Intel Atom N280 and GN40 Chipset Graphics Capability Limited by Windows XP OS in Netbook Market

Previously we mentioned about the new Intel Atom N280 series’ companion chipset GN40, a combo of Northbridge and Southbridge with intention to scale up the 3D graphics performance and hardware video decode acceleration that is still quite lacking in netbook and nettop market, now seems that the hardware graphics performance may not able to be fully utilized due to the nature of Windows XP Operating System commonly pre-installed in netbook or nettop platform.

One of the main reasons is these new chipset features are actually relying very much on DirectX 10 and DXVA (DirectX Video Accelerator) 2.0 APIs but for Windows XP, which is one of the most common Operating systems besides Linux in netbook market only has DXVA 1.0 that can’t fully make use of the available hardware capability. Intel Inc, the giant chipmaker did emphasize that it is up to OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to choose whichever flavor of OS that they would like to pre-install depending on their marketing plan. And obviously, most of them opt for Windows XP which is less hardware intensive as compared to Vista OS. The observation is consistent with the actual testing results conducted by a Chinese websites on Asustek’s 1004DN Eee PC embedded with GN40 chipset. Besides 1004DN Eee PC, Touch Note T1028 from Gigabyte technology is one of the earliest models that is already designed with GN40 chipset but so far no similar testing being carried out yet.