The PC Report

The new Pine Trail Atom chips from Intel haven’t hit the markets yet, but a German site CarTFT have got their hands on the latest D510 and D410 Pine Trail chips (designed for nettops) and put them through some performance benchmarks comparing them to current-gen Atoms. The results aren’t that surprising; we always expected the Ion platform to do better.

The new Pine Trail Atoms are slightly faster in CPU performance than current generation Atoms, with the performance difference showing in Super PI 8M; less when it comes to the real world. However, both Windows 7 and 3DMark06 favour the 330/Ion combo over the D510 and D410 when it comes to graphics-based applications, which isn’t that surprising considering Intel graphics have never been great. Luckily the chips won’t be expensive and won’t consume much power compared to current Atoms – maybe a bonus for nettops at the sacrifice of power.

It appears as though HP has leaked a huge heap of info about some upcoming products they are releasing, including info about new Intel processors and ATI graphics cards, along with the new HP software suite. All of the leaked info looks current and details the new North American Spring 2010 line-up from HP, which by the looks of it is going to be a good line-up.

In the new HP Pavillion desktop computers it appears as though we will be seeing the latest from Intel’s Clarkdale range. The new Core i5-6xx processors will be included, featuring Intel’s Turbo Boost technology that can speed up certain cores depending on the workload at hand. Core i3-5xx processors are also going to be used, however these will feature a lowered L3 cache and no Turbo Boost technology. It is also speculated that the HP TouchSmart will be getting an upgrade to the Arrandale Core i5 and i7s.

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Intel tried to enter the consumer graphics card market with the Larrabee line-up of consumer graphics chips, but that seems to have ended abruptly. Intel has cancelled the consumer version of the multi-core chip, citing that development was way behind schedule and where they hoped the chip would be. However, Intel only said that Larrabee won’t be a consumer graphics chip.

Instead, Intel is turning the consumer Larrabee into a software development tool that can be used by developers to make high quality graphics-based software. They also stated that Intel would continue work on stand-alone graphics chips, with more info to come in 2010. We can imagine that both Nvidia and ATI are both very happy at the moment; their graphics card market hasn’t been invaded by Intel just yet

Intel is already showing off the next generation in multi-core processors while the flagship six-core Core i9 hasn’t reached the shelves yet. This new processor, the experimental 48-core Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), codenamed “Rock Creek”, packs an impressive 1.3 billion transistors onto a single 45nm die, sucks less power than the i9 at 125W and is designed for parallel computation; specifically gesture control.

The bonus to this new chip is that it can run standard x86 applications, an improvement over its 80-core predecessor which couldn’t. The processor has successfully been able to boot both Windows and Linux so far, however as each core is less powerful than a standard Atom processor, there isn’t much you can do as of now. No doubt we’ll here more about massive multi-core CPUs in the future.

In what appears like an update to this roadmap we saw back in July, we are getting more details of upcoming Intel processors. First off are the S, or low powered, versions of some processors, namely the i7-860 and i5-750, which bring the TDP down to 82W and also lower the clock speeds. These processors still carry the same amount of L3 cache and still TurboBoost up to the same clockspeeds as the non-”S” versions.

Then we get some details on the dual-core i5 CPUs that appear to be coming relatively soon. There is an i5-670, clocked at 3.46GHz, an i5-660/661 clocked at 3.33GHz and an i5-650 clocked at 3.2GHz. All these CPUs come with 4MB of L3 cache and have a TDP of 73W. Interestingly, these CPUs are marked with “2-core & GPU” colors and another chart shows them also to have some sort of GPU combined. We’ll have to wait for more details though.

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It’s still a while away until these chips are released, but in an early review the upcoming Intel Core i9 is shown to be truly top-of-the-line. The 6-core processor, codenamed “Gulftown”, is made via the 32nm process and is based off the Intel Westmere architecture (the 32nm Nehalem die shrink). The test unit shipped to PCLab was an unspecified Gulftown model with a clock speed of 3.07GHz and it uses the LGA 1366 socket.

While the Core i9 is similar in performance to other Nehalem CPUs when it is doing single- or dual-core operations such as gaming and Windows startup, however when you crank up the threaded applications such as x264 encoding and ray-tracing the Core i9 shines. It pulled ahead by 46% in the POV-Ray test and by approximately 50% in the MPEG-2 to x264 encoding. The CPU also pulled ahead in the 3DMark Vantage CPU score, but the main score varied only slightly compared to the Core i7

These processors are bound to be expensive when they ship in 2010, but it’s well worth it considering the performance benefits in some applications.

With Pineview still not out the door yet, it is surprising that we are seeing the next-in-line so soon. The next generation CPU in the Intel Atom line, “Cedarview” (going with trees again like Pineview), is expected to be made using the 32nm process and will be shipping out sometime in 2011 after the upcoming Pineview processors have done their time.

Cedarview processors are also rumoured to include a DDR3 controller that supports DDR3-1066 RAM to match the Bloomfield Core i7 processors. However, it appears to only be supporting the RAM in single-channel mode even though the motherboards will contain two RAM slots. An odd choice, but I suppose Intel must have some reasoning behind the decision. We hope we’ll get more info about the Cedar Trail platform in the future.

The ultraportable market is going to get a processor update thanks to Intel, as it appears that some new 32nm Arrandale CPUs will be coming on the market in the first half of 2010. These new CPUs will go under the Core i7 name and are made using the 32nm process. The three expected processors range from 1.06GHz (the Core i7-620UM and Core i7-520UM) to 1.2GHz (Core i7-640UM).

While the core speeds of the processors aren’t amazing, there are actually a few more features than you might think in these CPUs. The main processor packs two cores, and Intel have also managed to squeeze a graphics engine and memory controller onto the 32nm die. This should result in less power consumption overall and a cheaper laptop.

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Asus axed its last attempt at a USB 3.0 motherboard in July “not for any particularly interesting reasons.” It looks like Asus is having another crack at a USB 3.0 motherboard with the P7P55D-E, which will be supporting SATA 6Gbps alongside USB 3.0 like the cancelled P6X58. Sadly though, the motherboard only carries two USB 3.0 ports, unlike the 10 USB 2.0 ports. SATA 6Gbps is also lacking with only 2 of those ports vs. 6 SATA 3Gbps.

Other than the USB/SATA, the motherboard is designed for the latest Intel i5 and i7 (and upcoming i3) processors with its LGA1156 socket and P55 chipset. It also carries both CrossFire X and SLI with its two PCI-E slots, and can support DDR3 RAM up to 2200MHz. The motherboard will be hitting retailers early next month for US$299.

Intel really is pushing to make smaller chips, with the announcement that its 32nm chips are in production, as well as its recently announced 22nm range. The new processors, announced at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, should be rolling out in the second half of 2011, after the 32nm chips slated for a release next year.

By going smaller, of course, you can fit more things onto the one bit of silicon, and this is what Intel plans in its “relentless pursuit of Moore’s Law.” The new 22nm chips are estimated to be packing 2.9 billion transistors – 2.2 billion more than the Core i7 CPUs and 1 billion more than its six-core Xeon. For now, however, we’ll wait and see what the future holds for these chips