Intel Releases Atom D2500 and D2700 Processors
by Kristian Vättö on September 27, 2011 2:28 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Atom
- Cedar Trail
Back in April, we reported the specifications of Intel's upcoming Cedar Trail platform. On Sunday, Intel quietly updated their CPU price list with two new SKUs: Atom D2500 and D2700. These are Intel's first Cedar Trail codenamed CPUs, as well as the first 32nm Atoms. The specifications are the same as what we reported earlier but lets list them anyway:
| Intel Atom "Cedar Trail" Lineup | ||
| Model | D2500 | D2700 |
| Core/Thread Count | 2/2 | 2/4 |
| Frequency | 1.86GHz | 2.13GHz |
| L2 Cache | 1MB | 1MB |
| Max Memory | 4GB | 4GB |
| Supported Memory | DDR3-800/1066 | DDR3-800/1066 |
| Graphics frequency | 400MHz | 640MHz |
| TDP | 10W | 10W |
| Price | $42 | $52 |
There aren't any major changes compared to what we have already published. The only new bits of info are GPU frequencies, but unfortunately we still have no idea of the architecture, and hence performance remains as a big question. It's not even sure whether DirectX 10.1 is supported, even though we initially reported that it will be. There were rumors of Intel having problems with DirectX, thus it's possible that Intel will be releasing only DirectX 9 capable driver at the release to avoid further delays.
Intel has not released a press release of Cedar Trail announcement yet, so the official release with more details should be coming in the near future.
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gevorg - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
This is ridiculous.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Remember that they are just drivers. The hardware should support DX10.1, but Intel may only ship DX9 drivers due to the issues. DX10.1 should be added later through a driver update.ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Seeing many games seem to use DX9 for the low-end settings and DX10 for the high-end settings, I'm not sure how useful giving a DX10 GPU to an Atom will be beyond the checkbox being filled.JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
It's *Atom* guys... does anyone actually try to play games on Atom? Ugh. Even AMD's Brazos struggles with games -- the undemanding Batman: Arkham Asylum almost manages to stay above 30 FPS at minimum settings, but most other games tank. See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4218/5The bigger deal will be whether the new IGP in Cedar Trail can actually handle H.264 offload and Flash video decoding. If it can, that takes care of the worst failings of Atom in terms of netbooks. If you want something faster, I'd suggest spending up for an AMD E-350, but you still won't have a good gaming experience. For that, you'll need to spend up even more for AMD Llano, or Intel i3/i5 + Optimus.
MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
The real question is, how will it compete with Bobcat? AMD blew Atom out of the water there.Herp Derpson - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
It's the same crappy bonell core, and should I even mention GPU? Much worse than E-350 (18W), should be on the same level as C-50 (9W) though. Don't forget that intel's TDP != amd's tdp.CharonPDX - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Yup, and you have each company's use of TDP backward. AMD uses "average high point", Intel uses "maximum".So when Intel says 10W, they mean that's the most it will use before throttling; when AMD says 9W, they mean "usually only gets this high." Yes, the actual long-term average power usages for both will be noticeably different, we'll have to see actual comparisons for that.
Not to mention the fact that at these CPU power loads, the CPU is no longer the major power hog! The display is likely the biggest power hog on these devices now.
What surprises me most is that $10 gets you Hyperthreading, 15% more raw CPU speed, and a 60% faster GPU. In the same max power envelope! Yeah, the average power use will likely be higher, but for only 25% more, getting more than 25% more CPU power (Hyperthreading is good for at LEAST 10%,) and 60% more GPU power, that nuts.
silverblue - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Well, the higher clock speed (513MHz) will probably mean that the D2700 will almost equal the E-350 for single-threaded tasks, and probably equal or slightly beat it for heavily threaded workloads. The E-450 might redress the balance, but it's barely an improvement over the E-350. Those TDP values aren't really comparable to the E-350, in any case, as the GPU on Brazos is easily the most powerful (and hungry) part, yet in most circumstances, you'll not see that sort of power draw, even with Brazos being 40nm and now behind the competition.Brazos wasn't really meant for gaming, only media acceleration in all fairness. Still, much was made of it being a very cheap way into gaming at the expense of Atom-based systems, so it can't completely escape criticism on that front.
Judging by those prices, the D2700 is only $12 cheaper than a dual core Llano A4-3300. You can buy an E-350 WITH motherboard for about $80-$90 if I'm getting the exchange rate correct.
Herp Derpson - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
I Have to disagree. Clock-per-clock, bobcat core twice as fast. Such small increase in clockspeed won't help atom much.silverblue - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
But it's not. I'm not defending Atom here, but there's plenty of benchmarks that state that Bobcat is much faster at single threaded workloads, and the gap narrows quite a lot when it comes to multithreading when compared to an HT-capable dual-core Atom.http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-revi...
Sure, the E-350 still wins, but not by much, against a 1.66GHz Atom D510. This new Atom is 466MHz faster and would likely take the lead in some of the benchmarks shown on the link. I suppose it depends on how well the architecture scales.
The Nano still looks rather nice. I'd love to see a 45nm or 32nm version as opposed to the 65nm versions floating about. Clock for clock, it is the best CPU in its class, even though it's only slightly ahead of Brazos.