Mar 2, (PRINTWORDS NEWS)-
Ever since Intel introduced the Atom CPU a few years back, the definition of portable computing was redefined. While the netbooks powered by this tiny chip offer decent performance for basic users, the power users and gamers have always complained that Atom falters when it is made to do media oriented tasks. To address the issue, Intel unveiled the much touted Pine Trail platform which was also meant for countering the competition from NVidia’s Ion platform. Yesterday Intel stepped up the ante by offering the new Atom N470 CPU which is by far the speediest Chip belonging to the Atom N series single core CPU.
The Atom N47o chip runs at a default clock speed of 1.83 GHz, slightly ahead of its predecessor N450’s 1.66 GHz speed. The Intel representatives are of the opinion that the N470 will offer performance boost for netbook users as the CPU has graphics processing unit in built. It will be more energy efficient according to them. The new CPU has a L2 cache of 512 KB and also supports DDR2 667 MHz RAM. The new CPU has a TDP of 6.5 watt, slightly more than its predecessor.
However, the tech experts are not very enthusiastic about the new CPU from the stable of Intel. While it has got a speed boost the difference is less than 200 MHZ. At the end of the day the majority of the users will bother about lag free performance and smooth multitasking rather than bothering about power consumption. Besides, the integrated GMA 3150 GPU is not exactly suitable for playing present generation 3D games, though it may be able to playback HD content. The GPU supports MPEG 2 decoding but lacks support for H.264 standard. This is where Nvidia may give it a run for its money. The few Ion based netbooks have shown excellent graphics performance and the new Pine Trail CPUs need to match up if they have to win the favor of the users.
The price tag of the N470 is around $75 which is on the steep side. The price sensitive users may choose to stick to the dual core Atom 330 CPU that offers reasonable performance at lower price. No matter how it performs, a number of netbook makers are likely to launch models powered by this CPU. Gigabyte has announced its T1000 netbook already based on the N470 chip and others are expected to follow suit.
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