While NVIDIA releases incremental GPU upgrades, the burning question on everyone’s mind has been: “So, just how good is the Ion?” Talk about NVIDIA’s new Netbook platform began in early December and, after a little smack talk, has finally made its way into the hands of testers.

The svelte little box marries an incredibly potent and well-featured chipset to the “good enough” performance of the Atom. If there was any doubt that Intel’s chipset is to blame for the Atom’s dismal performance in certain tasks, look no further than Tech Report’s perfectly functional 1080p playback.

What’s particularly compelling about Nvidia’s Ion reference system is that, despite its few shortcomings, it’s still far more capable than Intel’s existing Atom platform. An Ion-based system might not play back every single Blu-ray title perfectly or run every game at acceptable frame rates, but you can’t do either on a 945G-based Atom box, ever. So if you’ve already settled on an Atom-based rig, you definitely want one with a GeForce 9400 chipset.

I’ll be in the corner with my MSI Wind. Sobbing gently. Quelling its fears of abandonment. Shhhhh, don’t you worry, daddy won’t leave you.