AMD Phenom II X4 940

AMD Phenom II X4 940
(Enter The Dragon)

AMD has been fighting an uphill battle on two fronts for the last few years. For a time, fierce competition from NVIDIA, coupled with some of their own problems executing, put the ATI graphics division in a deep hole. And ever since the introduction of the original Core 2 processors, and more recently the Core i7, AMD's processor division has fallen well behind Intel in terms of overall performance.Starting in November of 2007 though, we got a sense that AMD was slowly, but surely, clawing its way back into the fight. It began with the introduction of the Spider platform, which consisted of AMD's native quad-core Phenom processors, 7-series chipsets, and 3800-series graphics cards. Individually, the components that made up the Spider platform weren't performance leaders in their respective categories, but ultimately the platform proved to be solid, and of course, it was priced very competitively. The introduction of Spider also marked the first time AMD could offer an entire desktop platform consisting only of AMD-branded processors, core logic, and graphics.As many of you know, AMD hasn't been sitting idle since the Spider platform introduction. The company's chipset division has launched a handful of new chipsets, featuring one of--if not--the best IGPs on the market and a new Southbridge, the SB750, that allows for higher overclocks through the use of ACC, or Advanced Clock Calibration. The ATI graphics division has also been firing on all cylinders lately, having released a top to bottom lineup of GPUs that compete very favorably at their respective price points. AMD also recaptured the 3D performance crown from NVIDIA for a time with the Radeon HD 4870 X2. AMD wasn't going down without a fight.With the chipset and graphics divisions on a roll, it was time for the CPU team to pull the trigger on something new and exciting, to complete the new platform trifecta. It took some time, but that's exactly what's happening today. The end result is the Dragon platform which consists of new 45nm Phenom II X4 processors, 7-series chipsets, and ATI Radeon 4000 series graphics cards. We've got the goods in house and will fill you in on all of the juicy details on the pages ahead; for now let's get some of the particulars and back-story out of the way...

Although the Dragon platform as a whole is new, most of its parts have already been on the scene for quite some time now. As such, we have already covered them in-depth here on HotHardware, so we won't do the same again here. We will, however, recommend taking a look at a few past articles to get familiar with some of the underlying technology and components that partially comprise the Dragon platform.
The Radeon HD 4800 series articles detail the features and technology that have made them so successful in the 3D graphics space. And the various 7-series chipset, Phenom and Athlon processor, and Spider platform related articles cover the remainder of the platform--with the exception of the Phenom II that is, which we'll show you next.


AMD's new baby is the Phenom II X4 line-up of desktop processors. Like the original Phenoms that came before it, the new Phenom II X4 processors feature a native quad-core design, with a shared L3 cache, and they fit into current AM2+ sockets. There are quite a few changes under the hood, however, that give Phenom II processors a significant edge is power efficiency and performance over their predecessors, and there are more changes to come in the not too distant future.



The most significant change brought forth with the Phenom II X4 is AMD's use of a 45nm fabrication process to manufacture the chips. The transition to 45nm helped reduce power consumption somewhat, but has also allowed AMD to up the L3 cache to 6MB, while simultaneously shrinking the die to 258mm2 (65nm Phenoms are 285mm2). In addition to the 45nm switch, AMD also re-architected the execution cores to offer higher IPC through enhancements to the architecture, brand predictors, and remapping of the cores within the die. According to AMD, the changes made to the cache and execution cores offer up to 5% and 3% performance improvements, respectively, over the original Phenom design.Also new to the Phenom II X4 series is a DDR2 and DDR3 compatible integrated memory controller. The first batch of Phenom II processors, like the ones we're looking at today, however, will only work with DDR2 memory. Finally, the new Phenom II X4 processors will be offered at higher frequencies than existing models. The Phenom II X4 920 and 940 we'll be showing you here are clocked at 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz, respectively. The 940 also happens to be a "Black Edition" processor, that ships with unlocked multipliers, for easier overclocking.Speaking of overclocking, AMD has been touting the frequency headroom in these new processors from quite some time. In fact, at a recent event, we saw one overclocked to over 5GHz--a vast improvement over the 65nm Phenoms. We didn't quite get our sample to go that high, but still hit some respectable numbers. More on that on the next page.


As we've already mentioned, the first two Phenom II X4 processors to be introduced will use the same AM2+ packaging as existing Phenom processors. That means these new chips will be compatible with existing DDR2 platforms, after a BIOS update of course. Future Phenom II processors will employ AMD's socket AM3, which will usher in support for DDR3 memory.We should note, that future AM3-based Phenom II X4 processors will be backwards compatible with AM2 and AM2+ platforms, and work with DDR2 or DDR3 memory types. But these current AM2+ Phenom II X4 processors will not be forward compatible with AM3/DDR3 platforms.

As we showed you on the previous page, the new Phenom II X4 processors look just like the original Phenoms, or older Athlons for that matter. But we fired up the latest version of CPU-Z to take a look at our Phenom II X4 940 processor's inner workings, because there are some distinct differences with the underlying technology.

CPU-Z correctly identifies the processor as a Phenom II, based on the core codenamed "Deneb". As the information shows, the chip is manufactured using AMD's 45nm process technology and our particular sample has a stepping designation of 2 and revision of RB-C2. The chip is clocked at 3GHz, due to its 15x multiplier and 200MHz base clock, the HT link is running at 1.8GHz, and there is 512K of L1 Data / Instruction cache, 2MB of L2 cache (512K per core), and 6MB of shared L3 cache.

With all of the information AMD has already revealed regarding the Phenom II's overclockability, we were eager to see what our particular chip could do. We didn't use any exotic cooling for our overclocking experiments, opting instead to see just how far the chip would go with a stock AMD PIB air cooler installed. With only a minor bump in voltage to 1.575v, we were able to take our particular CPU to almost 3.8GHz using the stock air cooler alone. That speed was achieved with an 18.5x multiplier and a 202MHz base clock; the components were installed in a basic mid-tower. The AMD Overdrive utility shown in the screenshot above did not report clock speeds correctly, but assuming thermal readings were correct (we don't think they were), the chip ran at about 50'C while overclocked.

How We Configured Our Test Systems: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for either DDR2-1066 (AMD) with 5,5,5,15 timings or DDR3-1333 with 7,7,7,20 timings (Intel). The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

The various SiSoft SANDRA tests we ran paint the Phenom II X4 940 in a somewhat favorable light. The chip was the fastest of all of the AMD-based systems by bar, and it held its own against the similarly clocked, Penryn-based Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650, although the Q9650 was faster overall. The Core i7-based systems simply extended the lead held by the Core 2 Quads.In the memory bandwidth tests, the Phenom II X4 940 offered up 12GB/s of bandwidth with DDR2-1066 memory attached. It's going to be interesting to see how that numbers changes when the DDR3-enabled AM3 editions of these processors are released later this year, with potentially higher frequencies.

We ran a handful of processors and platforms, including the new Phenom II X4 940 and 920, through Futuremark’s latest system performance metric built especially for Windows Vista, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by a quad-core CPU.

AMD's new Phenom II X4 940 and 920 processors performed very well in PCMark Vantage. The most interesting comparison is between the similarly clocked 3.0GHz Q9650 and the X4 940. In a direct comparison, the Core 2 Quad Q9650 outperforms the Phenom II in the the Music and Memories tests. The Gaming test was a virtual tie between the two, and the Phenom II takes the rest. The Phenom II holds its own against the Core i7 920 in a few tests too, but gets smoked in the gaming test.

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Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 and Intel 915G

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 and Intel 915G
(New Generation of Integrated Graphics)

Intel’s contribution into the sphere of integrated graphics has been rather poor compared to the mighty rivals like RADEON 9x00 PRO and NVIDIA nForce2. The speed and functionality of the Extreme Graphics 2 core from Intel is no match for the current integrated GPUs from NVIDIA and ATI – our recent review of contemporary integrated chipsets confirmed this point.
In spite of the alluring name, Extreme Graphics 2 is obsolete with its one pixel pipeline and two texture-mapping units (I won’t mention VIA or SiS today – their currently available integrated graphics cores are downright hopeless). It is like the long-forgotten TNT chipset from NVIDIA. Like the TNT, Extreme Graphics 2 has no hardware support of T&L as well as shaders.
Intel seemed to give little thought to that; Intel’s integrated chipsets never lose to their competitors in other capabilities, while high-performance integrated graphics must have been less interesting for the company.
This situation has changed after the arrival of LGA755 CPUs and a new family of PCI Express-supporting chipsets: the i915G chipset boasts a new integrated graphics processor called Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, and this is the first integrated chipset to have hardware support of DirectX 9 shaders.
Now, let’s discuss this and other facts in more detail.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900: Functionality and Features:

So, Graphics Media Accelerator 900 is an integral part of the Intel 915G chipset, which supports the PCI Express bus and DDR2 memory. We tested the i915G chipset using a D915GUX mainboard from Intel:

Data transfers between the graphics core and memory, both on standalone graphics cards and with integrated chipsets, are performed in rather big chunks, so higher memory frequency is more important than the timings. That is, the use of DDR2 memory, which works at higher clock rates compared to DDR SDRAM, provides an additional performance reserve to the integrated graphics processor: as usual, Graphics Media Accelerator 900 uses some part of the system RAM as graphics memory.
The i915G features a dual-channel memory controller, and ideally, when there’s no load from the CPU, GMA 900 can exchange data with the “graphics memory” at a speed of up to 8.5GB/s. The 128-bit “graphics memory bus” and 533MHz memory frequency are good parameters even if we compare them to mainstream discrete graphics.
Let’s now focus on the graphics core alone. The following table compares the two generations of integrated graphics from Intel:

Intel 865G Intel 915G

Graphics core Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900

Graphics core clock frequency 266MHz 333MHz
Pixel pipelines 1 4
Texturing units per pipeline 2 1
Maximum pixel rendering speed 266Mpixels/sec 1333Mpixels/sec
Maximum texturing speed 533Mtexels/sec 1333Mtexels/sec
Maximum number of textures
during multitexturing 4 8
Hardware pixel shaders None DirectX 9
shaders 2.0 Hardware vertex shaders and T&L None None
FSAA methods None None
Texture filtering Bilineartri-linearanisotropic Bilineartri-linearanisotropic
Maximum anisotropy level 2x 4x
Multi-display configurations None Yes
RAMDAC frequency 350MHz 400MHz

The table doesn’t include the characteristics of the integrated GPUs as concerns video playback and output, but it is anyway clear that Graphics Media Accelerator 900 is not a development of the existing architecture, but a new GPU from ground up.

Some points need comments:

The core now has four pixel pipelines. To be more exact, GMA 900, like the previous Extreme Graphics 2 core, has only one pixel pipeline, but unlike its predecessor, it processing four pixels at a time – all modern graphics processors use the same organization of the pixel pipework.
GMA 900’s “four-pixel” pipeline has four texture-sampling units, equivalent to a scheme with four independent pixel pipelines with one texture-mapping unit per each. Graphics Media Accelerator 900 can render one texture on a pixel per cycle, and rendering of each next texture requires an additional cycle. That’s exactly how modern GPUs work.
GMA 900 features hardware support of DirectX 9 pixel shaders. It means that modern applications using Shader Model 2.0 can start and run on a GMA 900 system without any problems or quality loss. Unfortunately, Intel didn’t publish yet any info about the supported calculation accuracy during execution of shaders, while special-purpose test utilities like Xbitmark, Shademark and others, as if conspiredly, refused to run on the i915G – they all require hardware support of DirectX 9 vertex shaders.
The new graphics core from Intel has no hardware support of vertex shaders or T&L. All the geometry transformations are calculated by the central processor of the system. The company presents this as an efficient use of system resources and relies on the power of its processors – the user shouldn’t pay for a more complex graphics core if the CPU can handle geometry calculations all right. However, things are not so bright in reality: discrete graphics processors have long had hardware support of vertex shaders and their special-purpose vertex units are no inferiors even to the topmost Intel CPUs as concerns fast shader execution.
Intel’s GMA 900 employs the tile-based architecture – “Zone Rendering Technology 3” is Intel’s term for it. This technology works like that:

Before drawing the image, the driver first waits till the application provides all the polygons necessary for the rendering. Then, for each tile (a “zone” in Intel’s terminology, it is a rectangular fragment of the image) lists of triangles that fully or partially cover it are produced.
When rendering a frame, the graphics processor renders tile after tile, using the polygon lists created at Step 1 as source data, until the entire frame is rendered.

This operation scheme has both advantages and shortcomings. The advantages include:

The use of small fragments, tiles, allows for an efficient use of the GPU’s caches since small amounts of homogenous data are operated upon.
Having drawn a tile, the GPU never turns back to it in the frame-creation process. Considering that a tile has a small size, the fragments of the frame buffer and the Z-buffer, corresponding to this tile, can be wholly loaded into the GPU’s cache. Thus, the graphics processor does all of its calculations “on-die”, using the cache, rather than system memory. After the tile is drawn, the contents of the tile frame-buffer and the Z-buffer are written into the system RAM. Caching of the frame and Z buffers allows alleviating the load on the memory bus by performing data transfers in larger blocks. This is most important for an integrated chipset, whose graphics core has to share the memory bus with the central processor.
Intel’s GMA 900 has a special unit for checking the values of Z pixels. If the check says some group of pixels won’t be visible, it is excluded from further processing. This Z-checking helps GMA 900 to avoid performing unnecessary work – like texturing or shader execution – for invisible pixels and to be most efficient at rendering scenes with a high overdraw parameter, which reflects the level of overlapping of the objects (or the number of “redraws” of a pixel).

The disadvantages of a tile-based architecture are mostly related to how it processes geometry data:

In order to create the polygon lists correctly, the tile-architecture graphics processor has to wait for all the geometry data, necessary to build a frame, to come in, and only then it starts rendering the scene. GPUs of the traditional architecture begin to process streams of geometry data and render the scene right after they start receiving the data.
The need to sort the polygons and create lists for each tile badly conforms to the well-established stream-n-pipelined operation algorithm of vertex processors. This is probably the reason for GMA 900 to offer no hardware support of T&L and vertex shaders, while all the geometry data as well as the polygons sorting are performed by the central processor.

Graphics Media Accelerator 900 doesn’t seem to have full-screen antialiasing. At least, the driver’s control panel doesn’t offer this function. Of course, FSAA is not a very important feature for an integrated graphics core, considering its overall low level of performance. However, it would come in handy in simple 3D games where the core would have some performance reserve.
GMA 900 supports anisotropic texture filtering of up to 4x level. Anisotropic filtering cannot be combined with tri-linear filtering: the latter is disabled when you enable the former.
GMA 900 supports Dynamic Video Memory Technology version 3.0. Thanks to DVMT, the system memory becomes “graphics memory” when it’s necessary and in the necessary amounts; it is flushed up for the needs of the OS after it is no longer in use by the GPU. Thus, the OS and the GPU share the system memory in the most efficient and balanced way.

That’s how GMA 900 works with memory:

The memory amount necessary for the graphics core is divided in two parts. The first and smaller part – Preallocated Memory – is the GPU’s domain; the operating system cannot use it and regards it as regular graphics memory. You can set up the size of this memory area in the BIOS into 1MB or 8MB.
The other part is provided for GMA 900 by DVM Technology. Three DVMT modes are supported:

In the “Fixed” mode, a fixed-size fragment of the system memory is allocated to the graphics core. It can only be used by the graphics core; its size can be set to 64 or 128MB.
In the “DVMT” mode, the driver of the graphics core uses the system memory like any other OS component or application does. If a “heavy” 3D game starts up, requiring a lot of memory for textures, geometry data and so on, and there’re no other memory-hungry applications running, the required memory amount is automatically allotted to the graphics core. When the GPU doesn’t need the surplus memory, it automatically hands it over to the OS. The maximum amount of memory, given to the GPU in this mode, is 224MB (the preallocated memory included).
In the “Fixed+DVMT” mode, the graphics processor gets a fixed-size chunk of 64MB of memory (preallocated memory included) and up to 64MB of dynamically-allotted memory. This mode guarantees that at least 64MB of memory is available to the graphics core, with a possibility to increase this amount to 128MB, if necessary.

So, the new graphics processor from Intel is an ambiguous figure that combines an efficient tile-based architecture, support of DirectX 9 pixel shaders and flexible control over memory with such deficiencies as the lack of hardware support of T&L and vertex shaders, unavailable FSAA and high texture filtering modes (tri-linear plus anisotropic filtering).
Today I’m going to test Graphics Media Accelerator 900 and compare it to potential and actual competitors. The description of our testbed and testing methodology follows.

Testbed and Methods:

The i915G-based system was configured as follows:

Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3400MHz CPU (800MHz FSB);
Intel D915GUX mainboard (Intel 915G chipset);
2x512MB Micron DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz.

I’ll compare the i915G chipset with available integrated chipsets for Socket 479 and Socket A platforms that I reviewed in the previous article: ATI RADEON 9100 IGP, RADEON 9000 PRO IGP, SiS661 FX, Intel 865G, NVIDIA nForce2 IGP, SiS741 GX and VIA KM400. I tested these chipsets using a Pentium 4 3000MHz (800MHz FSB) and Athlon XP 3000+ (333MHz FSB) CPUs and 2x512MB TwinMOS PC3200 (CL2) memory.
Like in the previous review, I didn’t ask for the impossible from the integrated graphics by using extreme gaming modes. I just used the games’ medium and low image-quality settings in 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions:

The “Medium Quality” mode uses average graphics quality settings and 32-bit color depth of the frame buffer. This is a compromise between speed and image quality in games.
The second or “Low Quality” mode uses the lowest graphics quality settings and 16-bit color (in games that allow setting this color depth) to achieve the maximum fps rates.

When running synthetic tests and games that use DirectX 9 shaders, we took the cheapest of the available DirectX 9-compatible graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA: RADEON 9600, RADEON 9550 with a 64-bit memory bus, GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce FX 5200 with a 64-bit memory bus.
Unfortunately, PCI Express analogs of these cards were unavailable as of the time of our tests, so we tested AGP products – it is clear that the results of the cards will be mostly determined by the performance of their GPUs and memory, rather than by the speed of the CPU or the system overall since we used very powerful configurations.
The i915G-based mainboard doesn’t support the AGP, so we plugged those graphics cards into a differently configured system:

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ CPU;
ASUS K8V-SE mainboard;
2x512MB TwinMOS PC3200 CL2.5.

I’d like to emphasize the fact that the tested graphics cards vary greatly in their performance level among themselves: RADEON 9600/9550 compete with GeForce FX 5700/5700LE in the market, rather than with the GeForce FX 5200. However, we chose these cards since they are the cheapest products from ATI and NVIDIA with hardware support of DirectX 9 shaders and are potential rivals of the i915G on the transition to the PCI Express bus. My point is that you shouldn’t compare the cards among themselves: they are potential competitors to the i915G, not to each other.
Now, the testing environment is clear – let’s proceed to the benchmarks.

Synthetic Benchmarks: Pixel Performance:

Thanks to the four pixel pipelines and increased clock rate, the pixel output rate and the texturing speed grew manifold on GMA 900 compared to the previous core, Extreme Graphics 2. The fill-rate tests of 3DMark 2001 SE confirm this fact:

Intel’s GMA 900 is very close to its maximum theoretical texturing speed, both when rendering one and several textures – the texturing speed is 80% and 96% of the maximum, respectively, in the hardest mode.
The share of read/write operations with the frame and Z buffers is much higher at single-texturing than at multi-texturing, so the tile-based GMA 900 processor, employing caching of the Z-buffer and the frame-buffer, should be similarly efficient at single- and multi-texturing. It is a notable fact that GMA 900 has a higher efficiency at multi-texturing, though, which is a trait of classic-architecture GPUs. At the same time, in spite of the limited memory bus bandwidth, this GPU is rather indifferent to the changes in the precision of the frame buffer, Z-buffer, which is a feature of tile-based processors.
Now let’s see the new graphics processor handling pixel shaders. Specialized test suites like Xbitmark or ShaderMark wouldn’t run on GMA 900, finding no hardware support of vertex shaders, so we’ll limit ourselves with the results of 3DMark 2001 SE and 3DMark03 only:

Like all modern graphics processors with hardware support of DirectX 9 pixel shaders, GMA 900 finds it no problem to do DirectX 8 shaders. It runs a simple DirectX 8 shader fast enough, being just a little slower than the RADEON 9600.

The efficiency of Graphics Media Accelerator 900 declines at rendering a scene with a more complex shader. Considering the difference in frequencies between the RADEON 9600 and GMA 900, I can say that GMA 900 is nearly twice slower. On the other hand, it keeps its advantage over the GeForce FX 5200.
Running a complex DirectX 9 pixel shader, rich in math1ematical calculations, the new graphics core from Intel finds itself behind the GeForce FX 5200, not even mentioning the RADEON 9600/9550.
So, GMA 900 is quite efficient at texturing but execution of complex DirectX 8 and 9 pixel shaders doesn’t seem to be among its strong points.

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Intel Atom

Intel Atom

Intel Atom:

Intel's Atom chip is designed for a brand new market. But Intel already has excellent market saturation in the microprocessor arena for desktops, notebooks, and more; why mess with something that works? And will this new chip deliver where it counts? Read on to find out.

Intel has a broad range of products. Anything from the top of the line Extreme Edition quad core, down to a single Celeron. They have desktop chips, server chips, and mobile chips. You might think that there isn't any other market for Intel to get into. Well you are wrong.
Technology is constantly changing, and new devices are always coming around. In the past year a completely new type of computer has come around, the Ultra Mobile PC. Intel has recognized this new market; it's come out with a CPU designed specifically for UMPCs, the Intel Atom CPU.

What about XScale?

If you ever owned a PocketPC, PDA, MP3 player, Personal Video Player, or iPod, I'm sure you have heard of the XScale CPU. The Xscale CPU was made by Intel until 2006 when they sold that lineup. If Intel had a CPU made for mobile devices, why would they sell it, and then start over again? Intel said they were giving up on the XScale so they could focus on x86 chips such as desktop, mobile and server CPUs.

The biggest difference between the Xscale and Atom is that the Xscale is meant for handheld devices, and the Atom is a full-fledged x86 CPU, meaning it has the ability to run software just like a normal PC; it can even run Windows. The XScale processors do not have the x86 instructions; they use the ARM architecture.

It's not a big deal for mobile devices, since most are home grown by the manufacturer. But if you throw an XScale into a typical PC, it won't even boot up. The Xscale is a great CPU for handheld devices such as MP3 players; the OS of the device is typically home-programmed, so they are fine with using ARM architecture.

UMPCs, on the other hand, run native x86 instructions, such as those needed to run Windows. In this case, the ARM architecture isn't going to fly. I don't think you're going to get Microsoft to rebuild Windows for Xscale CPUs, plus the fastest are running around 600 MHz, so XP would be a push to run.

Intel Atom - What about the ULV?

Clearly a redesign of the XScale CPU wasn't going to fly for UMPCs. While tiny and cool, it was built on the wrong architecture. So why didn't Intel just use the Ultra Low Voltage CPUs they already use in some smaller notebook computers for the new UMPCs? We learned with the XScale that Intel needed an x86 processor, and this is just that. The Core 2 Duo ULV runs between 1066 MHz and 1333 MHz with 2 MB cache. It also doesn't use over 1 volt of power even under a complete load. It sounds like a great CPU to throw into the new UMPCs, doesn't it?

For a UMPC like the ASUS EEE, it would be fine. It's on the bigger side of the UMPC spectrum, has enough room to cool it, and has the space to hold it in there, but the ULV CPUs go for $300, so you're going to have to raise the price an extra $200-$250. That's pretty much a deal killer for the EEE.

And wh en you go down to the handheld UMPC level, the CPU, even running at 10 watts, would be too hot for the device. The physical size of the CPU would be an issue as well. And once again, you are hit with an extra $200- $250 you need to charge for the device.

What is the Atom?

The Intel Atom fits in where the XScale and ULV CPUs fall short. Take the XScale's size and cooling and the ULV's power and x86 architecture, and you get the Atom. It offers the x86 and the x86-64, meaning it will run not only your traditional 32-bit OS and software, but also the 64-bit versions. It also offers some features that have only been seen on full-fledged CPUs, like SSE3 and hyperthreading. Since the Atom is geared towards UMPCs, the extra instructions should help multimedia and gaming.

As great as it sounds, it may be inefficient compared to the other architectures such as the ARM due to the die space required for the x86-decoding. The x86 instructions will make the Atom a great CPU for mobile devices, but it probably won't be as efficient as an ARM processor.

The next thing the Atom has going for it is its size. Sure, all CPUs are small when compared to the rest of the PC, but the Atom is really small. I'm sure you have seen this famous picture of the Atom CPU vs. the penny. The penny wins in size, as the core is even smaller. Its size will ease integration into small devices. The small size also means less material needs to go into each CPU, which should help keep the cost of production really low. Indications are that it will go for around $44, compared to the Celeron M, which runs at least double that.

The last major advantage the Atom CPU has is the heat output. The ULV CPUs produced only 10 watts of power. The Atom looks set to smash this by offering between 0.01W and 2.5W power. This means that a heatsink will be non-existent -- and probably unnecessary.
Intel Atom - Performance:

Now that we have talked about what advantages this microprocessor has over similar CPUs, it's time to dig deep into the Atom. There are two different code names for the Atom CPU, one for UMPCs and one for tiny desktop computers. The UMPC one is code-named Silverthrone; it's a single core CPU. It will run at clock speeds around 1.6 to 1.8 GHz, depending on model, and 512 KB cache with a FSB of 533MHz.

For the desktop market, the core code-named Diamondville will be used. It will come in both single and dual core flavors, topping out at 8 watts. These will be clocked up to 2.3 GHz and run on Intel's miniITX platform, called "Little Falls."

I'm sure this is the section you have been waiting for: how will it compare against other CPUs? It's great to have a CPU this size and this cool, but if it isn't any good at performance, it will make your UMPC slower than grass growing in the middle of summer. From what I have gathered from looking at many different sites, it will be between a Pentium 3 1.1GHz and a Celeron M 1.8 GHz.

Currently the Celeron M is the standard for most UMPCs, and this is a step backwards for performance. I'm sure after a few revisions and new cores, the Atom CPU will be fast enough to run Vista with no problems. Until this time, you are mostly going to be getting the Atom CPU for the size and heat output.

The next version of the Atom CPU, due out in the second half of 2009, will boast many features of the next desktop CPUs. It will have an integrated DDR2 memory controller and a graphics core as well. This should really cut down the size of the motherboard it requires. This future version, code-named "Pineview," will also come in both single and dual cores.

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