Intel's 1.8GHz Dual-Core Atom D525 For Netbooks Offers Needed Performance Boost
There is little argument that most netbook owners wouldn't take a little bit more performance headroom in their machine if it was available. The reality is, though Intel has mopped the floor with netbook design-wins that employ its ultra low-power Atom processor, performance on Atom-based machines has always felt a little (or a lot perhaps?) emaciated. And that's regardless of whether you're looking to run multimedia or gaming applications. Regardless, technology marches on, especially with the endless resources of Intel's monstrous fabrication technologies, and as such, Intel's darling netbook processor has been evolving of course.
Today we've got a quick, breaking look at an evolution of Intel's new Pinetrail Atom platform and the integrated Pineview Atom processor architecture Intel first unveiled last December. However, Pineview it appears, took on not only another processor core but also ramped up clock speed to a snappier 1.8GHz. Let's have a look.
Today we've got a quick, breaking look at an evolution of Intel's new Pinetrail Atom platform and the integrated Pineview Atom processor architecture Intel first unveiled last December. However, Pineview it appears, took on not only another processor core but also ramped up clock speed to a snappier 1.8GHz. Let's have a look.
Again, this is the new Pineview-D core with two physical cores with Intel Hyperthreading and four threads of processing resources available, two per core. Like the Atom N450, the chip has an 800MHz FSB and a DDR3 memory controller running stock memory speeds of 800MHz. The chip also has integrated Intel graphics, though the specific netbook we're currently testing (which we'll keep under wraps for now) is enabled with NVIDIA's Ion-2 graphics and Optimus dynamic switching technology. Here's a quick look at some performance numbers.
Atom D525 - 1.8GHz - SANDRA CPU (Left) and Multimedia (Right) - Click for high res.
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Atom D525 - 1.8GHz - SANDRA CPU (Left) and Multimedia (Right) - Click for high res.
Performance versus Intel's previous generation dual-core Atom 330 architecture has been nicely ramped up as you can see. Also, in addition to this 1.8GHz chip we're testing, Intel offers an Atom D510 dual-core at 1.66GHz as well.
A quick and dirty 3DMark06 run shows not only a measurable gain in processor throughput, but across the graphics platform as well, with more CPU bandwidth generally available. We'll keep you posted as we get more quality time in with Intel's new 1.8GHz dual-core Atom, along with the swank netbook it came delivered in. Stay tuned.
