NVIDIA's ION platform has been making the headlines since late last year, when the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker initially showcased its reference design. We were lucky enough to see the first NVIDIA ION-based nettop in action round about the time the company displayed the product for the first time, but we were anxiously waiting for the first consumer products to hit the market. That came when Acer unveiled its highly anticipated Aspire Revo nettop, a small-sized desktop computer system designed to incorporate Intel's Atom processor alongside NVIDIA's GeForce motherboard GPU. We got to review the Aspire Revo earlier this year and we found it to be everything we expected it to be. Now, we are going to take a look at yet another NVIDIA ION-based product, coming from Pegatron, namely the Cape 7.

 

Before we go on and talk about our second encounter with an NVIDIA ION-based nettop, let us set some things straight. Pegatron, as some of you might already know, is an ASUS spin-off company, which was formed to focus on the OEM manufacturing of motherboards and components, while the mother company was to apply its brand only on first-party branded computers and components. The Cape 7 design was initially showcased during this year's Computex 2009 show, in Taiwan, alongside a number of other NVIDIA ION-based systems, such as ASRock's ION 330. There was a significant amount of enthusiasm about the new system, especially since it boasted an interesting design and was expected to become available at a more affordable price tag, compared to Acer's Aspire Revo.

 

 

Pegatron's Cape 7 is a bit different from what Acer had to offer with its Aspire Revo. This machine has been designed to bring all the features of NVIDIA's Ion platform inside an even smaller a lighter form factor. Although Pegatron is yet to make a name for itself in the consumer market, the exterior design of the Cape 7 nettop manages to draw a considerable amount of attention, so we were really interested in seeing what it has to offer in terms of performance. We also wanted to see whether the thin design would enable us to access the upgradable parts of the nettop, much like in the case of Acer's Revo.

 

 

Now, there's no point in wasting your time with any more of these details, as you probably want to see what this system has to offer, when put through its paces. So, without further ado, we invite you to head on to the next part of our review, where you'll get a better perspective of what we will be dealing with.