UK Netbook Review

Intel officially launched the N470 today, but in a spec sheet for the new Asus Eee PC 1018p there’s already mention of two newer processors – the N455 and N475. Looks like they keep the same speeds as the N450 and N470 (1.66ghz and 1.83ghz respectively) but add DDR3 ram support.

From Digitimes we learn today that NVidia has received orders for ION 2 based chips from Acer designed to support Pine Trail processors. If the rumour holds true (and you never quite know for sure with Digitimes, it means we’ll see a Pine Trail processor’ed netbook with Nvidia’s Ion 2 graphics chip from Acer in 2010. The ION 2 graphics platform is said to offer more than 2x the power of the current ION platform and will include support for switchable graphics and the VIA processors. We’ll probably see more about Nvidia’s ION 2 at CES 2010.

Fudzilla has discovered that the successor to the upcoming Pine Trail , suitably called “Cedar Trail” and this platform / processor will launch in 2011. There isn’t much more information, but the speculation is that the new chips willl be based on a 32nm or 22nm manufacturing process.

Sick and tired of seeing N270 and N280 over and over again in the specs for the latest netbook? Well, you’re not alone. At long last, we’re hearing that Intel will supposedly officially announce the Pine Trail platform in late December this year, which lines up nicely with the new netbooks scheduled to debut at CES in January. Three new processors are expected. For netbooks, there will be the 1.66GHz Atom N450. For nettops, a dual-core 1.66GHz AtomD510 and a single core Atom D410 , also at 1.66ghz. The nettop procs will get 1mb of L2 cache, while het N450 netbook processor has to make do with 512KB of L2 cache.

Have you ever wondered why netbooks have such a homogeneous makeup – 1.6ghz processor, 160gb, 1gb ram.  Sound familiar?  Well, there’s a reason for that.  In order for Intel to sell you their Atom processors, you have to agree to their terms for the hardware.  Today, Fudzilla reports that Intel has revised the specification slightly.
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