Pining away
There is certainly a lot of buzz building about Intel's upcoming Pineview-based netbooks set to launch in early 2010, with many wondering whether the new offerings will offer a performance boost over the previous generation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, however, "Intel expects only a slight performance improvement by adding graphics to the new Pineview version of Atom."
NVIDIA, unsurprisingly, agrees, saying it has been hearing from its partners and early benchmark numbers that Pine Trail platform (Pineview is the name of the processor within the platform) graphics performance will be about the same as today's Atom-based systems and far behind ION.
According to NVIDIA's Ken Brown, who spoke exclusively to HEXUS: "Current-generation ION-based netbooks will continue to deliver a markedly better experience than Intel's next-generation Pine Trail architecture in terms of video, games, and rich media performance -- all with the long battery life that consumers expect."
"A number of OEMs will show off new ION PCs at CES demonstrating their continued investment in ION designs," he added.
NVIDIA reckons its first generation ION "will continue to deliver five-10x faster graphics performance than Pineview-based systems," and says that performance advantage translates to "smoother HD video including streaming video from YouTube or Hulu with Flash 10.1, support for games like The Sims 3 and World of Warcraft."
The green graphics machine also says ION is better for its GPU-accelerated media apps like transcoding and video editing, as well as Windows 7 Home Premium support (Pine Trail allegedly only uses Win 7 starter).
"Pine Trail is simply not up to the task," Brown told HEXUS, advising potential netbook customers, "if you want a premium, media-rich experience on a netbook, go get an ION netbook today like the ASUS 1201N."
