Tuesday, March 1st 2011
Intel Intros Atom N570 Dual-Core Processor
Intel today expanded its Atom family of high-efficiency, low-footprint x86 processors, with a new high-speed dual-core model. The Atom N570 released today is clocked at 1.66 GHz, a 166 MHz increase over N550 and its 1.50 GHz speed. The dual-core chip is backed by HyperThreading technology, which gives the OS a total of 4 logical CPUs to work with. Atom N570 features a single-channel, low-latency DDR3 memory controller, with DDR3-667 being the memory speed standard (common DDR3-1066/1333 modules will run at 667 MHz, with lowered latency). The processor also embeds a graphics controller, a PCI-Express root complex, and an L2 cache of 1 MB. One can expect N570 to gradually replace N550 in netbooks.
Source:
Intel
39 Comments on Intel Intros Atom N570 Dual-Core Processor
1. Both cores being on-die instead of combined.
2. Integrated DDR3-667 controller.
3. Integrated GPU (Intel HD, not HD 3000/2000)
4. Integrated PCI Express controller.
An AMD Bobcat Fusion processor will eat this alive though. Probably cheaper too.
Also, this one supposedly supports 4GB of RAM...
ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=49669,41173,50154,55637,52497,49490,43098,35641
They are a great start to a SFF HTPC because I like acronyms. The Gigabyte board on their is the the one used in the Zotac Zbox.
AMD E Series (E-350) has DirectX 11 Graphics, Radeon HD 5450 level graphics performance, 1080p Blu-Ray Decoding in Hardware, HDMI bitstreaming of DTS-HD/TrueHD, out-of-order Dual Core 1.6ghz x86 CPU with AMD64
Atom has DirectX 9 SM 2.0 Graphics, crappy intel level graphics performance, No 1080p Blu-Ray decoding in hardware, no HDMI bitstreaming
The n570 is probably on par with the C-50 in terms of computational performance, maybe slightly more since the n550 was fairly comparable.... but the HD6310 in the C-50 beats the pants off of any intel atom offering in terms of graphics, and once more stuff supports APU coprocessing, that gap will widen. This chip is not aimed against the E-350, which has a 60% clock speed boost over the C-50 (and a TDP increase), as well as a faster clocked APU graphics core.
It's nice to see intel pushing out new processors, but since the fusion line was launched intel really can't touch AMD. They have the advantage of OEM partnerships from their prominence in netbooks up until now, and they certainly have plenty of volume in the market... but the atom simply does not compete with the Fusion line - especially when web computing is moving more and more towards multimedia.