Atom N450 & N470 Specifications
Intel’s Atom processor has been a monster success for netbooks. Virtually every high-selling netbook released to date has featured one of the slim range of Atoms.
Intel recently announced 2 new additions to the range: The N450 & N470.
Gradually more details have come out about these, including clock-speed, and the possible lifting of Intel’s arbitrary rules governing how netbook manufacturers use their chips…
The N450, like its predecessors, will be a 1.6GHz single-core CPU. Apparently this will support 64-bit
The N470 on the other hand will be a 1.83GHz unit with 667MHz front-side bus & hyper-threading support.
This is great news for netbook fans & means we can expect to see more ‘low-cost/higher-performance’ machines hit the market in January (with some possibly shipping this year).
Restrictions?
It’s well known that Intel put restrictions in place on older Atom to make sure the low-power processor didn’t damage sales of their other processors. What do the new N450 & N470 CPUs mean for those?
- 1GB RAM? Intel previously asked manufacturers to ship Atom netbooks with 1GB RAM or less. This restriction is apparently being lifted (yay!)
- 10” Screen? Though some Atom netbooks have shipped with larger screens (notably the Asus EEE 1201ha), they have been very few. Apparently Intel will keep this restriction. (boo!)
- SSDs? Intel is apparently pushing for manufacturers to use solid state drives in preference to hard drives. The result being longer battery life & faster access to memory – meaning that machines feel faster.
These all make sense. Windows 7 needs far more RAM than XP (the OS used by most of today’s netbooks), and we’ve already seen manufacturers shipping Windows 7 netbooks with 2GB RAM. And on the flip side, Intel still wants to make sure the Atom doesn’t eat into their sale of higher powered processors we see in larger laptops.
[...] (un)official: Netbooks featuring the new Intel Atom N450 will launch on January 11th 2010. Digitimes’ Taipei reporter, Monica Chen is reporting that [...]