Faster Atom Chips Could be Introduced Monday
Faster Atom Chips Could be Introduced Monday
Posted 02/26/2010 at 6:45pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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It’s no secret that Intel’s Atom chips are a bit on the slow side. While we certainly like the battery efficiency, a bit more power would be great. It appears Intel is willing to appease us, and the announcement may come on Monday. Intel is expected to introduce the Pine Trail based Atom N470, which will be nearly the same as the N450, but clocked at 1.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz. We also heard a while back that the N470 netbooks would be allowed double the memory of the N450 units. We'll have to wait until Monday to see if that's still the case. It’s not a lot, but with Atom right at the edge of usability, every little bit helps.
Atom chips have been in high demand ever since netbooks took the PC market by storm. Atom offers lower power consumption than the previous low-power solution, the Core 2 ULV, but lags behind in processing power because of it. The N450 was released late last year, and quickly found its way into consumer products. Intel expects an equally speedy adoption of the N470. No word on if you will pay much of a premium for the new Pine Trail chip.
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Keith E. Whisman
February 28, 2010 at 8:14am
Were also likely to see no new content on MaximumPC.com website until Monday either.
Danthrax66
February 28, 2010 at 10:03am
Yeah I was just thinking that if this would probably have no comments if it wasn't the last article posted before the weekend.
Ryan Whitwam
February 28, 2010 at 12:21pm
Actually it had several comments shortly after it was posted ;)
We usually have weekend content, but this particular weekend is an exception.
Keith E. Whisman
February 28, 2010 at 3:47pm
You see a little complaining and hinting goes a long way here.. Excellent.. Thanks for the content. As always Maximumpc.com rocks.
Its the only magazine that printed my centerfold quality image of me holding my son.
FRAGaLOT
February 27, 2010 at 9:24pm
Netbooks have been around before the ATOM chip. Asus EEE PCs first used Pentium M CPU clocked at 900mhz or less (not Core 2 ULV those were in low power LAPTOPS, not netbooks). So the demand for the Atom CPU isn't because they are in netbooks now, it's because of the advent of netbooks in and of them SELVES. The first sentince in the second paragraph of this article is not an accurate statement. "Atom chips have been in high demand ever since netbooks took the PC
market by storm."Also if these new Atom N470 CPUs allow "double the RAM" why would you want 4 gigs on a 32bit CPU? 32bit OS (WinXP) barely can use more than 3.6GB. So unless the N470 has AMD64 bits included, there's no point to extra RAM.
violian
February 27, 2010 at 7:45pm
Netbooks employing the Atom N270 weren't that battery-efficient. I bought an Acer 11.6" netbook with the Atom processor, and it was such a horrible computing expierience (super laggy when browsing web-pages, etc), that I sold it and bought another Acer 11.6" - but this time-around, it had a Core Solo ULV processor. Much more powerful and usable! Both of 'em had the exact same battery-model and everything. Yet I was getting the same battery-life with the Core Solo as the Atom variant (5.5 hrs). So I say, double-thumbs up to the Intel Core Solu ULV!
logicmaster2003
February 27, 2010 at 10:50am
- I'm still gonna be holding on to my old Toshiba laptop (celeron 1.6 ghz, 1 GB ram, integrated graphics, dual-boot winXP and Mandriva2010.x). I just thought of getting an ultra-portable (10.1") that I can carry around for leisure but now I guess I'll wait a lil bit longer cuz I might eye on the dual-core atom chips (not sure yet),
Curtai
February 27, 2010 at 10:07am
Hey I thought snapdragon is suppose to be a mobile phone chip cause thats gonna be the next phone I get if it comes to Verizon anytime soon... 1GHz chip in my phone... amazing... its all good...
logicmaster2003
February 26, 2010 at 9:22pm
geeeez .. the design-and-production pace are faster than the my rapid eye movements ! It was just less than 2 years ago when I wanted to buy the very first Atom processor netbook when it went $349. Since then.. they kept adding new and new things and confuses the bajingle out of me.
to make me even more confused.. theres been so many netbook maker nowaday ( hp, compaq, lenovo, asus, acer, msi, sony, samsung, toshiba, google, etc etc). And to make me even more confused.. on top of Intel's and AMD's many many rapid-changing cpu design, now theres ARMS and Snapdragon .. geeze who have the right mind to decide what to get nowadays ?
NSA
February 28, 2010 at 4:42pm
Just buy ANY Intel based netbook or notebook with USB-3 when they become available !
and remember, Atom CPU's are OK if your not going to use your computer for anything!
and Intel's Ultra Low Zoltage but "Real" CPU's are good for everything else!
Keith E. Whisman
March 01, 2010 at 1:14am
If your Intel Atom CPU's are great. Intel is making gobs of money on these hobbled cpu's. And I am so glad that I'm not the only person that hates Atom CPU's. I'm so sick of Intel producing stuff that is just barely works. Meats a minimum spec that allows the Windows GUI to load and sorta operate. Intel can produce powerful processors that are fast and sip power that would work great in netbooks but no.. They have to have a fucking Atom.
Perhaps the Atom processor would have been awesome Ten years ago and even today if they were integrated in media players like the Zune. And even cell phones but in a computer running Windows?
QuakindudeMod
February 27, 2010 at 9:43pm
I hear you. But YOU can make the choice very easy. Find one that does all you need a netbook to do, which really isn't much, and then BUY the thing.
My wife was caught up in the same washing machine you are. Going round and round, always coming out a little more faded and wrinkled after each attempt to figure out which one was best for her. So I sat her down and asked her what she's going to use it for.
She said, "Websurfing, checking our bank accounts, playing Bejeweled and solitaire and writing the occasional MS Word document." So seeing that she had the very most basic of demands with long battery life being her primary concern, as well as weight, we went with an Acer Aspire One. N280 CPU, 2GB of ram, 100GB HDD for all of her music. She plays the music off of that thing in the car all the time. Take it out to the lake, plug it in and next thing you know, we can stream Internet music and news or just her large collection of music.
Just find one that will do what you need it to do. If you keep it up, one day you'll just talk yourself right into a Notebook and you'll be upset over not having the transportability or 8 hour battery life like my wife's netbook has.
*****MaximumPC Moderator. Report inappropriate/SPAM comments toQuakindudeMod at Gmail--dot--com with a link. My personal comments do not necessarilyreflect the opinions of MaxPC or Future US*****
snapple00
February 26, 2010 at 10:18pm
Just go out and buy any cheap laptop that isn't a netbook and boom goes the dynamite: you have something way more powerful than any netbook with slow technology like atom, Snap etc.
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