THEHAWKs Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 We just tore the packaging off of Acer's new AspireRevo nettop and dove into its Ion-powered goodness. The computer is in many ways a product of NVIDIA's designs, since the Ion-powered nettop reference platform has been a part of the Ion ecosystem for a while, and this Revo apple doesn't fall from the NVIDIA tree. Still, Acer had to go ahead and build the thing, and it's a pretty great package all-in-all. We're still in the preliminaries -- the HDMI didn't work out of the gate, but after swapping back and forth a few times with the VGA plug we were in business -- and we're playing with a potentially buggy "engineering sample," but hopefully we'll be able to pull together some cohesive impressions on the thing, and play a bit of Spore while we're at it. It's already obviously the fastest Atom-powered device we've played with, and while it still pretty much chokes on Hulu and that whole "multitasking" concept, we're pretty pleased so far. SOURCE : Engadget.com Chokes oh Hulu that might be because it was a “Engineering Sample” will get my hands on one to test out soon A handful of sites have managed to get their mitts on a miniature test PC equipped with NVIDIA's Ion platform, and it looks like the line between netbook and laptop just got a whole lot blurrier. According to the testers, the setup delivers smooth HD video playback and could be a boon for the Home Theater PC market. It won't play Crysis, but the DirectX 10-compatible chipset should do World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead justice. Though the company claims it'll only use 12% more power than comparative Intel 945GM/E-based solutions, PC Perspective found the test units to consume twice the wattage -- of course, it might be a different story when Ion-equipped PCs hit retail channels. NVIDIA says the platform will tack on about $50 to $100 compared to similarly-spec'd 945GM/E models, and the first two computers to use it -- one desktop and one netbook -- should be out early summer. SOURCE : Engadget.com REVIEW ROUNDUP : PC Perspective , Laptop Magazine , Hot Hardware NVIDIA Ion platform gets demonstrated at CES (VIDEO) We've been hearing an awful lot about NVIDIA's Ion platform, but up until now, we haven't seen an awful lot. HotHardware and PC Perspective were both able to swing by NVIDIA's booth at CES and get an up close look at the diminutive system. On hand was a half-liter PC that utilized a 1.6GHz Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M GPU, and it was reportedly being used to push some pretty stellar video on the monitors behind it. Have a look past the break for a couple demonstration vids -- if this is the kind of graphical prowess we can expect from nettops of tomorrow, you can color us interested. SOURCE : www.engadget.com VIDEO : NVIDIA Ion Platform @ CES 2009 (pcper.com) NVIDIA's Ion Small Form-Factor PC Platform - HotHardware Nasty Rumor Is False NVIDIA Ion Will Happen nVidia earlier this month announced its GeForce 9400mGPU, dubbed "Ion," currently available in Apple's new generation of MacBook notebooks, would be available for Atom-based netbooks. The company said the chips would offer considerably better performance for netbooks than Intel's 945 chipset. The report claimed "Intel will only sell Atom CPUs and corresponding chipsets in a bundle, but if hardware vendors are unable to buy just the Atom CPU, the Ion platform becomes too expensive for most applications." Intel has been the subject of several anti-trust investigations already, and the above-described deal would smack of Microsoft's old habit of making OEMs pay a Windows royalty on every PC they shipped, whether it had Windows pre-loaded or not. The result was OEMs declined to ship PCs with competitive operating systems. But an Intel spokesman said there is no exclusionary bundling in play. "There is nothing preventing vendors from using the Ion platform. We sell Atom as a stand-alone processor, or as package with chipset," said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman, in an e-mail sent to InternetNews.com. Source : Internetnews.com Nvidia schemes to get in on the Atom platform Nvidia Ion Platform: Atom gets GeForce GraphicsIntel's Atom CPU and the subsequent net-product phenomenon in the last year has been the fresh talk of the industry in an otherwise pretty regular world. It's not often we see a whole new product segment created and exploded - we've covered plenty of netbook and mini-ITX products based on this but while they have a fantastic little low power and cost effective CPU, they are ultimately let down by their pairing with an old, hot northbridge and feature minimised southbridge. Intel's Atom now comes in a dual core variety and even though it lacks the all important out of order execution that is an essential component to any modern CPU, it's very inexpensive as a platform and that has made it extremely popular for basic applications. Source : bit-tech.net anandtech.com Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
riws Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 Nice small platform, but there is a catch, nVidia does not own license for Atom CPU's at moment, that means, that Intel sells those Atom CPU's with his own chipset (x945xxx), you can not buy Atom CPU's alone. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004674 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 The best thing about this, is these have the ability to do HD at such a small form factor! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004701 Share on other sites More sharing options...
netkas Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 /mewants put leo on this baby Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004813 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 I have a question. Do the new Macbooks use the 9400M to help decode HD video? ie. can OS X utilize it yet? Otherwise, gotta boot into Windows for that... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004820 Share on other sites More sharing options...
weaksauce12 Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 I've got a whole bunch of pics on my blog: http://######.com/weaksauce12/?p=370 Can't wait to slap Snow Leopard on one of these...it will be the ultimate Media Center system for Plex! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004831 Share on other sites More sharing options...
THEHAWKs Posted December 18, 2008 Author Share Posted December 18, 2008 yep this platform would make a great Media Center or a NAS Small and powerful. [DDr3, 6 Sata, HDMI, DisplayPort, RAID] Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1004845 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ai Haibara Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 Now that would be a great board for a portable media center Sherry Haibara Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1005060 Share on other sites More sharing options...
realityiswhere Posted December 25, 2008 Share Posted December 25, 2008 *edit* ION is a go, TheHAWKS proved this post false, so edited Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014099 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted December 25, 2008 Share Posted December 25, 2008 Already ahead of you. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=142736 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014106 Share on other sites More sharing options...
realityiswhere Posted December 25, 2008 Share Posted December 25, 2008 Maybe they should just be merged then, no point in having two topics covering the same thing. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014108 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted December 25, 2008 Share Posted December 25, 2008 Doesn't matter what happens to the topics to me.(Not like it would anyways) But, we were discussing this on guru3d forums, and this still sucks. I don't know how many people would buy this for a tiny hd box, but I sure as hell know I would have. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014111 Share on other sites More sharing options...
THEHAWKs Posted December 26, 2008 Author Share Posted December 26, 2008 Rumors about Intel not having Nvidia Chipset on Atom Platform is False Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014291 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted December 26, 2008 Share Posted December 26, 2008 It's not a rumor. It's confirmed. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014300 Share on other sites More sharing options...
m16 Posted December 26, 2008 Share Posted December 26, 2008 It's not a rumor. It's confirmed. Confirmed? Do you have any proof? Some anonymous intel source said that nothing is preventing ion today: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/25/intel-p...standalone-ato/ Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1014308 Share on other sites More sharing options...
THEHAWKs Posted January 13, 2009 Author Share Posted January 13, 2009 OMG Video of NVIDIA Ion platform at CES demonstrated Check 1 Post for Links Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1038914 Share on other sites More sharing options...
stellarola Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Pretty damn badass. Supposedly it has the Atom 230 and not the dual core 330. I think it was a misprint... -Stell Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1039010 Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottishduck Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 I have a question. Do the new Macbooks use the 9400M to help decode HD video? ie. can OS X utilize it yet? Otherwise, gotta boot into Windows for that... I believe that OSX won't implement that until the inclusion of OpenCL in Snow Leopard. I may be wrong. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1039789 Share on other sites More sharing options...
realityiswhere Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 I believe that OSX won't implement that until the inclusion of OpenCL in Snow Leopard. I may be wrong. original link is in french, google translation below http://translate.google.com/translate?prev...sl=fr&tl=en My Alu MB with the 9400 only goes to about 30% cpu usage when watching HD video, this article is perfectly correct. H.264 is hardware decoded using the GPU on the new Macbooks, it is hardware based, not software. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1039812 Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottishduck Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Fair enough... I do seem to recall decoding being a major sell point of the new MB platform now that you say it. What I'm more interested in however. Could this possibly be a new platform for UMPCs or iPhone? It certainly seems to have the profile for it. Maybe I'm sounding stupid, battery life would be to say the least, short. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1039918 Share on other sites More sharing options...
THEHAWKs Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 For anyone that is following the NVIDIA Ion platform which i cant wait for there are some Reviews PC Perspective , Laptop Magazine , Hot Hardware Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1067939 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Envying Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Another review on anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3509 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1067949 Share on other sites More sharing options...
THEHAWKs Posted April 17, 2009 Author Share Posted April 17, 2009 Acer releases the Aspire Revo ion nettop this is what i have bin waiting for the smallest HTPC that could run Mac OS x. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1135020 Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKinHD Posted May 22, 2009 Share Posted May 22, 2009 Did any one test this machine for installing osx? It wold be great machine for plex, small, low price and beautiful:-) I have a NMT on my beamer, and think to replace it whit this one, give me please some informations. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1162100 Share on other sites More sharing options...
spapone Posted May 23, 2009 Share Posted May 23, 2009 Did any one test this machine for installing osx? It wold be great machine for plex, small, low price and beautiful:-) I have a NMT on my beamer, and think to replace it whit this one, give me please some informations. You can try this thread http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=164051 bye -=Spapone=- Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/141667-update-acer-aspirerevo-the-ion-infused-unboxing/#findComment-1162578 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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