AMD's Athlon 64 2000 processor on a 790G platform

Written by IT News on 3:04 AM

Not too long ago, a number of rumors made the rounds, saying that AMD was expected to release a new low-power processor, wholly designed to compete with Intel's very popular Atomic CPU. Finally, all the speculation came to an end once and allegations that the Sunnyvale chip maker was not even considering the release of an Atomic competitor at any time in the near future.

On this note, it seems that AMD has strong reasons not to release a new low-power CPU designed for small netbooks and nettops. According to a recent article at Tom's Hardware site, maker already has a decent competitor to Intel's Atom, and it is actually "cheaper, faster and quieter" than Intel's product. After running a comparison test between the Athlon 64 2000 processor and Intel's Atom 230 processor, a single, yet surprising conclusion was reached: Athlon 64 processor is generally better than Intel's solution.

The processors were tested on two desktop platforms, and according to test results, AMD's Athlon 64 2000 has a better energy than Intel's Atom, providing a greater processing power. One of the top strong points of AMD's Athlon was the 790G platform, on which CPU tested. Compared with the 945GC chipset, 790G platforms offers three times as many SATA ports have better integrated graphics and can also support two monitors. There is also support for an HD resolution (up to 1920 x 1200), while the high image quality achieved through a DVI / HDMI port.

As for the noise level is concerned, the Atom is once again surpassed the Athlon processor, which, thanks to the energy-efficient 790G platform, does not require an active cooling solution.

On the downside, Athlon 64 2000 processor has a higher level than Intel's TDP Atom, with 8W compared with 4W for Atom. There is also a disadvantage for energy-efficient 790G platform, which is currently only available with a Microatx form factor, while the Intel platform has a much smaller miniITX. In addition, according to Tom's Hardware, the price tag of AMD processor should be somewhere in the $ 90 range, nearly twice as much as you need for an Atomic processor.

Despite all this, there is only one conclusion to this, and that is that AMD has something to seriously compete with Atomic