By Shane McGlaun

I have a couple gaming PCs in my house and none of them can be called green. In fact, my personal gaming PC can double as a heater in the winter and after a few hours use in the summer it makes my office unbearably hot.

Maingear has announced a gaming PC for the eco conscious gamer called the Pulse. According to Maingear, the Pulse is the world’s greenest gaming PC and is the first upgradable NVIDIA Ion PC ever. The machine uses NVIDIA Ion graphics for power savings and can be upgraded with a GeForce 9800 ECO video card.

The 9800 ECO is similar to the 9800 GT but draws 40% less power than the normal 9800 GT. The computer starts at $799 and can be fitted with Intel Core 2 Duo processors or Intel Core 2 Quad parts. The machine can also be stuffed with up to 8GB of RAM and optional Blu-ray.

[ Maingear ]

By Shane McGlaun

When I was at CES this year one of the cool things that I saw was the NVIDIA Ion platform demo at the NVIDIA booth. The little machine looked to be the perfect HTPC with a tiny form factor that would fit inside my cramped entertainment center.

I wondered why we didn’t see machines at CES actually using the Ion platform and I was starting to think we might not see any. Acer has now unveiled the first Ion machine called the AspireRevo. Acer says the computer is no larger than your typical hardcover book and is a fully capable computer with advanced graphics and multimedia features.

The Ion engine has an Atom CPU with an NVIDIA GPU and is capable of HD video conversion. Processing of HD video is handled by the integrated GPU. The machine supports Vista Home Premium, outputs full 1080p video and 7.1 surround sound. Acer says that it will play games like Spore, Call of Duty 4, and Sim City 4 and is DirectX 10 compatible. Blu-ray playback is supported with an external Blu-ray player. Pricing and availability are unknown.

[ NVIDIA ]