It’s not like Intel to keep quiet about what they’re up to, but once in a while it just happens that news coming from the chip behemoth almost slips under the radar. Almost, because engadget picked up a scent from Intel about a couple of new Atom processors, aimed at (of course) netbooks and, less commonly, nettops.
The N2600 is running at 1.6 GHZ and a maximum of 1.83 GHZ when boosted, but staying within the boundaries of a very reasonable 3.5 W TDP. The N2800 takes it up a notch, running normally at 1.83 GHZ, but able to jump to 2.13 GHZ when needed, all with a TDP of 6.5 W. The N2600 and N2800 are aimed at netbooks and are a step up from the N4xx/N5xx of the world, and will bring in better power management, performance and HD support.
Also, the new platform supports up to 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, which will make the N2xx netbooks capable of running faster and superior multitasking. As for the D series, this is Intel’s offering for the nettop sector, so we should expect a chip capable of decoding HD content without any kind of compromise- or at least work smoothly together with a dedicated video card, probably ION 2.
The D2500 runs at 1.83 GHZ or 2.1 GHZ and has a TDP of 10 W, while the D2700, retaining the same TDP, will run at 2.13 and 2.4 GHZ. The integrated video cards on the N200 and D200 series come with support up to DirectX 10 and Pixel Shader 3.0, as well as Flash support up to version 11.0. These processors will run Blu Ray discs comfortably, with the maximum resolution being 1900 x 1200 on both platforms.
Maximum resolutions supported by the two platforms
The two lines of processors are part of Intel’s Cedar Trail offensive, which was supposed to be released around September, but graphics controller issues determined Chipzilla (there, we said it) to delay it, as the processors didn’t pass Windows 7 certification. While these chips are not overtly aimed at tablets and smart phones, we might see some versions of them appearing on hand sets and slates sooner than later, especially after Windows 8 will be out in force.
Either way, there will more than enough netbooks and nettops packing these new chips around Christmas, so you’ll have the chance to test them yourself.
The Intel Cedar Trail Data Sheet made no mention of either Intel’s Turbo Boost or their Burst Mode over clocking on demand technology.
To date Turbo Boost has only been applied to their higher end products and Burst Mode only to their Moorestown and Oak Trail. However we already know Cedar Trail will lack things like a hardware encoder like both Moorestown and Medfield are given and that’s typical of Intel leaving such features for the products they most want to sell.
So all we know right now is the Data Sheet indicates a frequency range for each of the new Cedar Trail ATOMs. But an alternate interpretation for example could be they are just indicating the engineering specification for each chip and the operational range each can be set to.
Besides, if the N2600 was capable of increasing its clock speed for even a moment to 1.86GHz then it would have benched much better than it did in the preliminary released scores and not scored below the same default clock speed N570, which we also know definitely has no such enhancement.
So I’m leaning more towards the idea that it just indicates the stable range they can choose to preset the default clock speed to for each chip series.
james, I’ve got a laptop with a D2700 on board, it’s the new generation Asus Lambo VX6S . I’m going to run the basic benchmarks on it and post them later today or early tomorrow. Any suggestions of what should I run besides the basic tests and some games? I have the device till Monday so there’s plenty of time for some thorough tests.
Interesting, the VX6S was rumored to get a AMD discrete graphic card instead of Nvidia ION, as well as a 3D capable display… Can you confirm the specs?
For the Cedar Trail, the looming question is how stable the Intel drivers are for the PowerVR based GMA. Though if it’s using a AMD discrete graphic then you may not be able to test that properly unless they made it switchable?
If it is switchable then you can maybe run some graphic stress tests to see how stable it is and of course see how the performance compares to the discrete card.
yep, it comes with the n2700 and amd 6470M graphics, with 4 gigs of ram and standard 5400rpm HDD. Graphcis doesn’t seem to be switchable, i only get the AMD chip in device manager under display adapters.
I’m still going to check for some options in BIOS, but really seems like there’s no way to test the graphics on the N2700. Still, i can test the CPU in PCmark, wprime, cinebench. I’ll post the results later today and have an unboxing video of the device.
as for stability, one again, i have a sample and not necessarily the final product, so drivers might still be an issue. just have to be patient now for the tests to run
rectification: it’s not the N2700, it’s the D2700, so the replacement for the D525 I believe. Got carried away