Dual core is great, however I'm a little apprehensive about battery life. With current average nettops getting between 1.5 and 3 hours, a extra TDP could cause battery life to drop significantly:(
Hopefully most good manufacturers can offset this in some way.
Damn right. I'm waiting for the next PMP (probably Archos) to use this processor so it's finally powerful enough for 720p/1080p H264 MKVs.
I completely ignored the last 2 generations of Archos PMPs because they omitted support for this... now that we have this processor, there's NO excuse.
What are you smoking? This chip is meant for small laptops/netbooks, even so it can not decode 1080p alone smoothly; beside, you wont notice any difference between hd and sd even on the latest archos series, due to limited screen res and size, not to mention the space 1080p content takes, plus the side-effects of a 8w cpu in the pmp.
Given that we now have 2 cores, it's highly likely it'll be capable of HD video playback.
Also, you're probably the billionth person to say there's no point of HD on small screen devices like Archos PMPs. However, I'm afraid you're wrong because: a) I already have a large collection of 720p/1080p resolution video I'd like to watch on the go WITHOUT having to re-encode them to a lower resolution + supported codec. In other words, I just want to drag and drop them straight onto my PMP and watch them. b) It may not make as big a difference on a small screen as it does on a large screen but IT DOES make a difference since we're downscaling high resolution video and so any artifacts in the video appear less noticeable.
You do have a point regarding the power though... maybe we'll have to wait forever for fuel cell batteries to become standard (and compact)!
yeah! also if they actually manage to have a poulsbo chip (rather than the 945GSE) that supports it would help offset the exta 4W power draw .. oh and better 1080p accel to boot....
@E71 -> feeling the same way myself re: high def content...i'm certainly not gonna attempt to keep a seperate version of everying for my portable players...already do that with my CDs in Flac and AAC for my ipod and its a royal pain...
Don't worry about the TDP, the chipset is most to blame for the poor battery life of current netbooks. Now that they're dual core, all we need is a new, power efficient chipset to make netbooks worthwhile for me.
I'm pretty sure it was engadget that reported on it, but the D945GCLF2 (2 for dual core) motherboard with the dual core atom has been shipping at mini-box for well over two weeks so far.
There's a lot of misinformation about TDP=total consumed power. The last story made the incorrect conclusion that total power draw was 8 watts. Unfortunately, that really isn't the case.
I've built 10 D945GCLF-based mini-itx atom systems so far, and without optical drive and a basic HD power consumption comes to 25 watts idle, 30 watts under max load. I'd tack on another 10 for dual core. As noted, the real power drain here is the 945 Chipset (ironically the only thing which requires active cooling). I can't for the life of me figure out why they haven't moved to something better and more suitable yet. I refuse to buy a netbook until the matching chipset is paired with Atom, or the power drains are essentially mitigated by the old 945 chipset. I sense that intel just watnted a way to dump a warehouse full of 945 chips.
I agree that we need a better chipset for netbooks. Unfortunately i am not to pleased with the decision Intel made to remove SATA support from the Poulsbo line. Apparently IDE requires less power, but seriously. IDE? I want to buy a netbook and throw a 2.5" SSD inside, and there is no way I am investing in an IDE SSD.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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Now if i can get this into a netbook, ill fianally take the plunge!
totally agreeing wit u bro
if
the
price
remains
relativly the same price
tho even that is a bit high :(
Dual core is great, however I'm a little apprehensive about battery life. With current average nettops getting between 1.5 and 3 hours, a extra TDP could cause battery life to drop significantly:(
Hopefully most good manufacturers can offset this in some way.
Damn right. I'm waiting for the next PMP (probably Archos) to use this processor so it's finally powerful enough for 720p/1080p H264 MKVs.
I completely ignored the last 2 generations of Archos PMPs because they omitted support for this... now that we have this processor, there's NO excuse.
@e71
What are you smoking? This chip is meant for small laptops/netbooks, even so it can not decode 1080p alone smoothly; beside, you wont notice any difference between hd and sd even on the latest archos series, due to limited screen res and size, not to mention the space 1080p content takes, plus the side-effects of a 8w cpu in the pmp.
@coolbee8
Actually, regular single-core Atom processor can play HD video:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/04/via-nano-trounces-intel-atom-in-hd-video-playback-not-quite/
Given that we now have 2 cores, it's highly likely it'll be capable of HD video playback.
Also, you're probably the billionth person to say there's no point of HD on small screen devices like Archos PMPs. However, I'm afraid you're wrong because:
a) I already have a large collection of 720p/1080p resolution video I'd like to watch on the go WITHOUT having to re-encode them to a lower resolution + supported codec. In other words, I just want to drag and drop them straight onto my PMP and watch them.
b) It may not make as big a difference on a small screen as it does on a large screen but IT DOES make a difference since we're downscaling high resolution video and so any artifacts in the video appear less noticeable.
You do have a point regarding the power though... maybe we'll have to wait forever for fuel cell batteries to become standard (and compact)!
yeah! also if they actually manage to have a poulsbo chip (rather than the 945GSE) that supports it would help offset the exta 4W power draw .. oh and better 1080p accel to boot....
@E71 -> feeling the same way myself re: high def content...i'm certainly not gonna attempt to keep a seperate version of everying for my portable players...already do that with my CDs in Flac and AAC for my ipod and its a royal pain...
Don't worry about the TDP, the chipset is most to blame for the poor battery life of current netbooks. Now that they're dual core, all we need is a new, power efficient chipset to make netbooks worthwhile for me.
I'm pretty sure it was engadget that reported on it, but the D945GCLF2 (2 for dual core) motherboard with the dual core atom has been shipping at mini-box for well over two weeks so far.
There's a lot of misinformation about TDP=total consumed power. The last story made the incorrect conclusion that total power draw was 8 watts. Unfortunately, that really isn't the case.
I've built 10 D945GCLF-based mini-itx atom systems so far, and without optical drive and a basic HD power consumption comes to 25 watts idle, 30 watts under max load. I'd tack on another 10 for dual core. As noted, the real power drain here is the 945 Chipset (ironically the only thing which requires active cooling). I can't for the life of me figure out why they haven't moved to something better and more suitable yet. I refuse to buy a netbook until the matching chipset is paired with Atom, or the power drains are essentially mitigated by the old 945 chipset. I sense that intel just watnted a way to dump a warehouse full of 945 chips.
I agree that we need a better chipset for netbooks. Unfortunately i am not to pleased with the decision Intel made to remove SATA support from the Poulsbo line. Apparently IDE requires less power, but seriously. IDE? I want to buy a netbook and throw a 2.5" SSD inside, and there is no way I am investing in an IDE SSD.
Using the main cpu to decode video is just lame... they should just use an extendable asic codec core. Thats one of the reasons why the nvidia tecra beats cpu's in power consumption when playing video.
http://www.slashgear.com/nvidia-demo-tegra-atom-video-playback-intel-should-be-worried-0311879/