IT APPEARS THAT Jetway is going to be one of the first companies to launch a nettop with Intel’s soon to launch Atom D525 and D425 processors in combination with Nvidia’s Ion 2. It’s by no means the first Ion 2 nettop, as that honour has already gone to Zotac and the Zbox, but it’s the first nettop to combine Ion 2 with DDR3 supporting Atom processors.
We don’t have a ton of details, but from what we’ve managed to dig up, the system might very well go under the Mini-Top name and we even found a picture of it. The design leaves a little to be desired, but it looks a bit like a mix between Acer’s Revo and Pegatron’s OEM Ion nettop. Stylish isn’t a word we’d use to describe it, but it looks functional and as it comes with a vertical stand, it won’ take up much space either.
Feature wise we know it’ll come with either an Atom D525 (dual core) or a D425 (single core). Both models are clocked at 1.83GHz and the bus speed should be 166MHz. The Mini-Top is equipped with two SO-DIMM slots for up to 4GB of DDR3 800MHz memory. Ion 2, also known as the GeForce GT218, is of course a discrete GPU this time around, as the Pineview based Atom processors not only have integrated graphics, but also an integrated memory controller, so there’s no need for a full chipset from Nvidia.
Jetway has managed to pack in a wide range of connectivity options, including an HDMI port, a DVI port, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, four USB 2.0 ports, a pair of audio jacks and optional support for a mini PCI Express Wi-Fi card. Not a bad little machine as such, but we suspect it’ll far from the only one of its kind. We know that Zotac is pushing its Zbox series of nettops heavily with a lot of models in the pipeline, but as of right now, there don’t appear to be any immediate plans of using the new, slight faster, DDR3 support Atom processors.
Asus and MSI will most likely unveil new Eee PC and Wind nettops at Computex as well, but again, we don’t have any solid information about upcoming models. The nettop is obviously here to stay for now and it’s getting more and more powerful while remaining true to at least part of its original design idea which was small and affordable computers. We’re not so sure these new models will be all that affordable, but they should still be cheaper than an actual desktop PC, but of course also a lot less powerful. On the other hand, they’re also vastly smaller and don’t even come close to the power usage of a traditional desktop PC.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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