Intel decided to speed up the launch of the new generation Atom platform. Pine Trail houses the new Intel Pineview Atom processors and on paper it looks almost completely refreshed. Atom Pineview has both memory controller and graphics circuit embedded into the processor and with everything but ”minor” I/O functionality integrated into the processor the overall efficiency of the platform increases considerably. Even if Intel has managed to build a very efficient platform, it lost its way on a few other things.
To summarize the good things of the new Pineview Atom processors they are generally faster than the current Diamondville Atoms. This is much thanks to the integrated memory controller.
Three different Pineview Atoms launches today – dual-cores for nettops and desktops
The battery time is often much better since the power consumption of Intel’s new 2-chip design (CPU + NM10 southbridge) is almost half of the last generation 3-chip solution (CPU + northbridge/GPU + southbridge). Tests with the Pine Trail-based ASUS Eee PC 1005PE shows up to 27% longer battery times over last generation.
The negative aspects are that the integrated GPU is anything but powerful. Performance is marginally better than Intel’s GMA950 chip and still far far worse than NVIDIA’s Ion circuit. The biggest problem is the lack of H.264 hardware decoding. Something Intel’s partners will have to use third-party solutions for.
In the end, Intel’s Pine Trail platform is slightly faster and a lot more energy efficient than today’s Atom platform, which makes the choice between the two ridiculously simple to make. With limitations in the 45nm technology Intel still leaves a segment for NVIDIA to fill as there will be those looking for better graphics performance than the Pine Trail platform has to boot.
Reviews of ASUS Eee PC 1005PE:
:: Anandtech :: HotHardware :: TechReport ::
– Anandtech Atom D510 test
Left half of the Atom N450 processor is the CPU die, the right half is the GPU/Memory controller (35/65% ratio)
