Just what Atom was Meant For

[FrgMstr]

We recently covered Intel’s Atom in a desktop environment and came to the conclusion that VIA’s Nano was a better choice in that arena, but this week we have started seeing more devices that are exactly what the Atom was built for, at least in our opinion.

With the launch come the final specs for this Asia-only MID we've seen incubating now for months: 4.8-inch touchscreen; the latest, sub-3 watt processor from Intel…

Maybe one for North America this week?

 

[SonicTron]

How does this product handle the heat output of the Atom? As far as I've seen, it isn't the coolest processor under the sun and I wasn't thinking it was ready for such micro-portable applications.

 

[Ockie]

I've been obsessed with this atom platform...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

 

[FrgMstr]

I have my first Atom notebook here and it is not all that bad. If you are using it for strictly web, it works OK, but it still dogs out on some embedded video.

 

[Mav451]

So far I can see 2 uses for this:

Google Map on the road (though this implies cellular network, at least for now).
Mobile Youtube - procrastination, now available on the road haha.

I suppose one is semi-work related.

 

[etjr]

Even for the web it doesnt seem to be all that great tho =/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,review-31253-7.html

IE takes a while to load with that

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

The Atom chip has a lot of potential, but the pathetic chipset is holding it back. Doesn't the chipset use near 20 watts, and the Atom uses 4?

 

[etjr]

The Atom chip has a lot of potential, but the pathetic chipset is holding it back. Doesn't the chipset use near 20 watts, and the Atom uses 4?

that same article from toms i posted above has some power usage numbers

the AMD chip they use to compare uses 8watts compared to the Atom's 4watts and as a whole the AMD system uses less power because of the more efficient chipset. Plus the AMD chip is built on 65nm and the atom on 45nm. Somewhere in there it also mentioned that the AMD chip also has less energy usage per transistor than the Atom. AMD was also able to go with passive cooling and not the atom.

 

[DanNeely]

The Atom chip has a lot of potential, but the pathetic chipset is holding it back. Doesn't the chipset use near 20 watts, and the Atom uses 4?

afaik only the desktop chipset is a power guzzler (eaking out the last bit of productivity from an ancient fab), while the mobile chipset is built on a modern process and equally efficient.