Intel: Ion Is Overkill, Don't You Know

By Jane McEntegart
published

There’s been a lot of talk about Nvidia’s Ion this week and apparently, Intel doesn’t like when the competition gets a couple of days of good press.

Speaking to the Inquirer, Mooly Eden, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s mobile platforms group, has spoke to the Inquirer in Taipei this week and when asked about Nvidia’s answer to it’s Atom processor, Eden dubbed the Ion platform for netbooks is "overkill" and unnecessary.

According to the INQ, during a recent Questions and Answers session, Eden said he believed in balancing CPU and GPU performance, but claimed Intel's upcoming Pinetrail platform with the next gen Atom will have a stronger graphics core, rendering Nvidia’s Ion pointless and expensive. Harsh words. In the same Q&A, Eden also said that despite being a “great solution” with “brilliant engineers” Atom would be three times better than any current ARM architecture.

There are 20 manufacturers displaying Ion-based products at Computex this year. This includes offerings from Acer, Asus, ECS, Zotac and MSI.

Jane McEntegart
45 Comments Comment from the forums
  • chise1
    There’s been a lot of talk about NVIDIA’s Ion
    Reply
  • cybot_x1024
    Load of BS from intel. they should make better chips and stop whining!
    Reply
  • hellwig
    First off, PineVIEW hasn't been released yet, so what is Intel's solution for people wanting upgrades before then? This statement is like Intel saying back in 2003 "the Athlon 64 is overkill, and besides we have the Core 2 coming out in 2006 and it will be even better).

    They say it's overkill today, but 6 months from now when they release their own upgrade with an even faster GPU, it won't be overkill? And am I reading that right, is Intel saying Pineview will be more powerful than Ion? Is there any evidence to support this claim?

    What a jackass.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    Nothing beats Intels Extreme(ly poor) video performance! Wooooo
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    cybot_x1024Load of BS from intel. they should make better chips and stop whining!
    sadly ATM i dont thing they care
    Reply
  • dman3k
    This is why Intel sucks. They talk way too much trash against competition who can't even put a dent in their business.
    Reply
  • grieve
    The ION is overkill so we are going to create an Atom with ""three times better than any current ARM architecture.""
    ** and it won't be overkill because it has the Intel logo....

    Whatever.
    Reply
  • Raidur
    Lol how can intel say the Ion is overkill, and then move to say that they will be making upgraded/stronger parts rendering it useless...
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    Oh yeah, because who would want smooth frame rates while watching video on their net top. That's just silly.
    Reply
  • Tindytim
    I actually agree with Intel here, the 9400 is so powerful compared to the Atom, the processor is the bottleneck on the system.

    If intel produced a more powerful mobile processor (the SU2700 has potential), the Ion platform would be quite a bit more worthwhile.
    Reply