• nVidia Ion to Spice Apple Mac Mini Update

    nVidia Ion to Spice Apple Mac Mini Update

    Techtree News Staff, Jan 16, 2009 1911 hrs IST

    An unnamed nVidia partner website reported about Apple going for nVidia Ion in next Mac Mini refreshment

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Apple's Mac Mini refreshment caused quite a buzz pre-MacWorld period. Now, Toms Hardware and AppleInsider have reported about Apple's plans to update Mac Mini with nVidia's recently announced Ion platform. An unnamed nVidia partner website concluded about Apple going for nVidia Ion in next Mac Mini refreshment.

An interesting chronology of events, but failed to strike many. At the same time when nVidia launched their Ion platform, rumors about Mac Mini refreshment started buzzing the Web. nVidia's Ion platform will use low-power Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz processor with 533MHz FSB for RAM. This platform comes to pico-ITX form factor-based systems and integrates nVidia's new GeForce 9400M GPU.


 



Apple's new aluminum unibody MacBook and MacBook Pros have nVidia's GeForce 9400M GPU integrated. On the other hand, current Mac Mini sports 1GHz or 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 667MHz FSB. So, if Apple would use a low-power CPU, the OpenCL technology will come to their rescue. With OpenCL, the workload of certain functions of CPU can be carried out by GPU. However, OpenCL is expected to come with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

The Mac Mini with nVidia Ion configuration looks perfect on paper as of now. About the price, we can't anticipate the new Mac Mini's to be anywhere close to the current Mac Mini's that was launched for $500 (Rs. 24,300) to $700 (Rs. 34,000). On the other hand, nVidia said that the Ion platform pricing itself starts from $400 roughly.

Though an unnamed nVidia partner website said Apple will use Ion for Mac Mini, neither Toms Hardware or AppleInsider are sure about the same. If the update includes nVidia's Ion it would be a worthy combination and the next big hurdle would be its price.

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Related Links
Nvidia's Ion Platform Launched
Intel Will Not Validate Nvidia's Ion Platform
CES: MSI Intros X-Slim 320 Notebook
Tag keywords
nVidia Ion Apple Mac Mini update nVidia partner website nVidia GeForce 9400M GPU Intel Atom CPU Toms Hardware AppleInsider OpenCL technology



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JULIAN JOHN
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