BlizzCon 2009 – The Vendor Booths

The NVIDIA Booth

NVIDIA was certainly in the house showcasing a bunch of their ION-powered ION devices.

Here, we interview one of the NVIDIA markating directors about their prototype netbooks featuring TEGRA family of processors. The TEGRA is the world’s first single-chip computer capable of the high definition and ultra-low power consumption.

There has been a bunch of buzz about NVIDIA’s line of “Nettop”s as they have been trickling out into the market. The Acer AspireRevo was designed to be affordable and a space-saver as they promote its use as a HTPC or small form-factor desktop. For around $350, you get a low-power Intel Atom 230 processor – enough to stream your movies, music and other multimedia to your home theater via the HDMI connector. Of of these was powering a 50-inch plasma in 1080P with no effort whatsoever.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 was one of the first netbooks powered by NVIDIA’s Ion chipset. The S12 featues a 12.1-inch lcd screen with a full-sized keyboard and has an Intel 1.6GHz Atom engine. You can pick this sub 3-pound netbook for around $450 right now.

Lastly, we checked out the Zotac ION ITX 230 motherboard which is a small form factor Mini-ITX ION board that home theater pc builders will just love.