Intel's Atomic 'Pine Trail' arrives early

Intel's new-and-slightly-improved Atom processors and support chips met the waiting world Monday morning, a couple of weeks earlier than their oft-rumored rollout at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Their early appearance is one of the only surprises about the new Atom platform, code-named Pine …

[Kevin 6]

hmm

The D510 interests me. Wonder how much more heat the processor produces compared to the 330. And how well it can play Higher Def videos, I find the 330 kind of fails big time (with that horrendous gfx chipset on the intel brand board) with any video over 480p.

[Bassey]

330

What system is that? I'm running an ASROCK NETTOP 330 ION and have no problems with 1080p video. That's with Windows 7 Ultimate.

[I_am_Chris]

nVidia Graphics

That's because the Asrock 330 *ION* uses the nVidia *ION* platform which has much better graphics capability than the default Intel one (as Kevin 6 mentioned).

[Anonymous Coward]

HD

The one i bult for a skint mate plays 720p H.264 files fine with 2gb of ram in it. I think the board was 'Littlefalls' or something similar.

[Tom 35]

That should fix anyone

thinking of using a different video chip with our cpu.

[Goat Jam]

intel + microsoft

Holding back the IT industry since 1978! (or thereabouts)

I really hate the attitudes of these two companies. Knowing that they can't deliver the goods in the GPU department they design their CPU to incorporate their craptastic GPU so that consumers are forced to buy it whether they like it or not.

I don't suppose the ION is/will be compatible with ARM based kit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing susprising here

Intel is trying to squash ION before it gathers enough steam to be a run-away train. ION can easily do all that Intel GMA based Atom platform cannot - full HD, RAID, etc and it sells fairly well. It definitely killed all Intel based nettops, it is only a matter of time until it eats into netbook share as well. This kills ION's chance to live once and for all.

No wonder NVIDIA supported the FTC suit on GPU grounds. If Intel does the same with their mainline CPUs it is out of business.

[psyq]

Actually, GMA can do HD

GMA500, that is - the kind part of Intel's "MID" and embedded ATOM parts, and probably the same GPU in the new Pineview parts.

However, the biggest problem of GMA500 (PoverVR) is extremely crappy driver support, so actually most people can't see what this thing can truly deliver.

In fact, I have it decoding 1080p AVC with ~3-5% of CPU load - and, yes, that's a 1.3 GHz Z5xx ATOM.

[James Henstridge]

GPU

What sort of GPU is included in these chips? Is it a PowerVR core as found in the GMA500 chipset, or one based on Intel's own GPUs?

[psyq]

Unfortunately - no GMA500

Uhh

I just saw it is GMA3150 - 45nm shrinkage of GMA3100

It is not capable of hw. decoding of anything except MPEG-2. This is a really ridiculous decision from Intel's side - especially when NVidia's ION is available.

[Quirkafleeg]

Re: Unfortunately - no GMA500

Good driver support, or hardware support for HD decoding. Pick one.

Yes, both would be nice, but for me, driver support wins. (And that's why I won't touch nVidia graphics hw; that said, open-source 3D support for these is very much on the way…)

[Alan Mackenzie]

Intel's atomic pile train arrives early .....

... unlike Eurostar's electric trains. :-)

[Peter Kay]

There's not much wrong with Intel's GPUs

The key is understanding that they're for integrated and low power solutions. For that, they're ideal. The low end/older GPUs accelerate standard def video, the more recent ones accelerate high def.

There's enough acceleration to run Aero and basic 3D, the only thing the chipsets aren't designed for is games. Laptops and low power desktops should not be used as gaming machines..