Nvidia preparing to launch Ion 2 chipset this year

[Matthew DeCarlo]

According to Fudzilla, a higher-up at Nvidia has confirmed that the company is planning to begin shipping its Ion 2 chipset before the year's end -- a rumor that surface over the summer. Along with a die shrink, the second-generation chipset is reportedly much faster and accompanied by about twice as many shaders.

Ion (commonly referred to as the GeForce 9400M chipset), has been a staple for many netbook and nettop makers, providing Intel's lightweight Atom platform with enough muscle to tackle things like 1080p video playback. Ion 2 will bring support for the VIA Nano, as well as the typical Pentium 4-compatible processors. I haven't caught wind of any official time-frame from Nvidia, but we'll be sure to follow-up accordingly.

This news comes days after the company announced it would halt chipset development for Intel DMI processors, which would imply that the Ion 2 will lack support for Intel Nehalem/Westmere-based chips.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/36538-nvidia-preparing-to-launch-ion-2-chipset-this-year.html

 

[poundsmack]

very nice indeed. I have been looking forward to this being paired with VIA's nano for some time. To bad the new dual core nano won't be out till be begining of next year, would have been good to launch them both at once.

 

[Tekkaraiden]

A venture with Via sounds like a great idea though I though they already had compatibility with full sized Intel processors. That's what I thought the Zotac 9300 was anyways.

 

[9Nails]

I'd like to see some early benchmark figures if anyone has them. On paper the Ion 2 looks close to a perfect little low-powered well performing accelerator. Pair it up with a new Via Nano or Intel Atom dual-core in a netbook and I'll have some new hardware to play with. I just hope that my wait isn't too long.