Here comes nVidia and business is about to pick up in the netbook world. nVidia finally announced its entry into the netbook market today with a brand new platform, which means netbooks — lacking significantly in the graphics department — are about to get a boost.

nVidia’s Ion platform will bring a whole new level of graphics to netbooks, combining Intel Atom and a GeForce 9400M on a Pico-ITX motherboard, with a graphics and video performance some ten times better than Intel’s GMA 945. This will allow netbooks to do what was previously impossible – run some of the newest game releases, even if with settings lowered from what what a PC powerhouse could manage.

Yep, thats right — you will actually be able to run something like Far Cry 2 or Left 4 Dead on your laptop with an Ion-charged Intel Atom netbook! It also means Windows Vista or Windows 7 will be more plausible options on netbooks that previously struggled to run them.

The Ion platform is expected to be on show at next month’s CES and systems using it should be out and about by the middle of 2009. nVidia says Ion will add about $50 to the price of netbooks, but with what it is likely to bring, that will surely be an extra $50 well spent.