News - Intel launches first dual core Atom processor

[HEXUS]

Pricing and spec unveiled for new processor designed with nettops in mind.

Read more.

[sleepyhead]

...|snip|...the first Atom to have 1MB L2 cache, clocks at 160 GHz and has a 533 MHz FSB.

Great googly moogly! 160Ghz with only an FSB of 533Mhz, that is SOME CPU.

Forget Nehalem/i7, 160Ghz Atom is the way to go...!

[sawyen]

yep.. spotted the 160 Ghz..

typo there.. or is Intel doing something super with the Atom to scale up to 160Ghz..

[Scott B]

Thanks, forgot the decimal point.

[MSIC]

We would like to know what the HEXUS.community thinks of the concept of "nettops" as Intel would have us call them. Is it a valid niche?

Absolutely i think it is.
For far too long we have been sold that more (faster Mhz, cores etc) is better but honestly for the likes of my parents who type emails and a rate of 2 words a minute and browse ebay (but are too cautious to actually buy anything) something like this is totally appropriate.

I even fancy one myself, since my main rig runs 24 / 7 for downloads, quick connectivity or whatever but in truth i dont need anything like it's potential 95% of the time.

If i had something like that connected to a HDTV, was on probably 24/7 for streaming media / downloading / skype etc, my main machine would be turned off much of the time.

As for dual core being better than the single, yes, maybe dual is necessary to reduce those freeze / lock-up issues when anti-virus runs etc (although in my experience i still get slow-downs with my Athlon X2, which appears mostly to be hard drive / data transfer related issues than CPU use).

[NightshadowUK]

Well I'm sure glad I didn't buy a netbook this weekend now. I knew a dual-core Atom would be on the way but I had no idea just how soon.

[Jay]

do you think it will have enough grunt to be able to play 1080P blu-ray?

[this_is_gav]

If the wattage of the chip that AMD announced is a rough indicator of the speed of it, then it would be a better option in my opinion. Looking forward to that. Perfect for an HTPC. I'd love to try an Atom-based system in an HTPC, but I'm not sure there'll be quite enough grunt, and there are no board around bigger than Mini-ITX that I know of.

Until there's a half decent chipset out, then it's all a bit irrelevant anyway. Intel cocked that one right up.

Originally Posted by Jay

do you think it will have enough grunt to be able to play 1080P blu-ray?

Fairly sure it'll need assistance from a GPU. Even a single core Opteron @ 2.4GHz couldn't play 1080P without hardware acceleration from the GPU.

[dangel]

Reports are that intel will stop manus from putting the dual core atom in netbooks..

[NightshadowUK]

[Webby]

As to the 1080p question without a discrete graphics card the onboard graphics are just not up to it and if it is released on mini-ITX boards (as seem likely) then unless they put a PCIE slot rather than PCI you will be stuffed. Add to that the fact you might actually have wanted to put something in that slot like a tv tuner and it really is all a bit of a farce.

The are mini-itx boards out there that will do 1080p though a few 780G and 8200 chipsets for AMD CPUs and Intel have a G45 board out for S775, problem is they are all expensive £80+ for the board plus a CPU I would expect the duel core Atom boards to be costing ~£70 (as the current single cores go for ~£55).

As to if they will make a good nettop they will be better than the single core and as long as they are still cheaper than a conventional board and CPU ~£80 then maybe they will see some use really they need to get the chipset updated to the G45 then maybe they would be competitive in a number of markets.

[TheAnimus]

the problem is the 945 is rather energy hungry in comparison to these atom CPUs.... look at the mini-itx offerings, the chipset fan is massive compared to the CPU fan!