Intel’s dual-core Atom 330 reviewed in desktop guise

September 19th, 2008 by

Intel’s Atom processor and the netbook are the silicon equivalent of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson; they’re inseparable. Naturally we can’t wait for the dual-core Atom 330 to cozy up to the next generation of economical portables, but have to wait a bit as it’s being soldered exclusively into tiny desktops at the moment, like the one tech site The Guru of 3D just ran through a series of benchmarks. The posted results could have been interesting had they compared its performance to the single-core Atom 230 rather than AMD’s (relatively) heavy-hitting Athlon 4850 X2 and Phenom 9850 — not exactly apples to apples. We’ll just have to assume it’s roughly twice as fast on the right apps, all that for only twice the power consumption. That’s still only a measly 8-watts!

[Via The Inquirer]

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Posted in Intel, cpu, atom 330, Atom330, intel atom, IntelAtom, energy consumption, EnergyConsumption, 330 | No Comments »

AMD taking on Atom with Ultra-Value Client line

September 12th, 2008 by

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Another week, another AMD leak about taking it directly to Intel’s minimalist Atom. No, not with Bobcat, but with the new Athlon Ultra-Value Client (UVC) series. AMD is targeting the 230 with its 2650e, a single-core 1.6 GHz chip, and the 330 with its 3250e dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. Both have 512KB of cache per-core, matching the competition, but are rated at 15- and 22-watts respectively, much higher than the Atom’s miserly 4-watts. It’s unclear if that rating is current for just the CPU or the matching 740 chipset as well, but given the fact that AMD’s Athlon 64 2000+ is already quite frugal we wouldn’t be surprised if it were for the package. There’s no mention of price, and right now these chips are just for desktop OEMs, but laptop versions are said to be in the works and could be quite popular amongst the netbook crowd — if they’re cheap enough. 1.2GHz of Turon can do wonders, and we’re hoping for even better from 1.6.

[Thanks, Luiz H]

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Posted in amd, athlon, cpu, atom, energy consumption, EnergyConsumption, 2650e, 3250e, 740 | No Comments »

Athlon 64 2000+ at 8-watts outperforms, draws less energy than Atom

August 17th, 2008 by

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

AMD’s going through some rough times, no doubt about it, but for fanboys of the CPU maker (wait, do CPU fanboys still exist?) here’s your feel-good story of the year. The always-thorough Tom’s Hardware has pit Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor against AMD’s Athlon 64 2000+, and the results just might surprise you. The 1GHz Athlon (with a core voltage of 0.90 volts and a power draw of just 8 watts) managed to best the aforementioned Atom in both energy consumption and processing power tests. The gurus at Tom’s credited the more modern 790G platform and the highly efficient K8 architecture as big players in the Athlon’s strong showing, finally deeming said chip “more economical, faster and quieter” than the Atom. We know you’re in disbelief — good thing there are 14 pages of proof waiting in the read link.