Acer AspireRevo first to announce with NVIDIA ION platform

Today NVIDIA and Acer partnered together to formally announce the first real ION-based hardware solution: the AspireRevo.  There really isn’t much news here to report other than what we have already discussed numerous times.  NVIDIA had a press briefing this afternoon to discuss the announcement and we essential were pitched the same technology we have seen many, many, many times before.  vReveal, Badaboom, etc. 


The only real new piece of information from NVIDIA was the official adoption of the NVIDIA ION GPU brand – rather than call the chipset on this platform the GeForce 9400M it will be called the “NVIDIA ION”.  NVIDIA says the ION provides “the best visual experience in the smallest form factors.”  Why this requires a new brand is really beyond me as the hardware is basically IDENTICAL to the GeForce 9400M product used in loads of motherboards, the Apple MacBooks and iMacs. 


The Acer AspireRevo includes a VGA output, HDMI output with 1080p and 7.1 HD audio support, Gigabit Ethernet, six total USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, analog audio output and microphone input and even support for flash memory cards.  The box is 7.1-in x 7.1-in x 1.2-in and supports up 4GB of memory (dual-channel DDR2 actually), up to 250GB of storage and Vista Home Premium/Basic.  The CPU in this beast will be the Intel Atom 230 – essentially making this identical to the NVIDIA ION reference platform we reviewed early this year.  Pricing is the only thing that hasn’t been revealed yet…and is likely the most important aspect to help us evaluate the platform.