Submitted by The Intel Atom platform, on which most netbooks are based, lacks the graphical grunt for things like 3D games and HD video playback, because Intel insisted on paring the Atom processor with an outdated graphical chip by Intel. Several efforts are underway to resolve this issue, and one of them, NVIDIA’s Ion, might already be in trouble before it has even arrived.
The Ion platform pairs an Intel Atom processor, found in most netbooks today, with an NVIDIA9400M GPU to provide netbooks with a much more powerful 3D and video decoding experience. However, the first netbooks based on this platform have been announced and are ready to burst out of the gates, but there’s one problem: pricing.
One of the two announced Ion netbooks, the Samsung N510, has been priced at a whopping 599 USD, which is twice that of many other netbooks, raising the question whether or not having a 9400M GPU is really worth paying twice as much. To make matters worse – the N510 carries the Ion LE patform, which is an inferior variant of the Ion platform, artificially limited to just DirectX 9.0 which will reduce its performance in Windows Vista and Windows 7. In other words, potential netbooks with the full-blown Ion platform will be even more expensive. The other announced Ion netbook, the Lenovo S12, is facing a pricetag of 550 USD, but this price still has to be confirmed.
Those are fairly high prices, especially in a market that got where it is today because of its price. While it is obviously far too early to say anything about Ion’s viability in the marketplace, prices like this and artificially reduced performance really aren’t helping.
On the other hand, I think that price is okay for a “complete” CUDA GPGPU platform. I really hope to see inexpensive Ion nettops someday that can be clustered together into massive computing systems for just a couple of thousands of dollars.
Nvidia says Intel raises the price of Atom enormously when it is not sold with an Intel chipset. Yes that sounds anticompetitive and illegal, but not if Intel words it just the right way.
Anyway, the cost problem isn’t necessarily because Nvidia’s product costs a lot. It is because Intel’s product costs more when paired with Nvidia’s product.
No doubt Intel’s preferred wording is that they’re not charging more if you don’t use their chipset, but that they offer discounts for using all-Intel parts? Same thing, of course, but it sounds so much more acceptable that way…
Sounds to me like McDonald’s where a burger, fries, and a cola cost more when adding the individual prices than a menu.
Should we sue McD and Burger King now for anticompetitive bundling of menus that make it more costly to get burgers from one shop, fries from another, and actual beer (not that US p*ss) from a bar?
Yes… But, McD’s don’t have an monopoly on burgers, and not only that, they can’t sue into oblivion any other company, apart from Burger King (AMD) who attempt to make their own beef patty.
What Intel is doing is abusing their monopoly to keep a larger market for their high-margin Core 2 chips
Looks like a great argument for matching Ion with an ARM processor…
What ION manufacturers must do now it is begin to sell those little form-factor motherboards like ones they put in ION reference platform (for demonstration). Mini-ITX still too big (from zotac). Otherwise I will steal the reference box and get an gunshot to the head from nVidia while trying to run away with it.
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…the AspireRevo Ion-based nettop runs only $299:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/28/acer-aspirerevo-review/
Just 4 weeks ago I bought one myself, the Linux version, only 200 euro! And the pleasant surprise was that it was advertised as coming with only an 8Gb flash card, but it came with the 160Gb HD that is sold with the Windows Vista version (for 100 euro more!)
It is just slightly too slow to be a comfortable desktop but I turned it into a media PC and it is VERY VERY capable. It plays everything smoothly on XBMC.
It is fast enough for surfing the web and similar tasks, and Ubuntu runs faster than Windows 7.
Not for the fainthearted though, it took my some while to set everything up on Ubuntu, and you will need to buy a remote (5 euro). But the whole project was a lot more satisfying and cheaper than buying a Popcorn Hour, if you are into this kind of stuff.
a little off topic. i’m currently researching buying something like that plus a big TV when i get my final GSoC pay. where are you located and where did you buy it? i’m interested in any problems you had. i’ve considered that popcorn thing too as a friend just bought one. you can reply to elvstone … at … gmail dot com. thanks in advance!
Definately NOT the company to look at when pricing netbooks… and if the people writing these articles bothered to make themselves aware of the street prices you’d see that the current netbook offerings from them have street prices $50 over the competition, and reach up to $500 already on the Atom platform.
You have to ask, what the blue **** makes this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834131041
Worth a street price of $450?
It’s also worth noting that the display jumps in resolution to 1366×768 explaining the price increase… and it could be worse, we could be talking about Sony who has only one model at $500, the entire rest of their line being $700 or more STREET.
Much less we’re talking about comparing MSRP to street. The MSRP on my MSI Wind U123 is $379 and I paid $299 on special, with the average street being $329 – So with that $500 MSRP we’ll probably see them go on sale most places at $450 and inside six months be available at $399… For some people the extra resolution and graphics horsepower might be worth that extra hundred bucks over a 1024×600 with the crappy GMA 950. I know a few people who won’t buy the current crop because it won’t do HD playback – this kills that problem and opens up the form factor to those people. Hell, with that HDMI adapter on the back they might not make a bad set top box/homebrew DVR (with the ability to watch online videos in addition to conventional)… if they end up making mainboards or mini-desktops out of this arrangement, I’d be tempted to pick one up for that purpose.
… sad part is we saw the same type of nonsense about the price differences when the hard disk/1024×600 models came out supplanting the SSD backed 800×480 ones, and the market yummed them up in spite of the people raging against them as ‘defeating the point’.
Edited 2009-08-20 00:30 UTC
There’s still truth to that though, since the closer they are in size to typical notebooks, the more they simply become greatly underpowered notebooks. Which is exactly what they are, but their selling point is more “weighs under 1kg” than “low-budget laptop”.
Which kind of backs up what Dell said – the sweet spot for netbooks is around 10inchs. Once you get above 10inchs, you’ve got an over priced, under powered laptop. ZDNet did an article talking about how for $50 more you can get a more powerful laptop in many cases.
What I’d love to see, however, is to what degree are people using their netbook as either a replacement for a laptop as the main machine, to compliment their laptop, or whether it is a replacement for a laptop where their main machine is a desktop.
Yup, interesting question. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll turn it into a “OSNews asks” item as soon as the Grey’s Anatomy episode I’m watching is done.
see my post, right above yours. you can already get an Ion-based ‘desktop’ for $299. Been out for months.
It’s a whole different thing to sell a desktop and a notebook. Besides the obvious change in the pcb topology just add the screen and the price goes up.
Have you seen how much an Atom based desktop costs? Much less than the 300$/€ an Atom based netbook costs.
PS. This reply goes to AdamW of course not deathshadow
Edited 2009-08-20 05:53 UTC
Some good ole competition from AMD in the mix. That will definitely drive down the price.