There are still only a handful of desktops with Intel’s latest Atom D410 and D510 chips on the market. But Fudzilla reports that Intel is already working on a refresh, and that new Atom D425 and D525 chips should be available within the next few months.
The biggest change is that the new chips will support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, while the current processor line only supports DDR2.
The dual core Atom D525 processor will also reportedly get a slight speed bump to run at 1.8GHz instead of 1.66GHz. Fudzilla says the single core Atom D425 chip will run at the same 1.66GHz clock speed as the Atom D410.
If we’re lucky, maybe the memory controller redesign will make it a real integrated memory controller rather than the bolted-on farce that the current Atom on-chip memory controllers are (moving to an IMC should cut latencies a ton, which should especially help an in-order chip like the Atom which is often stuck on pipeline stalls; the current IMCs don’t help latencies a bit).
Awesome, they need to do something to make these chips more powerful on the desktop. I’m all for lower power consumption, but take up another watt, and give me more performance please…