AfterDawn: News

Netbooks with Dual-Core Intel Atom processors hit stores this week

Intel has announced today that a dozen new netbooks will be released this week using the company's new dual-core Atom processors, the fastest CPUs available for netbooks.

Netbooks are hitting stores from Acer, ASUS, Fujitsu, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, MSI, and Toshiba.



"Acer strives to continually improve on our customers' total mobile experience, whether it is increased responsiveness or extended Internet interactivity through longer battery life," added David Lee, associate vice president of Acer's Mobile Computing Business Unit. "We are pleased to select dual-core Intel Atom processors for Acer netbooks, helping to empower netbook users achieve even more – both at work and at leisure."

The new powerful processors will give netbook owners better support for gaming, at the very least.

Each netbook uses the Intel Atom processor N550, which also adds DDR3 RAM support with the same battery life as the single-core N450 Atom.

"In their short history, the netbook category has experienced impressive growth," says Erik Reid, director of marketing for mobile platforms at Intel. "Having shipped about 70 million Intel Atom chips for netbooks since our launch of the category in 2008, there is obviously a great market for these devices around the world."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Aug 2010 1:28

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• 11 comments

• ROMaster2

  Netbooks should never be used for real gaming, EVER.

  25.8.2010 03:22 #1

• KillerBug

  "The new powerful processors will give netbook owners better support for gaming, at the very least."
  
  Hehe...that is laughable...the whole reason that netbooks can't play most games is the intel graphics, not the intel processors.

  25.8.2010 04:00 #2

• chinpark9

  Compared to an ordinary laptop, which I own, the netbook is pretty laughable. The one I have sports an SSD, capacity of 12 or so Gb. spit in two, with the OS part of it only having 450 Mb of space left. So it is all very well pushing this as the new up and coming gear to own, but until they can install a much larger drive and memory, mine only carries a 1 Gb module, which they say can be increased to 2, but needs the thing to be taken to bits before the job can be done. Laughable does not begin to describe it.

  25.8.2010 04:50 #3

• Maleficent (unverified)

  My Asus 1201n netbook can play any game I can throw at it. Just Cause 2, Borderlands, Wow, Even GTA IV. Not sure what you guys are smoking. Check Youtube.

  25.8.2010 05:36 #4

• domie

  chinpark9 - well that was your choice I suppose - the solid state drives on netbooks are small , reflecting the technology and the price which is why you got only 12 GB .
  If you had bought a netbook with a normal HDD you can easily get up to 120 or 160 GB no problem - probably more as they presumably use the 2.5 " HDD that come in sizes up to 1 TB now.

  25.8.2010 06:11 #5

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by Maleficent: My Asus 1201n netbook can play any game I can throw at it. Just Cause 2, Borderlands, Wow, Even GTA IV. Not sure what you guys are smoking. Check Youtube. That netbook uses nVidia graphics instead of Intel graphics...that is why it is so powerful. Also, the small display size helps a lot. Fact is, the nVidia chip with a single core is a lot faster than a dual core with intel graphics...intel is terrible at graphics for some reason...maybe it is because instead of buying nVidia, they waste money on McAfee.
  
  Originally posted by domie:
  If you had bought a netbook with a normal HDD you can easily get up to 120 or 160 GB no problem - probably more as they presumably use the 2.5 " HDD that come in sizes up to 1 TB now. No, they don't use 2.5" drives; they use micro hard drives that are much smaller.

  26.8.2010 01:20 #6

• ddp

  killer, maybe they use both as i had to take a 2.5" sata hd out of a customer's netbook & connect it to my external usb sata adapter to retrieve her info before reloading windows.
  

  26.8.2010 13:21 #7

• KillerBug

  Perhaps, but I know some of them use the smaller 1.8" drives.

  26.8.2010 23:48 #8

• ddp

  no perhaps then as they use both.
  

  27.8.2010 18:32 #9

• Jemborg

  Killer, your wrong about the drives. My wife's Asus 1000H netbook has a 160GB HDD and 2GB and it's a little beauty. It performs much better than the specs lead one to believe.
  
  But your right about the nVidia graphics models. It's also possible in those machines to turn off (bypass?) the nVidia gfx chip to save power for non-demanding gfx tasks like browsing etc.
  
  But again, you're being negative here for some reason... what makes you think they won't bring out models with dual-cores AND nVidia gfx... for wankers like myself. :P
  

  Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
  
  
  

  31.8.2010 16:43 #10

• danishasad95 (unverified)

  Originally posted by Maleficent: My Asus 1201n netbook can play any game I can throw at it. Just Cause 2, Borderlands, Wow, Even GTA IV. Not sure what you guys are smoking. Check Youtube. agreed

  31.12.2011 12:19 #11