 9400 that has a 30W TDP vs. the 15W for mobile.
deputc26 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Wait 20W at idle???? My Laptop with T8100, 8600m GT and 1440x900 screen, 802.11n and bluetooth(the huge power hog) draws only 11w at idle. How is this low power??7Enigma - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I'm interested in the explaination here as well...SilentSin - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I noticed this too. Was powerplay not fully implemented in this thing? The Atom 330 is spec'd for 8W TDP vs. 2.5W for the 230 used in the Eee Box so the difference in power usage here seems to reflect that exact bump of about 5.5W in the CPU. So that means those power consumption figures point to the NV chipset using just as much power as the dinosaur 130nm 945G chip. What gives? I know there are a metric crapton of features added by using the NV chipset, but I would still expect an overall reduction. Remember that most reviews of the Atom platform seemed to blame the 945G for the "high" power usage figures. I would have hoped a more focused mobile-oriented chipset would have done better. Maybe the problem is in the demo box? It looks as if they are using dual phase power distribution where they could probably get away with single phase for something like this, maybe that is the culprit.