PC perspective took an Nvidia Ion reference platform—all the guts crammed in a box—for a test drive and found the performance very much lives up to the hype: It blows away every other netbook.

But that incredible performance (for a netbook), with smooth HD video playback and Left4Dead running at an average of 20FPS, comes at a price. Literally, since Ion-based netbooks will run about $50 more than regular Atom-based netbooks with otherwise similar specs. And then on the battery front—the reference platform used double the amount of power of a standard Atom netbook. Nvidia says the reference platform lacked all of the power-saving features actual Ion netbooks will have, but definitely expect less time on the go.

Still, the dudes at PC Perspective are pretty hyped about Ion—check out all the benchmarks and details over there to see why. [PC Perspective]

Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.