NVIDIA to Work on Intel Atom Core Logic

[btarunr]

NVIDIA will have the opportunity to design platform core logic (chipsets) for the Intel Atom processor, in the weeks to come. The visual computing giant has had a fair bit of success with its MCP79 chipset for mainstream PCs, which could be ported to platforms with much smaller footprints, such as netbooks and nettops. The starting point in its roadmap could well be the MCP79 itself which has architectural superiority over Intel chipsets in the same range, for being of a monolithic design.

Intel's own chipset for the Atom processor faced quite some criticism from the media for being dated in both design and manufacturing processes, resulting in its high TDP. Major players in the industry, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI have said they welcome the partnership between Nvidia and Intel and believe the cooperation would give them more pricing flexibility.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[lemonadesoda]

Intel and Nvidia will join forces to enable Nvidia chipset support to the Atom platform in order to enhance graphics performance

Key info. Intel isnt looking at Nvidia to design a whole chipset for Intel; but is looking for a simple (outsourced) solution to improving integrated graphics in nettops.

 

[Bl4ck]

I you look at the overall TDP of an Intel Atom + i945 we have near 40Watts of power draw, but if you look at great ATI/AMD chipsets + low wattage Athlon X2 like 25 or 30watts we have the same power draw but more bang for the buck on AMD side. Intel did nothing spectacular with simplifying the Cpu architecture and by that approach they minimized the power draw, but they reused their old i945 ect. with ridiculous-mediocre (for todays standards) power draw and features.

 

[DrPepper]

Compared to the semprons I find the atom a fail even though it has a lower power draw.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Agreed. It's quite silly how inefficient an Atom based system is. At a minimum they should have made a low power 45nm shrink of the 945. Better still, they would have cut features (e.g. PCIe lanes) and introduced better power management and clock downs since the Atom is designed for netbook/top and NAS use.

Given the power consumption, its probably better to go with the Core 2 Mobile series Txxx and the laptop chipset.

 

[unsmart]

Someone should make a atom board without integrated GFX and a x16 pci-e slot. A monolithic chipset and a 4350 would probably end up lower power usage and if not at least be worth using in a HTPC. Regardless I'll must likely be getting a daulcore atom mobo to replace my parents 1gh VIA ITX I built for them years ago.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Oh man, I built a 1Ghz VIA ITX some years ago and it sucked so bad I swapped it for a mini ITX intel P3 800. And the P3 SMOKED the VIA. I'm very wary of VIA after their EPIA claims. All those fantastic benchmark figures that meant diddly squat in the real world.

 

[unsmart]

I'm running XP with everything turned off and 512mb of pc 133 with a ATI 7500 pci card so it's not all that bad for what my mom does. which is look at the internet on a 56k[ 33k max connection speed] usb modem and my dad wouldn't even touch the thing.
Via older cpu's are P3 arc based but with somethings like cache size reduced to cut back on power consumption. The nano I believe is there first CPU arc not licensed from Intel and preforms pretty well but uses about 25w. I would consider a nano based system if the price wasn't so high. Via can't compete with Intel on production cost and will probably priced out of the ITX market sooner or later.

 

[newtekie1]

I you look at the overall TDP of an Intel Atom + i945 we have near 40Watts of power draw, but if you look at great ATI/AMD chipsets + low wattage Athlon X2 like 25 or 30watts we have the same power draw but more bang for the buck on AMD side. Intel did nothing spectacular with simplifying the Cpu architecture and by that approach they minimized the power draw, but they reused their old i945 ect. with ridiculous-mediocre (for todays standards) power draw and features.

I don't know where you are getting your power numbers, but they are way off. My ASUS EeePC, with the 10" screen on full brightness, under load only draws 20w. The Maximum TDP of the N270 Atom is 2.5w, the maximum TDP of the i945 chipset used in netbooks is 6w, and the southbridge's TDP is 3.3w. So the whole setup is only using 11.8w.

Moving to the AMD side, there is nothing that offers the same power draw, but more performance. Plenty that offers more performance with more power draw though. AMD's side doesn't offer the same power draw. The CPU alone(which is just an underclocked Sempron) consumes 8w, after adding in the chipset, power consumption for the AMD solution is nearing 20w by itself, without the rest of the components.

Compared to the semprons I find the atom a fail even though it has a lower power draw.

The Semprons definitely perform better, but in this market, performance isn't the main focus. It just has to be good enough to access the internet and run Office. Which the single core Atom is more than capable of. Power consumption is king in the nettop world, people want 4+Hour battery life, which you simply can't do with a Sempron machine.

Agreed. It's quite silly how inefficient an Atom based system is. At a minimum they should have made a low power 45nm shrink of the 945. Better still, they would have cut features (e.g. PCIe lanes) and introduced better power management and clock downs since the Atom is designed for netbook/top and NAS use.

Given the power consumption, its probably better to go with the Core 2 Mobile series Txxx and the laptop chipset.

They did cut features, the i945 chipset used in Atom machines is very different from the original i945. They have even gone as far as cutting out Dual-Channel memory support, which isn't really an issue as most nettops/netbooks only have one memory slot anyway.

A process shrink would definitely have been nice though, and hopefully nVidia can release some chipsets that offer a little better video experience, and maybe better power demands.

 

[lemonadesoda]

^ thanks for the info.

 

[Hayder_Master]

friends are back after big war nvidia lose it before , hahaha , no one can beat intel mum