Discussion of everything directly related to Intel® Atom™ Processor, articles & review links, technical documentation, personal experience, supporting chipsets, where you see the technology going etc . . .

This is a [Knowledge base], please make sure every post is either a contribution to the main topic or just a good question relating to the topic, the idea is that we as a group build up a useful resource for everyone to share knowledge. This resource will be available to many people around the world so please lets show them our talent . . . try and avoid excessive quoting and thanks in advance for your input!

Damn Big.Wayne you are on a streak with all these glitzy topic posts. You looking to be the next "Vogue" of overclocking.

For the first generation, 230/330, performance is poor but the processor itself uses little power. In an interesting move Intel coupled most of them to the 965 chipset (cheap), which proceeded to use significantly more power than the atom itself thus making the claimed 2/4W something of a con.

Nevertheless if you're patient, don't do many things at once, and value battery life over performance, it works well. Netbooks would not be a success without it. However I'm not sure firefox & word need more processing power than this, so don't know what void Intel intend to fill with the faster versions.

This is a good idea mate, nice one. I was shopping for netbooks with my auntie at Xmas and even I was having trouble trying to keep up with all the various Atom N280s, N430s, Z520s, Celeron M-1300s etc. etc. etc. It's a proper pain.

JonJ678 said:

For the first generation, 230/330, performance is poor but the processor itself uses little power. In an interesting move Intel coupled most of them to the 965 chipset (cheap), which proceeded to use significantly more power than the atom itself thus making the claimed 2/4W something of a con.

Nevertheless if you're patient, don't do many things at once, and value battery life over performance, it works well. Netbooks would not be a success without it. However I'm not sure firefox & word need more processing power than this, so don't know what void Intel intend to fill with the faster versions.

Click to expand...

I think the chipset was the 945, not the 965 which as far as i know was actually quite good as a desktop part never the less.

Atom doesn't need a chipset. It will eventually be a one chip solution. I have a netbook and the performance is really bad although the battery life makes up for it. I cant wait for a proper low power fusion core. The new Atom though it integrates graphics still uses the same technology as the older one so it is kind of moot for us.

You're quite right, it never used the 965. Apologies.

wiki said:

Although the Atom processor itself is relatively power efficient for an x86 microprocessor, many chipsets commonly used with it dissipate significantly more power. For example, while the N270 CPU commonly used in netbooks has a net maximum TDP of 2.5 W, an Intel Atom platform that uses the 945GSE Express chipset has a specified maximum TDP of 11.8 W, with the processor using a relatively small portion of the total power consumed. Individual figures are 2.5 W for the N270 processor, 6 W for the 945GSE chipset and 3.3 W for the 82801GBM I/O controller. Intel also provides the Intel System Controller Hub US15W chipset with a combined TDP of less than 5 W together with the Atom processor Z5xx (Silverthorne) series, to be used in ultra-mobile PCs/Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

Initially, all Atom motherboards on the consumer market featured the Intel 945GC chipset, which uses 22 watts alone. As of early 2009, only a few manufacturers are offering lower power 945GSE-based motherboards to end users, paired with the Atom N270 or N280 CPU, while Dell's Mini10 (but not Mini10V) uses the US15W chipset with Z-series processors.

Click to expand...

Atom doesn't need a chipset. It will eventually be a one chip solution.

Click to expand...

They have already integrated the northbridge into the cpu with the new N450/N470 and D410/D510 chips being teamed up with the NM10 Tiger Point southbridge, so they have moved it from being a 3 chip solution to a 2 chip solution.

Expect DDR3 versions sooned to be dubbed N455/N475 and D415/D515.

overclocking atoms is fun

My experience of Atom has been great. I've got a dual core + hyper threading 330 model with Intel graphics as a server machine in our home. It's much snappier than I expected and handles the light load I throw at it easily. Browsing and general machine use is great.
- I tried Cinebench for the hell of it and the score is looooooooow, yet it doesn't feel ten times slower than my i5 750 in general use!
- I even encoded MPEG4->DVD overnight and it was a similar speed to running the same tasks on my C2D 2.1GHz in VirtualBox.
- running the latest Ubuntu 9.10 + 2x640GB drives with various RAID partitions
- the thing is fanless for most of the time, only kicks in when the northbridge gets too hot

Pendu said:

"Vogue" of overclocking.

Click to expand...

Pendu, you have just broken the first rule of the [Knowledge Base] . . .

Every single post *must* be related to the original topic, this can either be your original text or something as easy as pasting up a link like so:

Intel Atom CPU Review
Tom's Hardware 06/05/2008

It would be nice if Intel released some higher clocked Atom processors though. An Atom 330 running at 3GHZ and hopefully with a low TDP would be great!!

It would be nice if Intel released some higher clocked Atom processors though. An Atom 330 running at 3GHZ and hopefully with a low TDP would be great!!

Click to expand...

No chance they don't want Atom to compete with CPUs they make more money on.

Sorry wrong thread..

Bit-tech reviews Looking at a shuttle PC using an ATOM 230 and 330 in photoshop, compression and encryption, decompression, mp3 encoding(next page) and xvid encoding(next page). Also Compares it to a sempron LE1200

Thanks for the contributions so far lads, rjkoneill that’s just wrong mate!

I thought I would pen some original text . .

Atom™ Age . . .

I'd heard a lot about the Intel® Atom™ as I've been interested in ULV computing for a few years, didn't like the look of it much until the Hyper-threaded models turned up . . . There were Net-Book models (small laptops) and Net-Top models (ITX desktop ting!), as I already have a HTPC but no laptop the choice was easy! . . . . started reading a few different web reviews but as always when you read about a product without using it you build up a weird distorted picture, some people said it was good, others said it was laggy? . . . the biggest grumble I heard was there wasn't enough processing power to play Adobe flash videos which was a concern as I'm addicted to the BBC iPlayer . . . Anyway got a chance to buy one for work so did a little digging around and come up with this . . .

• Intel® Atom™ N270 1.6GHz
• 1GB DDR2 Ram
• 160GB HDD
• 10.1 WSVGA
• WLAN
• Webcam
• 6cell Battery
• Black
• XP Home
• Product Page

Good Price, very good price! . . . and you can't really gauge from the picture just how dinky these things are, decent and crystal sharp widescreen, nice little keyboard, 3x USB2.0 ports, 10/100 Lan port, VGA, Headphone-In/Mic-in and built in Video-cam, WIFI . . . haha nice!

Not really a big fan of any touch pads so I plugged in a little Microsoft USB mouse and the click fest began! . . . . nice and fast, not laggy, good start. Impressed by the quality of the screen but had to change a default option that kept making it dim, once that was done I was in business. Open IE and hit iPlayer and waited with baited breath for the slides-show to begin but alas my fears were unfounded . . . it played the videos perfectly, of course the Atom magic didn't begin until I hit the iPlayer full-screen button and there it was . . . . a perfect little widescreen video playing in my palm . . . streaming the data via wireless and powered by a 6-cell battery, of course I wandered around the house marvelling at the possibilities watching the video play out in my palm as I walked, cool beans! . . . having passed the iPlayer test I quickly fired up the mandatory Iron-Man film (DivX) and again that played smooooth! . . . at this point I realised the built-in speakers were pretty kak so went and got my boombastic sennheiser cans and connected them to the headphone-in jack . . . oh yes, sweet clear *loud* audio . . . at this point I realised I would never have a boring train journey again!

With the basic Video/Streaming-video/Audio tests out the way I sat down to do some surfing, auctioning, a little bit of OcUK forum viewing etc and found the screen wasn't really big enough with all the toolbars eating up valuable screen real estate . . . however this was solved by hitting the [F11] key and switching to FullScreen Mode, along with the little USB mouse I found the set-up perfectly useable . . . Storage for a heap of personal data is also not a problem with a 160GB hard-disk . . . but it was easy to plug in my 500GB USB 2.5" drive which is something I use when working out and about and need an easy way to backup a clients important data so basically a very useful tool . . . . Battery life was reasonable, the video cam worked fine, the wireless worked without a hitch, can't think of anything that was a problem really!

The Intel® Atom™ N270 @ 1.6GHz processor with Hyper-Threading didn't have any problem dealing with my day to day usage, you know thing like Surfing, emailing, working in MS-Office, video/audio playback, it was all good! . . . as the version I had came with Windows XP home the 1GB of DDR2 memory proved ample for my needs. I think the only feature I didn't get on this model was HDMI out which was an extra £74. If you have been thinking of getting one of these they have no doubts, they are very good indeed . . . if you get one with HDMI all the better!

Can't really think of anything else to add apart from I've never watched a film in the bath before lol!

*on* topic chatter is welcome but it would be appreciated if you post a link while your at it . . . a little effort goes a long way!

Didn't AMD say that they had a competitor to this that was sub 10W and could perform to 90/80% of an average desktop processor. Would be interesting to see what they think of as an average desktop processor of today though. They're waiting to see if the market stays or something i think. I think VIA could be a big competitor if they moved onto a smaller manufacturing process.

Oh wait...

Pity that Pinetrail is just the old Atom:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3728

I expected it to be much faster, but I was disappointed. Now I'm waiting for a netbook to come out with something along these specs:

11.6" HD screen
Ion 2 (or something similar in terms of performance)
Atom N450 (or something better)
8 Hour battery life
Must weigh less than 2kg's

There's definitely a market for chips like these, but for what they are i think the price needs to drop and people need to be a bit more sensible in design. I don't get why all the chips have to be soldered on. Sockets have worked brilliantly so far. Then you could standardize the cooler to, most probably, a chipset-like mounting system. Just imagine what sort of temps you'd get with one of these. More wok is needed in the chipset area.

The idea is they are a low cost solution, they are not supposed to perform well and have feature rich chipsets.