Intel Atom CPUs, for a long time, were combined only with Intel 945C chipset and integrated GMA950 graphics card. Although Intel graphics card is worthless when it comes to games, it is power enough to play HD videos. In addition, this combination has low power consumption levels, so besides HTPCs, it was ideal for office configurations. After lot of troubles, NVIDIA presented its ION platform with support for Intel CPUs. Whole platform is based on Intel Atom CPU, but chipset and graphics card are different, so besides hardware support for HD video reproduction there is also support for DirectX 10. All movie lovers will appreciate this fact, while these features will most certainly be one of the most important features that will promote ION as perfect base for HTPCs. When it comes to power consumption, this new platform should have slightly higher consumption compared to Intel solution..



Link: InsideHW