Digital Home Thoughts: Anandtech Previews The Nvidia ION

"NVIDIA’s Ion comes in as an alternative two-chip solution. The GeForce 9400M is a single chip, the other chip is the Atom, the two make up Ion. You get a modern memory controller as well, supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 memory (up to DDR3-1066). Graphics performance is better than Intel and you get full HD video decode support."

Anandtech has their hands on an NVidia ION reference platform and put the wee board through a quick set of benchmarks and tests. NVidia ION looks like it will give netbooks a chance to be more than a light duty computer. The pairing makes it possible to watch Bluray movies and play games, albeit with very low settings. Currently, Atom based netbooks run off of the aging 945G chipset. While capable, it doesn't take advantage of advancements over the past few years like faster memory. The tests Anandtech go through shows how much the Atom is hobbled with its current partner. Is the potential enough to make you wait on your ultra-portable purchase?