NVIDIA Ion – Intel Atom Done Right?

3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware. 3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage with default settings had a 3DMark score of P300, which isn’t too impressive as neither of the GPU tests were able to break the 1FPS mark.

Benchmark Results: Lowering the benchmark settings to entry level in 3DMark Vantage was optimal for the NVIDIA Ion Reference platform and the platform now has a 3DMark score of E2463. Since 3DMark Vantage is tough on the Ion I figured the least I could do is run it on 3DMark06 as well to see how it does.

3DMark 2006

3DMark 06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking and the latest version in the popular 3DMark series! 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, advanced SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.

Benchmark Results: With default settings the NVIDIA Ion reference platform scored 1185 3DMarks at 1280×1024 and all default settings.

Here are the detailed benchmark results for those that are interested.