New Intel Atom Due In October

The Atom N450 chip is intended to replace the current N270, which has been the staple chip of the netbook for a good while now. Previously known to be arriving in Q4, the date has apparently been narrowed down to the early part of the that period if sources are to be believed. The N450 platform, codenamed "Pine Trail" will see the graphics subsystem and memory controller move onto the same die as the CPU, cutting the number of chips from 3 to 2. That also means a move from a six-layer to a four-layer mainboard is possible, which should reduce power consumption and cost. Performance is also set to go up, though we are yet to know by how much. As for the N270, that is supposedly set to be phased out in the first half of next year.

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The Smith on June 10, 2009 02:19PM At least they will be able to cut down the 12W thermal envelope of the GPU :lol: I don't think performance will be much better though. ION & Yukon FTW :) reply to this

tkrow21 on June 10, 2009 04:41PM Performance is good enough for internet and word processing. However, lower wattage = more powerful GPU or longer battery power. reply to this

The Smith on June 10, 2009 07:46PM lower wattage = more powerful GPU ?? Umm I would say the inverse. Stronger GPUs are much more power hungry. :) reply to this

tkrow21 on June 11, 2009 04:58PM Lower wattage from the CPU = more room for GPU wattage. reply to this

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