Netbooks to see speed boost this year
Updated Atom CPUs to get DDR 3 support
Expect to see Atom-based netbooks speed up a little in the latter half of the year when Intel releases upgraded Atom CPUs able to talk to faster memory than the current lot can manage.
Today's top-of-the-line netbook Atom, the 1.66GHz N450, connects to DDR 2 Ram through its built-in memory controller. Later this year, Intel will release the N455, which will hook up to DDR 3 memory.
DDR 2 runs at up to 800MHz. DDR 3 can clock at more than double that frequency.
What difference this will make to everyday netbook tasks remains to be seen. According to a report at website Fudzilla, the N455's CPU core will still be clocked at 1.66GHz.
DDR 3 consumes less power than DDR 2, but since memory isn't a key netbook power drain, the shift is unlikely to lead to any significant increase in battery life. ®
COMMENTS
Boy racer laptop?
Sticking on loud exhuast, bucket seats spoilers and tinted windows on a shit 1 litre Cosa.
it will have a new super fat addon, but the engine is still shit.
Be great for...
all those large scale BLAS calculations that people run on their netbooks whilst checking email.
Does this mean
That the Reg will stop giving insane high scores in hardware tests to the same atom based units over and over again? Usually units that have a rising cost, and a spec that never changes and with only very few moderate improvements?
Memory is only half the problem
The other bit is the I/O chipset. Unless they sort that out making the memory access faster is not going to make that much difference.
Paris because she can't get it out fast enough (I/O that is)
What about the price?
The speed may increase, but what about the price? Ever since Microsoft went into bed with netbooks, the price jumped up. I remember people talking about £100 netbooks, but when I look for netbooks, they are all about £300 or more!
