Intel just got finished telling us how great its
Atom Z5xx series of chips were, in flavors ranging from 1.1 to 1.86GHz, and how they only needed a miserly 2.2 watts or less of power. They weren't good enough, apparently, as there are two new members now joining the ranks. First is the Z550, featuring a clock speed of 2GHz while still using less than 2.4 watts. Also new is the more frugal Z515, with a dynamic clock speed ranging between 800MHz and 1.33GHz to suit you whether you're playing Solitaire or watching Survivor re-runs. These chips too seem destined for mobile phones and MIDs, but we wouldn't be surprised if Sony releases a (slightly) speedier
VAIO P packing a Z550 -- and then refuses to import it to the States.
[Via
Pocketables]
posted Mar 20th 2009 7:44AM
I believe that more important product is dual core Atom 330, finding the way to entry level office computers, net-tops, home servers etc.
Jaak, http://jacksgadgets.blogspot.com/
I have to agree with you on that, but I really hate your self-promoting
I don't agree. The 330 is based on the 230, which had a TDP of 4W at 1.6GHz. The 270 had a very similar feature set at 1.6GHz (losing 64-bit, IIRC) but used 2.5W.
Hence, the 330 has a TDP of 8W, while a dual-core 550 at 2.0GHz would have a TDP of 4.8W.
I'd much rather see a dual-core 550 with the ability to selectively disable a core when on battery. This would give a big boost in performance without affecting battery life.
The Atom series can really use some more muscle too. Playing around with tweaking an Eee PC 1000HE (1.75GHz in super performance mode) for video playback showed that it can play most 720p h.264 content back just fine when using a renderer that does raw buffering, but it was unable to play back some scenes (such as the opening of the Dead Space film) without slowing down. Since decoding was done by CoreAVC (which makes very good use of dual-core systems), a bump up to a dual-core 2.0GHz model would make all 720p content playable without acceleration, and would put 1080p content (with 2.25x the pixels) in the same position as 720p is now; much or most content would probably play back with some careful tweaking.
Of course, a graphics chip supporting CUDA would also fit the bill; CoreAVC supports CUDA, and the 9300M in some netbooks does too. 1080p content on those products should work just fine regardless of the slow CPU.
I'd still like to see performance from an atom compared to an equivalent c2d or even a core duo. cause if the atom platform becomes this powerful, it might as well become the norm laptops.
in**
note to engadget: consider the implementation of an edit button.
...and what happened to that VIA talk a while back spanking Atom?
Well the thing is MOST people do not need all that performance.
Look at auto industry, no one needed a fully loaded, 8 passenger, body on frame, V8 powered behemoth of an SUV, but people bought them for "just in case" scenarios, all the while they could have done just as well with a Honda Civic.
My point is why overpay for what you do not need, most people serf the web, play solitaire, some games which Atom can handle, some Office applications, music, movies...............computers from 10 years ago did fine with the same tasks as do all Atom powered laptops.
Why pay more so something you do not need?
Sea Urchin:
I totaly understand what you are saying, but I think this man wants a "powerful netbook".
In other words, he doesn't understand the netbook market.
2.0ghz is still better than 1.4ghz or whatever we have.
A little off topic, but wouldn't it be nice to have a netbook as a "thin client"? Something ala remote desktop?
@Haikibutsu:
Kudos to that. Xandros Presto + noMachine. Assuming you can get Presto to install without it's xp buddy, and that !m is supported on Presto. Failing that, then just a ubuntu netbookremix + !m. All the thin client heaven.
At 2GHz and 2.4 W - can I have 4 of them in my laptop? Or 8? Would still use less power than my 2.6GHz C2D at 35W, no?
or at least let user delete their own comment and repost
Engadget's board is the iphone of comment boards.. It will suck until they feel their userbase deserves these needed features.
P.S. I have an iphone and am running 3.0 firmware.. Just having a little morning coffee fun! :)
Has you sex life improved since you got an IPhone.....are you cooler now with the girls?
Sweet, I hope ASUS comes out with a non-eeepc netbook with the Z550 and a chiclet keyboard :')
But can they play 1080p?
hahahaha! Of course they just made a new better processor.... I am expecting my shiny new Eee1000he in the mail today...
fug
Lol that always happens. But tbh the atom Z series are more for MID's while the N series are for netbooks, and the 1000he has the better-ish N series processor.
Anyone else find it humorous that the chipset is still like 5 times bigger than the cpu? Although I haven't seen nVidia's 9400 ion die side-by-side with the atom, but for all the crappiness that is the gma chips, you would expect at least equal sizing... right?
It is only for Atom N2xx series. The Poulsbo US15W chipset (for Z5xx series) use less than 2 watts.
That's nice..
But what I would really like to see them make is a chipset for Atom that doesn't require 1.21 gigawatts..
Double points if new chipset has mpeg2/mpeg4/h.264 decoding and HDMI-output built in..
I second that notion.
1.21 gigawatts??? ;P
Did you miss something?
The Poulsbo US15W chipset (for Z5xx series) use less than 2.3 watts (compare to 9.3 watts for 945GSE chipset for N2xx series). That's why Wind U120 is so energy-efficient.
Via:
http://ark.intel.com/system.aspx?groupID=36331&configID=27616&chipsetID=36550
http://ark.intel.com/system.aspx?groupID=35460&configID=27616&chipsetID=35555
Mpeg2/mpeg4/h.264 decoding and HDMI-output built in???
Yep, both decoding (H.264, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, VC1 and WMV9: 720p up to 1080i) and HDMI are there. Just look on Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (got HDMI but doesn't has any software with which you could handle the hardware decoding). You can read it too:
http://translate.google.pl/translate?prev=hp&hl=pl&u=http://www.hkepc.com/2595&sl=auto&tl=en
I'll hold off on buying a netbook until intel comes out with dual core atoms thank you....
Uhh...dual-core Atoms are already out... http://ark.intel.com/cpu.aspx?groupId=35641
Yes a vaio p you could actually watch full screen videos would be nice. But they'd also have to up the GPU as well... miserable GMA
Soon we will have these at 2.5 and then 3.0 GHz and there will be no difference between a normal CPU and this one. Just like netbooks are just getting bigger and bigger.
For the Intel Atom CPUs, the Z series is better than the N series in terms of performance and power consumption. That's why the new MSI U110 echo & U115 are going to be the crown.
Performance:
http://www.yugatech.com/blog/personal-computing/intel-atom-z530-vs-atom-n270/
Power Consumption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors
Wrong, look at that graph you posted. Z series (silverthorne) has lower performance than N series (diamondville) at the same clock.
If you buy anything with a Z series processor you are sacrificing price and performance for power efficiency.
I for one wish that Engadget would make an effort to better inform people of the differences between the 2 families of atom processors.
It seems that public knowledge is generally that there is just 'Atom' or like you, that the Z series is better, usually assuming the same performance per clock for Silverthorn when this is not the case at all. Silverthorn was originally meant for superportable premium devices such as umpcs, hence the lower power consumption and higher price tag.
Anything to improve performance is welcomed. The Atom is slow for today's "web browsing." Sure, it works fine if you're doing classic "web browsing" (checking emails, news, simple IM, etc). Now, "web browsing" means streaming video from youtube/hulu, video chat. multi-tabs web browsing, ajax heavy websites, etc. The Atom is not up to those tasks. The least it should get is dual-core. Of course, intel wants to keep Atom as the low-end choice, thus I don't expect performance to be improved much.
If the Atom reaches higher clockspeed but with less performance vs a lower clock speed Pentium dual core, then it's like Pentium 4 all over again.