Acer's Nvidia Ion Revo Goes Dual-core Atom

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Two cores are better than one.

Acer was the first out the gate with an Nvidia Ion-based nettop, which made for a good, small, low power home theatre PC. It had HDMI, flash memory card readers, and of course the ever important GeForce 9400M, but it was a bit lacking in the CPU department.

While all Nvidia Ion platforms lean on the Intel Atom CPU, the original Acer Aspire Revo packed only a single core chip. While such a CPU choice could make sense for a netbook with its smaller thermal envelope, for a nettop we expect the beefier, dual-core Atom.

Acer seems to be making good on our expectations with its upcoming Aspire Revo 3600, which will pack the dual-core Intel Atom 330 on the Nvidia Ion chipset capable of supporting 4 GB of DDR2 RAM.

Acer won't be the only one with an Atom 330-based Nvida Ion nettop, however, as Asus revealed earlier this week its own EeeBox featuring very similar specifications.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • And the dual-core Atom's have hyperthreading, so it's like having a quad-core.

    /sarcasm


    I bet an Athlon II stuck at 800mhz speed-stepping would stomp it into the ground while using the same or less electricity.
    Reply
  • tektek
    I might be really interested in this.. space is a factor.. add performance in it.. and its a match made in heaven.. now only if the demonic price devils stay away from overpricing these things... then its a home run!
    Reply
  • tpi2007
    This is really the starting point for me in this department. Good enough cpu for most common tasks + good enough gpu for some light gaming and video decoding + small form factor + small electricity bill + silence. At an affordable price. What more could you ask for ?

    This is the perfect computer for your mom; a child's room; the kitchen, the basement, etc, especially if you have them connected to a network. That way you can use the server's dvd drive to install programs, which is the only limitation it has.
    Reply
  • hillarymakesmecry
    If this is $250 or less I'll buy one.
    Reply
  • Titanius
    This isn't new...

    http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=41924&vpn=PT.SCA0X.073&manufacture=Acer&promoid=1058
    Reply
  • Great to act as file server, router, and firewall!
    Also great for skype phone.
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    if only they would include an ONBOARD dvd drive!
    Reply
  • Who voted down tacoslave? Creating a drive bay for a laptop optical drive would be brilliant, rather than some clunky piece o' crap external drive. Shame on you.
    Reply