Last week the hot conflict between Intel and NVIDIA reached new low levels. In short, Intel is worried about NVIDIA’s considerably more powerful Ion platform and that it could damage Intel’s position on the fast growing netbook market. It has put emphasis on high power consumption and high price, but NVIDIA looks to ride out the storm pretty well. The fact is that the first Ion-based products are already on the way and the first to go is netbook giant Acer.
Acer has announced its Acer Hornet nettop, which is said to be a power efficient and cheap replacement for the full size desktop computer. Hornet can either be placed on the desk or hanged on the back of the monitor.
Under the hood Acer has stuffed Intel’s Atom processor alongside of NVIDIA’s MCP79 chipset, also known as Ion, which through its relative powerful integrated graphics circuit adds enough crunching power to play 1080p HD video, among other things.
According to Donanimhaber Acer is also planning a combination of NVIDIA’s Ion platform and a new model of VIA’s Nano processor. Nano is a bit more power hungry, but at the same time faster than Intel’s Atom processor. A tuned model of Nano would therefore be a great choice for a nettop.
