VIA Nano X2 vs AMD Brazos vs Intel Atom

[CsG_kieran_2]

This is an interesting Little battle about to unfold in the netbook/low powermarket.

Personally i think Atom needs a big update soon or its going to get a kicking.

AMD's new CPU is a great piece of work, CPU and GPU in the same package. It could only fail if AMD forgets to sell them :lol: Although GPU Performance vs the ION 2 is about the same (and its old tech!)

Probable the most powerful of the three CPU's is the Nano. Lacking shared cash may bite you in the ass mind. Would like to see this pick up, unfortunately it has poor graphics performance.

Lowest Power consumption goes to the Atom.
Best GPU performance to the Brazos.
Highest CPU performance to the nano X2.

I don't know, Any ideas how this will pan out?

 

[jimmysmitty]

This is an interesting Little battle about to unfold in the netbook/low powermarket.

Personally i think Atom needs a big update soon or its going to get a kicking.

AMD's new CPU is a great piece of work, CPU and GPU in the same package. It could only fail if AMD forgets to sell them :lol: Although GPU Performance vs the ION 2 is about the same (and its old tech!)

Probable the most powerful of the three CPU's is the Nano. Lacking shared cash may bite you in the ass mind. Would like to see this pick up, unfortunately it has poor graphics performance.

Lowest Power consumption goes to the Atom.
Best GPU performance to the Brazos.
Highest CPU performance to the nano X2.

I don't know, Any ideas how this will pan out?

Depends really. Atom can be paired up wth a nicer GPU from nVidia or another company. The Atom GPU will be utilized for pretty much 2D and low GPU usage programs while the other one will be used for 3D applications. I do wonder if Brazos can or the Nano X2 can.

But in the netbookmarket the biggest part of it is mobility and with that, battery life. So in normal areas the one with the lowest power usage will have the best battery life. Depending on how low the battery usage is, a Atom on a 6 cell will probably beat out a Brazos/Nano X2 on a 9 cell.

As for a refresh, Intel plans a 32nm Atom in about September of 2011 and is supposed to have a GPU thats 2x as powerful as the current GMA3150 (I would assume its based around the HD3000) and most vendors seem to be waiting for that. It might be whats needed to boost the GPU performance while lowering the power usage by a nice amount since it will probably also be based on current 32nm process tech like in Sandy bridge.

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

True and i agree with you.
32nm with a good C

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

I take that back. And with ARM on the rise, Intel's grave is being dug by a few company's lol.

Maybe this is the start of the end for Wintel?

 

[jimmysmitty]

But AMD also plans on a refresh of it's Brazos with 28nm along with it's Hd7k graphics at about the same timeframe

=)

That sounds quite soon for AMD. I can see the GPUs at 28nm but even still the HD6K series just hit and if they plan the HD7K out that soon it would put most people off from buying the current GPUs right now. Still you never know with that because ATI needs to push nVidia harder.

As for a 28nm Brazos, the first 28nm Fusion based chip I can find any info on from AMD is Krishna and Wichita both that are set for 2012 according to this roadmap from AMD:

So unless there is something from AMD that specifically puts 28nm refresh of Brazos out in Q3 2011, then thats just all fulff and no substance.

Intels 32nm is also more mature than AMDs 32nm, which will be out with Llano later this year, or even GF 28nm process. Thats why a quad core SB CPU is more efficient than a dual core 32nm Arrandale CPU.

Add into that 22nm for notebooks and desktop in Q4 2011/Q1 2012 that means Atom will also see 22nm in 2012.

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

Can i ask were you got that chart? wouldn't mind a look myself
But isn't the whole point in atom Power efficacy? Bumping up the clock speed will be a win/loss situation, not to forget in order execution

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
^theres a cpu chart somewhere on that site

Helps. lol

Tigra does a good enough job with 1080p and soon to be 3D aswell, looking to play Crysis or something?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Can i ask were you got that chart? wouldn't mind a look myself
But isn't the whole point in atom Power efficacy? Bumping up the clock speed will be a win/loss situation, not to forget in order execution

http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/files/2010/11/PH4.png

Thats the actual link. its from a post on AMDs blog. Haven't had the time to dig through it to find the full post though but its a pretty recent roadmap (dated November 9th on the bottom).

As for bumping clock speed, the 8 hour battery life Atom based tablet is at 1.5GHz, the max speed of them. But when Intel moves to 32nm it will allow for a increase in clock speed while retaining the same TDP or the same clockspeed at a lower TDP.

Thats how its always been. I remember that when the 45nm C2Qs came out, A 4GHz QX9650 used less power than a stock QX6850 (3GHz, 65nm).

Found the blog post:

http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2010/11/09/simply-put-it%e2%80%99s-all-about-velocity/

November 9th 2010. 40nm for now, 32nm between now and the first half of 2012 and towards the end of first half of 2012 they will push 28nm which will be around the time Intel probably puts Atom on 22nm.

Also looks like AMD might do the same as Intel and they might seperate mainstream from high performance. We will have to see but still its strange that Llano is considered mainstream and Zambezi is performance all the while only Llano has a GPU. Might be a chipset thing like with LGA1155?

 

[jimmysmitty]

They can just add hypertreading to their cpus and call it Hypersports or something.

What AMD is doing with Bulldozer is their version of hyprethreading. Its supposed to be a better one that intel has had for a while but never implemented. Remember when AMD and Intel settled a bit ago along with the $1.25 billion Intel paid AMD, there was also a cross license agreement which means they are sharing the technology.

As for its purpose, since it is still a form of HT if you pit a dual core BD CPU against a true dual core Intel CPU, it wont win. Where it will win though is if you pit a "8" core BD CPU against a 4 core with HT Intel CPU. Of course thats just in an ideal situation and we will need to wait and see.

But in the end, AMD is going to be pitting their 8 core BD parts vs a 4 core Intel part. In some ways that sounds like it takes half the core amount Intel wise to keep up with AMD but since thats not really a true 8 core I hope AMD does it right so thats easily known to the non computer savvy consumer.

Still as for the topic, I still don't see anything beating Atom in its market for battery life and performance. Intel has a massive process lead and the next up is 32nm. AMD should have a 32nm part out near the same time but Intels 32nm will be more than a year ahead and also features a second generation HK/MG while AMDs will be first gen. All of those factors easily points to Atom being the dominant player in the UMID market for a long time.