I've had XBMC 10.1 running on an Acer Aspire Revo R3601 (which I think is Ion based) for a couple of years now and it's been able to smoothly play everything I've ever thrown at it. The trick is to get VDPAU working.

Its a bit old, but here's a guide I posted on the xbmc forums for getting 10.1 working with Debian 6 on the Revo: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=106811