NVIDIA to offer scaled down Ion LE for netbooks
updated 02:25 pm EDT, Tue August 4, 2009
NVIDIA Ion LE for netbooks
NVIDIA will apparently soon roll out a less potent version of its Ion platform, according to a Tuesday Fudzilla report. The LE moniker has been used to designate an entry-level product at NVIDIA in the past, and the product PR manager for EMEA ION/notebook products, Igor Stanek, said the Ion LE chipset was designed specifically for use in Windows XP notebooks and nettops.
Stanek says Ion LE is identical to Ion, but only supports DirectX 9 and not the ION's DirectX 10. It will only be offered to computer manufacturers, Stanek added, which could help software makers such as Microsoft to charge less for its Windows XP licenses if the product only supports DirectX 9 and therefore does not threaten sales of Windows 7 systems that have DirectX 10 support with the appropriate hardware.
NVIDIA Ion LE based products are soon expected but not yet confirmed.
The current Ion is closely related to the company's GeForce 9400M graphics processor but is optimized for use in low-power devices.
