Intel has been promising that it’s next-generation of low-power Atom processors for tablets would offer better performance while using less power than any Atom chips to date. Now Intel engineer Francois Piednoël is proving the point.
He’s posted benchmark results for an upcoming Intel Atom Bay Trail processor called the Atom Z3770. It’s a quad-core chip running at 1.47 GHz, and according to AnandTech it scores almost as well in the Cinebench test as a 2011-era Intel Pentium processor.
That’s about 3 times better than what you’d expect from an Intel Atom Z2760 Clover Trail processor, and about what you’d expect from a 2010 Core 2 Duo chip.
In other words, Intel’s upcoming low-power tablet chips will offer the same kind of performance you would have gotten from one of Intel’s best laptop chips just 3 years ago.
At least, that’s what we see when running a multi-core test like Cinebench.
Geekbench scores from July suggest that the Atom Z3370 will be significantly faster than today’s Clover Trail chips… but it won’t necessarily be 3 times as fast.
We’ll probably have to wait a little longer to see how the chip holds up under real-world conditions. Devices with Bay Trail processors are expected to ship in late 2013 or early 2014.
The performance seems to equal AMD Kabini. Probably the performance is more weak in graphic intensive benchmarks.
Depending on which set of benchmarks you look at, it ranges from “in the general vicinity” of Kabini to “Blows it out of the water” since both chips use a form of thermal restricted turbo. The Z3770 seems to be better suited to tablets as it’s SDP is lower,
The graphics will most likely be weaker than Kabini, but more than enough to handle full HD video acceleration.
If the benchmarks are remotely accurate, I wonder why MS are releasing a Surface RT 2, why not just release a Baytrail Tablet running W8 proper and be done with RT?
I would conjecture too much invested into surface rt. It would be nice to see baytrail surface pro tablets, but I really want proper W8 and ubiquitous hardware. The idea of bare bones tablets that you can swap out storage and OS in, appeals to the geek in me.
I wonder which of these chips will actually make it into devices. Based on previous Atom generations with mutiple SKUs (ie. previous Z-series Atoms), only a few (usually on the slower side) made it into products.
The Z-series should make it into tablets and similar form factors, and so far only the Z3770 has been revealed.
There’s no specs yet for the phone level chips. The rest of them are for laptops, desktops and the wierd little E-series for embedded industrial stuffs.
Maybe this has enough juice to finally have a decent windows 8 tablet that’s cheap.
If surface and surface pro are any indication, ms really has no intention of bringing tablets to the masses like google does. The new chip does have tremendous potential though. We could see full x86 compatible tablets in the sub $500 category.
I’d say lower, Intel is going to try to push pricing below the present ATOM, which we already see in sub $500 devices like the Acer W3 tablet…
Mind that Intel has to fight market momentum that’s presently in ARM’s favor for the mobile market. So they have to be competitive on all fronts of pricing, power efficiency, and performance in order to effectively compete.
Though, a lot depends on OEMs… adding features like WACOM digitizer, etc can add significantly to the pricing of a tablet but they may feel pressured to do so to better appeal to consumers and differentiate themselves from competition…
I threw out the sub $500 price tag because it’s a fairly important pricing segment. I don’t know if Silvermont bearing tablets will hit that level, but it’s certainly plausible and I can hope.
I would completely agree with you, if it was a matter of just Intel and OEMs setting prices. MS is going to want its cut of revenue too. Whether MS would cooperate to reduce pricing to get more market share, I don’t know. They can be very stubborn about keeping their margins, or willing to give hardware away at or below cost to increase market share or dominate a market.
I really like the idea of OS agnostic tablet hardware, from a tech-savvy consumer’s perspective. Linux, Windows, x86 Android or Chrome, I’d like to be able to choose and change things up as I want.
Special features like WACOM digitizers are a premium feature worthy of a higher price compared to more basic models. If pricing pressures bring the final cost down for the consumers, I fully support it.
Edited for grammar.
Well, looks like they’re definitely pushing for lower pricing…
News from IFA 2013, Toshiba recently showed off their upcoming Encore Windows 8.1 8″ Bay Trail tablet that’ll be released by the end of October and the rep stated that it should be released in Europe for just 299 Euros… Pricing in UK tends to be a bit high because of VAT, and Toshiba is hardly known for providing the best prices, etc… but if it makes it to the states then pricing in the US should be similar to the Acer W3 at around $300 but running on Bay Trail and a bit better spec’ed in screen quality, etc…
That is truly excellent news! It’s great that a major OEM like Toshiba is bringing windows 8 to the masses. Here’s to hoping other manufacturers follow suit.
You just made my day!
What I really want to see is a quality Intel android tablet.
Dodgy benchmark results aside, skipping a generation or 2 (or 3) of Intel’s offerings
seems to pay off, assuming you don’t need a device right away. So, for example,
if you bought a Core 2 Duo product, you could have waited for Core i5 Sandy Bridge, then Haswell. The stuff in between would have yielded negligible improvement.
In the case of Atom, Bay Trail could be the first version for serious work.
No wonder the PC market is in a funk. PCs have been “good enough” for so long that there’s no need to upgrade as compelling reasons (hardware AND software) to do so are becoming fewer and farther between.
In a way, you might say Intel did too good a job in the past and software innovation just couldn’t keep up.
My primary desktop is a Sandy Bridge core i5 and I have no plans to upgrade at all. As someone who used to upgrade every generation, this is something new for me.
Since when is a good idea to trust Intel’s benchmkars?
Thus why Brad suggested we’ll probably have to wait to see how the chip holds up under real world conditions…
Chips will start shipping in a matter of just weeks now… So it won’t be that much longer before we see some independent testing done…