Does Intel's Dual-Core Atom Improve Efficiency? : Atom 330: Dual-Core To The Rescue?

Atom 330: Dual-Core To The Rescue?

Intel’s low-power Atom processors have received an interesting upgrade, as a more attractive dual-core version has now been available for a few months. You may recall our shootout between an entry-level Core 2 system and a standard Atom 230 solution: Core 2 Nukes Atom on the Desktop. The Atom turned out to be truly low on power consumption, yet it lost to the Core 2 business machine when it came to power efficiency defined as performance per watt. Well, it’s time to look at the new dual-core Atom 330, which, in fact, could make a difference for low cost PCs.

There's Two Of Them...

Once again, Intel followed the approach that seems the most economical: it attached two Atom single-core CPUs onto a Socket 441 chip to create a dual-core Atom processor. This was the same method used with the Pentium D 900 series (65 nm Presler) and with the Core 2 Quad family (65 nm Kentsfield and 45 nm Yorkfield). It would certainly be possible to create a monolithic dual-core by creating a die that contains two chips, but this would also introduce the risk of lower product yields (e.g. the 90 nm Pentium D800 Smithfield). With the dual-core packaging system, Intel can select and validate chips to be used in single or dual configurations. The third approach—a unified dual-core processor—would require a lot of development, which isn’t appropriate for a cost effective product.

The Future Atom

The Atom processor has been available since the second quarter of 2008, and it will still be around until the end of this year, when it will be replaced by a more integrated solution called Pineview. This upcoming product cycle will integrate the processor with the chipset northbridge, resulting in a two-chip solution that is referred to as the Pine Trail-D platform. This means that both the graphics unit as well as the memory controller will be part of the next-generation Atom, starting in dual-core flavors, with single-core models following. Intel aims to reduce the total package size by 70% and the total thermal design power (TDP) by 50%.

Atom Now

Let’s start with a little summary of Atom processor and platform options, and quickly move on to our benchmark results. Since the Atom 230 and 330 will be around for almost one more year, the question of whether or not it makes sense to get a dual-core system is highly relevant for low budget PCs and undemanding applications. Can the Atom 330 dual-core claim the efficiency crown from entry-level Core 2 systems?

NVIDIA PhysX - CUDA Power in Gaming (GeForce GTX 280)

Physics at Lightspeed

If you are well into your teens, chances are you would have a smattering of knowledge in physics. You might also know that Earth, though as wondrously complex as it, is actually strictly governed by certain laws of physics. So encompassing are these laws that it is even possible to predict to a great degree of accuracy, the height of waves at your nearby beach, 10 years from now.

While that might be possible, it is certainly not easy. Remember that in physics, formulae are king. That's right, we are talking about things like F = MA, E = MC2, and these are only the simple ones. There are also more infinitely complex ones, involving differential, trigonometry, summation and integration.

By now, you might be wondering what does all of this got to do with games and, more importantly, graphics cards? Well, like the world we live in, game worlds are governed by their own laws of physics which are getting more complex to portray realism. While they are not as complex as the real word, they are still complicated enough to bog down your traditional CPU. This is where the CPU needs help from the GPU to keep the game running smooth and realistic, hence enter PhysX.

As a brief introduction, PhysX is a middleware physics engine which enables real-time physics in games. By middleware, what it means is that game developers need not write their own physics code, only that they need to license the engine for use, thus saving time and effort. But what really makes PhysX stand out from its competitors is that it is primed to take advantage of the parallel processing power of graphics processors through CUDA. Doing this takes the strain of calculating complex physics equations and algorithms off the CPU, resulting in smoother game play, leading to a better gaming experience.

Right now all GeForce 8 and above graphics cards offer support for PhysX right out of the box, so long as you've downloaded and installed the latest drivers. A couple of years ago however, this wasn't the case. Let's step back a little to see how PhysX has progressed to its current stage and what its potential is from our testing.


By Kenny Yeo
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=2802&pg=1