Intel GN40 based netbooks held back by Windows XP

Posted on Thursday, April 23 2009 @ 00:35:35 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

DigiTimes reports one of the selling points of the Intel Atom N280 and GN40 chipset bundle is the enhanced 3D graphics performance and hardware video decoding, but unfortunately these features aren't available Windows XP. To use DirectX 10 and DirectX Video Acceleration 2.0 you need Windows Vista, and there are very few netbooks that use that operating system.

The Chinese-language website HKEPC has published a review of Asustek Computer's Eee PC 1004DN, one of the first netbooks to launch featuring GN40 chipset, which highlights the problem. The reviewers found that hardware video decoding was not working properly on the netbook's shipping configuring (with XP) which they traced back to only having DXVA 1.0 available. HKEPC went on to load Vista on the 1004DN and confirmed that, after that, hardware decoding worked as expected. Digitimes has contacted notebook vendors in Taiwan who commented that the issue does exist.

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Intel GN40 based netbooks held back by Windows XP