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Acer buys into Nvidia's Ion 2?
Perhaps Intel's Atom GPU not up to snuff
Some pundits may not see the point of putting a discrete GPU into a power-tight platform like a netbook, but Acer possibly does - if the latest whispers from Taiwan are to be trusted.
The PC manufacturer has decided to build Nvidia's Ion 2 chippery into future product, say moles by way of DigiTimes.
Ion 2 will inevitably connect to Intel's next-gen Atom CPUs - due 10 January 2010 - all of which contain a GPU core and a memory controller. That leaves Ion 2 is either a slightly better integrated GPU or a discrete GPU in its own right, depending on how Nvidia plans to push it. Either way, it's arguably a hard sell for a power-constrained environment light the inside of a netbook: does this machine really need two GPUs?
Or Nvidia may focus on nettops which, being desktops, are a little less power-sensitive than portables. Intel certainly has new - also GPU-enabled - desktop Atoms coming: the single-core D410 and dual-core D510. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
