AMD pushes 1GHz Athlon 64 to battle Intel Atom

Nordic Hardware reports AMD is rolling out a new processor to get a bit more competitive with Intel's cheap and low-power Atom processor. AMD isn't expected to roll out a real Atom competitor until 2009 but in the meantime it carved out a new niche processor out of the aging K8 architecture. The chip is called Athlon 64 2000+, it has a clockspeed of 1GHz and a TDP of 8W.

The processor is based on the lesser known Lima core with G0 stepping. The HyperTransport bus has been reduced to only 1GHz. At 8W it is still twice as hungry as Intel's Atom processor, but AMD has the upper hand on the chipset side. In the review they compared AMD's critically acclaimed 780G chipset to Intel's 945G circuit and it's a technological knock-out.

AMD 780G uses a fraction of the power, while offering tons of features lacking in the 945G chipset. The only drawback so far is that there are few boards smaller than mATX with 780G, while Intel has Atom platforms at both miniITX and miniDTX standards. Unlike Atom, the AMD processor is not fused to the board which does make it a bit more flexible although the in the end it will end up costing you more.

Even though the AMD processor has a TDP of 8W and the Atom 4W, the AMD processor remained a lot cooler and worked just fine with passive cooling, which is not something you could say about the Atom platform. The actual power consumption also proved to be better with the AMD processor, just like the overall performance.

A review of the Athlon 64 2000+ can be read at Tom's Hardware.