NVIDIA Ion Benchmarks and Review

It looks like you can expect the NVIDIA Ion information to start rolling in any time now. I was doing some poking around and saw some benchmarks have been posted based on reference parts and figured with the recent talk about NVIDIA Ion and the Intel Atom N280/Intel GN40 that I wouldn’t be the only one intereted to hear how NVIDIA’s new platform performs.In what is a rather detailed reference design review, there’s a whole hell of a lot of information to dive through, so let’s hit the highlights and those interested can just skip to the link and see the whole for themselves.

If, like me, you’ve thought that the NVIDIA Ion platform has the makings of fixing what’s wrong with the Intel Atom “platform” and that it could make for a really, really awesome HTPC, I think you may be right. I interested in real-world performance, so how’d it do with HD video?

The NVIDIA Ion was able to handle a 1080p movie without breaking a sweat. When using the crappy Windows Media Player, CPU usage seemed to spike to around 60% with an Intel Atom 330 (that’s the dual-core Atom). 60% isn’t exactly low, but compared to an Intel Atom 330 with the crappy GMa950, things get really interesting when you use a program that is designed to, you know, use the video card. Using a beta version of PowerDVD with that very support, CPU usage hit about 20%. Wow!

So obviously with the right software (well, especially so) the NVIDIA Ion will make a good HTPC, so how about some gaming? They tried that as well, but it’s about what you’d expect. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars ran at a poor 20 FPS at 800×600 resolution, while Left 4 Dead managed 26 FPS. It’s not going to replace your gaming desktop or gaming notebook, but hey, that’s not bad for a tiny box.

The last major point I’ll touch is power draw. This, obviously, is where the Intel Atom shines. It won’t win any speed competitions against its bigger brothers, but it’s pretty damn efficient while still putting out considerable power for its size. While the GMA950 generally all-around sucks, it is somewhat thrifty about power usage, so how does the reference NVIDIA Ion “desktop” do? At its worst, the NVIDIA Ion with an Intel Atom 330 ran just under 40 watts at load and 23 at idle. That’s less than an incandescent light bulb.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. Of course, more reviews and benchmarks ought to come out soon, but if the first is any indication, it’s off to a good start.

As a side note, they do they the fan is a bit loud, but if you’re using it as an HTPC, I’m fairly sure your TV/stereo will drown out any whine it throws out.

HotHardware has this scoop, and it’s well worth checking out their thorough review.