Intel is releasing three new ultra-low-voltage (ULV) chips. The company issued a new price list this week, and it includes the previously unannounced processors which come in dual-core and quad-core varieties and which seem to straddle the line between an Intel Atom and Intel Celeron chip.

Intel Logo

The new chips are named like Atom processors, but they’re being marketed as part of the Celeron family. They’re also priced more like Celeron chips, at $132 per part.

Intel’s price list only provides basic specs, so it’s tough to say how the new processors compare with Intel Atom Cedar Trail or Clover Trail chips or upcoming Celeron processors based on the company’s Haswell architecture.

Here’s what we do know about each chip:

  • 1.46 GHz Intel N2805 dual-core processor with 1MB of cache
  • 2 GHz Intel N2810 dual-core processor with 1MB of cache
  • 1.6 GHz Intel N2910 quad-core processor with 2MB of cache.

They’re all based on 22nm designs, and all sell for the same $132 price (although Intel will likely offer deals to vendors that order in bulk).

Update: Mystery solved. It looks like at least some of Intel’s next-gen Celeron and Pentium chips will be based on the same Silvermont architecture as its new Atom-branded chips.

via MiniMachines, PC Inpact, and CPU World

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19 replies on “Intel quietly introduces 3 new low-power chips (N2805, N2810, N2910)”

  1. BoloMKXXVIII: I think the E-350 and E-450 chips are going to change people’s minds about AMD. I have a machine based on the 450, and it works great. 19v 2.1amp power brick powers the whole machine, pretty cool. They have their “Break” now it’s just a matter of whether they can parlay that into a difference or not. My NEW pc priced at about $120 total, is a tough price point to hit.

    1. Change? Those are their old APU’s!

      Temash and Kabini will replace all the AMD Fusion/Brazos generation APUs!

      1. Yeah, I know they’re “last” generation. Which is now finally fully into the market. I haven’t researched their newest “C” cpu’s yet. Mostly because all the stuff available now is based on the E-3/450. I will buy more E-450 based machines, after the experience I’ve had with mine. No, it’s not a core i7. Most of what I do doesn’t need a powerhouse computer anyway.

        1. Then you’re safe because those old APU’s are far from being a powerhouse of any sort. They’re more than last gen, the E-350 especially is over two years old now and the E-450 didn’t improve much at all over the E-350.

          Aside from graphical performance, those older chips were only intended to compete against low end Intel ATOMs for the netbook market.

          The lower end Ontario C-Series APU’s got clocks so low that despite having a more efficient CPU they dipped below the CPU performance of a dual core ATOM and the Zacate series didn’t have that much of edge against the D-Series ATOMs.

          AMD mainly just provided a lot better graphical performance compared to Intel’s low end GMAs but all of them provide less performance than Intel’s higher end GMA’s like the Ivy Bridge HD4000!

          Even the newer Temash and Kabini only rate somewhere between a Intel HD 3000 and HD 4000 GMA and they’re providing up to double the performance of the old Brazos series.

          Besides, AMD is slashing prices on the older higher end APU’s now that they’re going to start introducing Richland APUs… So you can probably get a good deal on a Trinity APU and get over double the performance of those old low end and APUs!

  2. Hope to see some low TDP quad cores. I like to double my HTPC as a video transcoder and more cores give better performance even at lower frequencies. Too bad I use Linux and Quick Sync support seems like it’s going to take years to come.

    1. Intel made it possible for Open Source developers to add support for Quick Sync… Hand Brake will be one of the first apps to add that support, though no mention if it will work on Linux yet but with Open Source it’s only a matter of time…

    2. Yup, going to be years. I don’t even think much work is going on for it. The Windows version of Handbrake with Quick Sync support will probably be in a somewhat stable state next year but that doesn’t relate to you.

      1. Ya, the “open source” SDK for exposing Quick Sync is Windows only.

        There’s a beta Linux version of the SDK that was announced recently and it’s “open source” (emphasis on the quotes) as well.

  3. AMD just can’t get a break. Their recently announced chips sit in roughly the same performance market but use more power.

        1. Same performance is rather relative… Intel tends to have a CPU advantage, while AMD has the GPU advantage… Though the CPU advantage is mainly in single threaded processing, as AMD tries to push more cores and technology like HSA and hUMA but they’re a long way from seeing that pay off yet.

          The upcoming Kaveri will be the real test but we may not see actual products using that until the beginning of next year and that’s their higher end and doesn’t apply to their lower end…

          For similar product range though, generally the AMD system will cost about $100 less than the Intel system… The actual cost difference between the chips can be larger, especially when comparing to Intel’s high priced Core i-Series but total system costs depend on the OEMs and in the end the chip costs are a small part of the total system costs.

          While it also depends what features the system will offer… Like the Temash version of the Acer Aspire V5 is nearly the same price as the Core i5 version because they used the cost savings to add a more premium IPS screen with Multi-Touch and changed the design of the casing a bit as well…

          The lower end APU’s from AMD though do get pretty cheap, with only ARM and Intel ATOMs possibly matching or going lower… So you should see some systems for under $500 being offered…

  4. Seeing as they’ve been putting some of the Atom chips in phones lately, I wonder if these are intended for mobile applications.

    1. There’s still a trade off between power usage and performance, even with these next gen chips… So we won’t be seeing any Haswell generation device put into something as small as a phone…

      Only the ATOM SoCs are presently low powered enough to go into anything that small and the next gen 22nm Bay Trail/Valley View with the Silvermont architectural update won’t start coming out until the end of this year, with the replacement for Medfield/Clover Trail+ being Merrifield but that won’t come out until well into 2014 to apply to the phone market…

  5. It’s unlikely to be either Clover Trail or Cedar Trail… The N2600 and N2800 were listed around $42-$47 Tray cost on Intel site when they were first released… They’re pretty much discontinued now in favor of the ATOM SoCs like Clover Trail…

    While, Clover Trail and the other mobile ATOM SoCs are all under the Z-Series model naming system… and the Clover Trail Z2760 has a Tray listed cost of just $41…

    So, unless the pricing is wrong then those are definitely not going to be based on either of those…

    More likely they’re adopting a new model naming system for the Haswell update to the Celeron line… right now they’re still rolling out the Ivy Bridge update but should be all done by Q3… Leaving any additional releases to be Haswell based…

    Besides, Intel previously suggested a new naming system for ATOMs starting with Bay Trail/Valley View… Emphasizing the new roles Intel intends for the ATOM there would be the T-Series for Tablets and will run under 3W max TDP, M-Series for Mobile (Laptops, Hybrids, etc) will be offered in 4W and up to 6.5W TDP, and finally D-Series for Desktops/Servers will go up to 12W TDP and will be the version to offer up to eight (octo) cores…

    So the previous N-Series for ATOM naming seems to be abandoned… Meaning it’s much more likely they’re either giving these new models a temporary model number with no actual meaning or they no longer need the N for ATOM and decided to use it for a new branch of the Celeron series.

    1. Hopefully they’ve done something here with the onboard graphics. Driver support has been extremely weak and they gave up entirely for 64-bit operation so a ton of Atom machines run 32-bit instead. I have a D2700 box that runs WHS 2011 (64-bit) just fine but I run it headless anyway. A new D2700 box is on the way but it has an Nvidia chip on the mainboard to solve the driver issues – sadly this combo runs too hot for fanless operation.

      1. Well, I’m pretty sure these models the article mentions really are Celerons and intended just for low cost laptops…

        But for the ATOM, yes… The upcoming Bay Trail/Valley View GMA will be based on the Ivy Bridge HD4000… Just scaled down from 16 execution units to 4, which will probably place performance closer to the HD2500 but that’ll still be about 3x better than the present Imagination PowerVR based GMA being used with Clover Trail.

        Initially, Intel driver support tends to be lacking because they take a long time to provide updates and patches but the HD4000 has been around for a year now for mobile and driver support has advanced enough that they recently released a Haswell based driver update for Ivy Bridge HD4000 that provided up to 10% performance improvement, which is pretty large for just a driver update and should apply to all hardware based on the same GMA…

        Regardless, Intel driver support is at least a world of difference better than Imagination PowerVR drivers… Ever since Cedar Trail Introduced the SGX545 based GMA 3600 (400MHz) and GMA 3650 (640MHz) the ATOM GMA (Clover Trail uses the same GPU but clocked at 533MHz) has been stuck with limited 32bit drivers that wouldn’t even support all the specifications that the hardware was suppose to support like DX 10.1 support was limited to just 9.0c for example and of course no Linux driver support to speak of at all… But Intel provides both 32bit and 64bit drivers as well as decent Linux support for their own GPUs.

        While Bay Trail/Valley View can take advantage of that because it fully supports full 64bit…

        The Tablet versions will support to up to at least 4GB of LP-DDR3 RAM and the Mobile and Desktop/Server versions will support up to 8GB of DDR3L RAM… So gone will be the days of ATOMs only supporting up to 2GB of RAM per module slot…

        Anyway, Anandtech estimates that Bay Trail/Valley View should provide about as much performance as a 2010 Apple MBA… which is pretty good for a platform mainly intended for mobile devices like phones and tablets…

        While, just like Haswell will be getting the Broadwell update in 2014… The Silvermont ATOM will also get another update in 2014, or early 2015, to 14nm Airmont… So they’ll be pushing these platforms aggressively for the foreseeable future…

        So aspects like driver support should improve if they’re going to keep up with that pace…

        1. Probably worth mentioning that the D2700 system I have in service has 2 slots each accepting up to 2GB each, and the new D2700 system has one slot accepting up to 4GB. Still a 4GB maximum, but don’t let a single-slot board put you off – check the specs before you buy to be sure.

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