Sunday, March 9, 2008

After the Asus Eee PC 701, Cloudbook, HP 2133 (glup) and of the recently revealed 9 inch screen version of the Eee PC, lo and behold, here it comes, the MSI "Wind":



As predicted, the Intel Atom is taking the (low-end) world for its own.

However, i still believe that the VIA "Isaiah"/CN-based HP 2133 UMPC is, not only more feature-filled (it even has an ExpressCard/54 slot, for god sakes; not even the top of the line, über-expensive Apple Macbook Pro 17 incher has one :P), but it could end up being faster in most single-threaded software applications than a single core, dual-threaded Intel Atom "Diamondville"
due to the former Out-of-Order CPU design and significantly improved Floating Point processing capabilities.
The also new -if actually used on the HP "mini-wonder"- DX10 IGP from VIA's S3 subsidiary could also give it an edge over the modified GMA950 from the Intel "Poulsbo" chipset that currently is a required companion to the Intel Atom core.

As they say, time will tell.

P.S.:
It is believed that the first versions of the 9-inch Eee PC still sport the >underclocked to a mere 630MHz by bringing the "quad-pumped" FSB from 100MHz down to 70MHz< Intel Celeron M 900MHz based on the old 90nm "Dothan" core (second generation, but still single-core Pentium M), so be careful when you decide to choose one of those as your next "net-machine".
An Intel Atom "Diamondville" should be significantly faster than it anyday, especially if its clockspeed overs around the rumored 1.6~1.8GHz figures. Not to mention a much lower power consumption due to the 45nm process and agressive clock gating techniques, which are completely absent in the Celeron M.

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