Can Nvidia Ion LE support DirectX 10? Find out...

A minor tweak can get the work done

NVIDIA a big name in the field of graphic cards manufacturing for computers launched an entry level Ion chipset designed specially for windows XP netbooks. NVIDIA’s Ion LE is designed to provide 1080p HD playback similar to what it’s regular ion sibling is providing but at cheaper cost. For this NVIDIA has disabled DirectX 10 from Ion LE. This chipset platform is a very effective combination of GeForce 9400M graphics based MCP79 chipset and the Intel Atom processor which allows low power systems to handle HD video, new video games, and other jobs by taking advantage of the graphics processor.

It seems that both Ion and Ion LE chipsets are physically very similar but only difference between them is that DX10 has been disabled in Ion LE. It seems to be the main drawback of Ion LE platform which seems to have been artificially crippled by NVIDIA themselves. Runawayprisoner a MyHPMini forum member has done some investigations and found out that by slightly modifying the HP’s own Ion drivers he could get them to install for the Ion LE.

It was found out that absence of the Ion LE device ID in the driver’s INF prevents Ion drivers from getting installed on an Ion LE system. Once that has been done than you will get DirectX 10 support on a chipset which has been rated lesser in performance. Runawayprisoner looked at the drivers for NVIDIA Ion LE and found out that these can be installed on system having device ID 0876 which relates to ION platform. Systems equipped with NVIDIA Ion LE have a device ID of 087F, so by adding 087F to the INF he installed NVIDIA Ion drivers. This will provide DX10 support for the Ion LE. This has converted a standard HP Mini 311 to a very effective system having power of NVIDIA Ion graphics. Runawayprisoner said he got 50 percent hike in the GPU for some DX9 games but in some games he has to manually make some games to use DX9 in place of DX10 as these games were performing slower when played under DX10. Also his Windows Experience Index score got a jump from 3.9 to 5.4.

Also it seems that Ion LE was a part of concession provided by NVIDIA to Microsoft’s XP licensing policies as Ion LE is only designed to be used on Windows XP based netbooks.