First Cedar Trail Nettops Use Nvidia, AMD Instead of Intel IGP
The first Cedar Trail PCs are making their way to customers.
However, there is a twist and PC makers are trying to make their way around persistent rumors that Intel has trouble getting the drivers for the PowerVR graphics chip to work as it should. German publication heise.de noticed that Intel's Atom D2500 is now available in Lenovo's IdeaCentre Q180 as well as in Giada's i35G. Neither model relies on Intel's integrated graphics system, but a third party solution.
Lenovo uses AMD's Radeon HD 6450A and Giada includes Nvidia's GeForce GT 520 chip. There was no information available from Lenovo and Giada available why the two manufacturers are accepting the extra cost. The AMD and Nvidia chips are much more capable than Intel's integrated graphics, but they also consume more power and work somewhat against the economic idea of a nettop PC.
Lenovo's IdeaCentre Q180 comes with 2 GB memory, as well as 500 GB HDD and currently sells from $303.
Buy it and find out.
It's unfortunate Intel continues to sell the Atom brand. The AMD E-350 is a much more considerable choice.
Buy it and find out.
It's unfortunate Intel continues to sell the Atom brand. The AMD E-350 is a much more considerable choice.
Are you nuts ?
These are low-powered entertainment devices -- not gaming beasts. However, I can tell you that my netbook equipped with AMD E-350 can play titles like: (a) the famous 3D Final Fantasy* (b) Need for Speed**. It can also play 720p from youtube (on battery).
* Final Fantasy VII
** Need for Speed: Underground 2.
They're not even in the same class. Cedar Trail is supposed to have a TDP of 1-2 watts. The E-350 has a TDP of 18 watts.
Even if Cedar Trail were in the same class as the E-350 it would still not be unfortunate. It would be great that Intel is competing with AMD.
Also, even a Tegra 3 gets spanked on the graphics side by an old SGX543MP2 like the one in the iPad 2. I can't wait to see what the Series 6 chips can do.
The D2500-the one mentioned in the article-is technically 10W most likely:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4884/intel-releases-atom-d2500-and-d2700-processors
The E-350 has a TDP of 18W, but it's much more energy efficient. Nettops are really went for single thread apps, which the E-350 and Cedar Trail serve in. The E-350 does significantly better in such tasks compared to the previous gen of Atoms. Yes, Cedar Trail will most like surpass the E-350 in some cases, but overall, the E-350 will most likely take the crown for what it is intended for.
Once you got same version the c2d destroys it like there is no tomorrow.
Atom is just a huge failure, cedartrail is just a die shrink with the same craptastic atom arq(which no other modern x86 cpu including fusion brazos uses) just with a bit more mhz.
Even with the "improced" graphics is behind E-350 HD6250 by a factor of 10.
No it doesn't. The test you were talking about was also with a crippled Tegra3. When the test is re-run with the correct compilers, the Tegra3 is still faster.
Official Coremark site
Tegra250 (Tegra2) = 2.65 coremark/mhz
core2duo t7200 = 2.64 coremark/mhz
Tegra 3 is in principle more or less identical with Tegra 2 when we look at per core per mhz because they both use cortex9 cores. There's just 4 (technically 5) cortex9 cores in Tegra 3 instead of 2 and support for NEON which doesn't add much to coremark performance as it will mostly have an effect in multimedia applications.
No, the Tegra 3, at least in benchmarks, is 25% faster than the SGX543MP2.
The title of the article is misleading. The D2500 and the D2700 are Cedarview Atom's. Cedar Trail Atom's are the N2600 and the N2800. Still the TDP of the Cedar Trail Atoms isn't 1-2W.
The C-60 is the one that is more close to the N550 in terms of processing power. Also the replacement for the N550 is the N2600 not the D2500. The D2500 will replace the D510.