Nvidia has long advocated the many benefits of a strong graphics platform and experienced netbook users should by now understand the limits of a slower GPU when trying to perform modern tasks with it. Nvidia developed their ION platform for low cost devices to address this issue and have recently posted a video on their blog demonstrating the performance advantages that it can have when using the GPU-aware Internet Explorer 9.Â
In the video, Chris Pedersen of Nvidia compares an old netbook with just an Intel Atom to a newer Asus EEPC 1201PN that features ION. He runs three different test suites for the comparison: map zooming, flying 3D images, and SVG animation. The results speak for themselves:
At MIX 10, Microsoft released the IE9 Platform Preview which demonstrated a new JavaScript engine called Chakra, expanded support for CSS3, SVG, and HTML5, and hardware acceleration through Direct2D and DirectWrite.Â