Nvidia Ion Next Generation?

Hey everyone!

I'm going to college after summer, and I have taken a look on many netbooks! I found the Asus Eee PC 1215N (12,1 inch screen) quiet interesting since it has the Nvidia Ion 2 installed.

But how powerful is the Nvidia Ion 2?

But I'm in a dilemma. Is Nvidia Ion 2 worth the money? Or should I just buy a netbook with the GMA 4500 or something similar?

What do you say?

Kind Regards,
Peter

 

It's worth the money.
I'm getting one when it comes out because it's been pumping out some impressive numbers in early benchmarks.
2.6k in 3dmark06 is incredible for a netbook, when compared to a gma 4500 scoring 500 points. Thats 5x the performance and should be enough to facilitate light gaming etc.
Allot more than you can get from an intel chip.
Also i'm sure someone will come out with a way to overclock it further so i bet it'll be reaching 3k easily, which when compared to full sized laptops isn't that far from what an ati 4570 and a pentium dual core can accomplish.

 

Thanks for your great answer oogamar! But the Asus 1215N is equipped with the Atom D525 1.8 GHz with Hyper Threading. Could it be the bottleneck for gaming? Can it run Oblivion and YouTube 1080p videos?

Thanks.

 

I started a thread about the 1215's cpu a while ago, perhaps it might be of some help to you http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...atom-d525-vs-su-core-2-duo-i3-i5-um-cpus.html

Also, while the 1215 scores higher in 3dmark06 than my laptop I doubt it would be able to play a game like assassins creed 2 (which mine can...barely). Don't expect to play current games at any but the lowest settings, and the cpu will definitly bottleneck more cpu demanding games.

You need a 2ghz pentium 4 cpu or better for oblivion, and I think someone told me the cpu in the 1215 would be a strong as a 1ghz dual core cpu so it might work (I don't have that game but if its like any other rpg, it will stress your cpu quite a lot when there will be a lot of characters around).

 

the 1201n can run oblivion at 20-30 fps (on lowest, some higher) and that had a 1.6ghz atom. This has a 1.8 so it will run it at least as good.
Also i saw that in pcmark and some other benches that this was scoring quite a lot higher than my old pentium m [email protected] and i could max out obivion on that system (granted it had a much better gpu).
It'll be entirely dependant on the game, oblivion yes, 1080p youtube yes, starcraft 2 probably, crysis 2 - maybe 15-20 on low if were lucky.

EDIT: Heres how it stacks up against the competition in passmark.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+D525+@+1.80GHz
Here it beats a 3.73ghz p4!
While that's not saying much given todays performance it's still pretty impressive for a netbook cpu.

 

Wow, really impressive for a netbook. I have seen a pentium 4 processor run Oblivion.

Thanks for the help so far, but one question more. What is the Nvidia Ion 2 gpu based on? I know the first generation Ion was based on the GeForce 9400m which is quiet powerful.

 

Its based on the 305m/310m chip and should perform somewhere near, if just shy of the g210m. Which again is impressive for a netbook lol.

 

The Ion 2 Optimus consists of:
Intel GMA 3150 + nVidia GT218

GT218 falls in between 9400 and 9500m

NVIDIA GT218 is low end card, between 9400 and 9500 GT - Madshrimps Forum Madness

Asus EEE PC 1215N review – power in a compact sleek body

 

Nice! The g210m! As far as I remember it's actually very good, although it's a slight less powerful than the ATI 5430. And I like the battery life of the Ion. Asus promises the 1215n will last up to 7 hours It should be enough.

 

If you look here at the top end of the class 3 cards it'll be around there.
Notebookcheck: NVIDIA ION 2

 

From the review, they only managed about 6hrs with brightness at half, wifi off, no multimedia.

 

Haha, and noticed right after I posted it ^^ I edited immideadly xD

But theres something I think it's weird. In the review that TomTom posted, the Asus 1215N got a big Enter Button, but in this preview it got a rectangle-shape enter button: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bwJUKIIrQ

:S

In the school I have just use it to surf the web and writing stuff. By the way, can't you disable the Nvidia chip so you only use the Intel one?

 

They released an option in the new drivers so you can choose which program uses which gpu so yes

I noticed the keyboard thing aswell... maybe they changed it at last minute :S

 

Nice

Well, on the site where I want to buy it's with the small enter-button - According to the picture.

http://www.komplett.dk/k/ki.aspx?sku=599895

 

You guys are underestimating just how huge a bottleneck the Atom CPU will be. I have the 1201N, the predecessor to the 1215N, with a dual-core Atom 330 (1.6GHz) with Hyper-Threading, and ION graphics. This thing struggles to play Morrowind at minimum settings and view distance, let alone Oblivion. It also cannot do 1080p on Youtube...hell, most of the time it can barely pull of 720p. Crysis and StarCraft II are unplayable on any settings.

It's better than a single core Atom and Intel graphics, but you really shouldn't overestimate its capabilities. Also, it's going to be REALLY FREAKING HOT. As in, my 1201N idles around 60C for the CPU and 70C for the ION.

 

Not that i'm trying to contradict you because i'm not. I'm basing these assumptions based on benchmarks and videos so obviously your first hand experience is more accurate.
However if you look at these video's you can see the playability of the games on that system:

Oblivion: YouTube - Asus Eee PC 1201N Gameplay TES IV Oblivion

Crysis warhead: YouTube - TEST Crysis Warhead on EeePC 1201N Windows XP 800X600 with pydon shaders tweak 1.4

Transformers WFC: YouTube - Netbook Gaming - Asus 1201n - Transformers War for Cybertron Gameplay

Alien vs Predator: YouTube - Netbook Gaming - Asus 1201n - Aliens vs Predator Gameplay

Batman Arkham Asylum: YouTube - Netbook Gaming - Asus 1201n - Batman Arkham Asylum Gameplay

Also i'm aware that some of these were with cpu overclocks which i've read greatly illeviate the bottleneck - don't know if you've had any experience of this?
I also read somewhere that they'd changed the vent(s) for better cooling but i doubt it'll make much of a difference.

 

I'm not going to overclock a CPU that idles at 60 Celsius at stock speeds, and I'm not going to spend money on better memory just to be able to do it (that's what I've read has to be done to efficiently overclock this thing).

As for the Oblivion video...I know overclocking can help, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. Morrowind is a game that is several years older and looks pretty awful to begin with, with all settings on minimum or off, and view distance of maybe 100 feet, and it doesn't run nearly as smoothly as this guy says Oblivion does.

Crysis...note that the framerate is rarely above 20, even when nothing is happening. To me, that is not playable.

 

I totally agree that it can be a stretch and that the crysis vid is on the very borderline of playability.
But this thread is about the ion 2 not the ion and the fact that when the n330 is overclocked the speeds these people go for is between 1.8-2.0ghz which the new cpu falls into and the new gpu is quite a bit more powerful so while it won't mean you can crank up the settings to high, it will probably mean that you will be able to play almost anything on lowest settings with playable fps. That is something the old 1201n could only just about manage with pretty severe overclocks and more heat.

So in that respect the new 1215n with ion 2 is going to be quite a bit better than the STOCK 1201n.

 

Fair points.

 

Yeah, I just want a light netbook that is a bit more powerful than a regular netbook. If the Asus can run games such as League of Legends, and maybe Modern Warfare 2? It will be the right choice for me

But Mastershroom: Do you regret that you bought the 1201N?

 

To be honest, yes I do regret it. I paid a little less than $500 for it, and I guess I expected more than I got out of it. It's extremely hot, and its battery life is hardly any better than most full-size laptops (roughly 4 hours), yet it doesn't perform significantly better than most "normal" netbooks. I overestimated the capabilities of a dual-core Atom CPU and a non-Intel graphics chip.

If I could go back and buy it again, I'd get a "true" netbook, i.e. 9" or 10" screen, single-core Atom and Intel GMA, and upwards of 5 hours of battery life (and probably not 60 degrees Celsius while sitting there doing nothing).

 

Well, I'm sad to hear that. But here in Denmark I can return it to the shop within 14 days and get a full refund. Maybe the 1215N models are cooler than the 1201N?

But I'm a bit curious: What is your score in 3Dmark06? The current system I'm on scores around 2000 (Aspire 6930G, 9300m gs) and that's not much, but I can still run the newest games on lowest settings.

 

Can't really answer for mastershroom but i've seen some massive overclocks on the 1201n and they hit between 1900-2000 points. At stock it'll only deliver 1300-1400. The 1215 however doubles the points of the 1201n in 3dmark06 anyway (2600 points).

 

The 9400m based ION is a COMPLETELY different GPU die than the GT218 of the ION2. Also, the Atom D525 is not made on a smaller process. The N330 and the D525 are BOTH 45nm dies with probably the same TDP, or an even higher TDP with the integrated GPU of the D525 being the GMA3150. The only thing that would make this ANY bit cooler running than the 1201n is that the Nvidia GPU has been die shrunk from 65nm to 40nm. Otherwise the battery life estimates and heat issues should be about the same. Personally I'd go with an Acer Timeline X or something. Intel's Atom is IMO a joke for anything more than simple web-browsing or similarly light tasks. Believe me, I had to figure that out the hard way.

 

I as well, so I made the jump to the CULV porcessors in the ASUS UL30VT, little bigger, little more expensive and a darn sight more convienient.

 

Anyway, I just did some further testing. Unless the guy in that video overclocked his Atom to 3.0GHz, there's no way Oblivion runs that well. I just overclocked mine as far as it would go on this memory (1.93GHz), disabled all power saving features, and lowered all settings in Morrowind as low as they would go. We're talking 640x480, minimum view distance, all effects off or minimum. Outdoors, it rarely went above 20fps. There is just no possible way that Oblivion, a much newer and more graphically demanding game, will even be close to playable at 1024x768, as that video showed.

 

I doubt the 1215n would be cooler since it also has a desktop cpu because asus doesn't want to wait for intel to release its dual core netbook cpu's (expected in Q3 this year).

 

Haha, even my old Xbox1 could run TES3 Morrowind.
Just tested the game myself on my ASRock Ion 330 with Nvidia Ion.
I overclocked the CPU to 2,1 GHz and it still runs like crap.

 

Well at that resolution it's no wonder it wont run 628x480 is extremely cpu bound whilst 1024x768 is giving more work to the gpu and oblivion is more optimised to utilise the gpu because its newer. Morrowind is old and as such relies more heavily on the cpu. This would also explain how people are able to get crysis "playable" on low because it's very gpu bound and not so heavy on the processor, which limits the impact to the low end gpu.
I suppose the only certain thing to say about all this is that, results will vary depending on the game. Have none of you guys got oblivion to try?
Because it seems comparing 1 game to another on this kind of system is an exercise in futility due to the average gpu and below average cpu and what each game favours.

 

1366x768 runs even slower than 640x480. Lowering resolution doesn't make a game use more CPU power, it just uses less graphics card power.

And I have Oblivion, but I'd rather not spend half the day downloading it and using up most of the remaining space on this tiny hard drive.

 

Wow, maybe I should just buy a "real" netbook (Any recommendations?) with Intel graphics and save the extra money on a dekstop replacement later.

But I thought that the 1215N would perform waaaay better

 

ASUS Ul20A or a UL30VT if you want swithcble graphics ( im a fan of the 30VT if you can live with a SMALL 13" unit

 

The UL30VT is more expensive than the 1215N but nice suggestion ^^ My cousin got this model and he is satisfied with it.

 

I bought an Asus 1215n and tried both Morrowind and Oblivion on it. Oblivion runs reasonably well at native with low-medium settings. Morrowind doesn't run run anywhere near as well because it's a lot more dependent on the CPU and isn't smart enough to multithread, but it's decently playable at medium draw distance. The Morrowind FPS optimizer and Morrowind Anti-Mod help as well.

 

If you want your current system (the acer) to run games better why dont you upgrade the graphocs card because i thisnk the 6930g has a mxm graphics card and for less than the price of a netbook you could make your current laptop quite capable at playing current games with something like a radeon 4650 or geforce 9600m gt

 

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but if you want something small with punch why not check out the Alieanware MX11? Through it may not be truely considered a netbook its still got a 11" screen.

 

I can also vouch for the Alienware mx11. A friend of mine has one, and he can play Crysis on literally the highest settings.

 

Giving the CPU a modest OC (~25% or so) with SetFSB does wonders for Morrowind's framerate.