Atom processors are netbook CPUs designed and manufactured by Intel. These processors offer a low-profile power consumption and reasonable performance for a low budgetary price. Netbook manufacturers like to use them for their high efficiency, and low price, these are also the lowest power consumption X86 based processors on the market at the moment.
There are other solutions, such as ARM based CPUs used in smartphones and some MIDs(Mobile Internet Device). These processors also use less than 30% of the power for the same amount of work done than their x86 competitors, the only flaw that makes netbook manufacturers opt for the hungry Atoms is that they can run Windows.
What are the differences between Atom 330 and other Atoms?
There are several Atom processors on the market simultaneously, and they’re differentiated from each other by their clock speed, number of cores and power consumption. There are two distinct groups when the axe falls by efficiency; desktop Atom processors and netbook Atom processors. Atom 330 belongs to the former group because it doesn’t have EIST (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology).
Lack of this feature in Atom 330s result in better responsiveness, but raises power consumption considerably. 330 also comes with two identical Atom cores, therefore it can be considered a dual core processor. The two cores run at 1.60GHz, and 133MHz(and support 533MHz DDR2 Memory chips) therefore are identical to Atom N270 in performance as long as the application uses only one core for its calculations.
It’s worth mention that HyperThreading technology is activated in these processors, making the two cores appear as four different computing units in task manager and resulting in more convenient multi-tasking abilities.
Does the additional core help?
While the additional computing core certainly doesn’t hurt single core performance, it barely speeds actions up when the application uses only once core. To truly benefit from the two extra threads you either need to be heavily multi-tasking, or using software that cares.
Take a look at this benchmark to see how it really performs in real world circumstances. Note that while it’s always faster than N270, it doesn’t beat it by 100% as it would have been expected considering it has twice as many N270 cores as N270 does.
Where can you find these processors?
In low-cost desktop motherboards. The packaging is BGA, which means the processor has to be soldered on to the Atom motherboard, so there is no possibility of upgrading from 330 to D510 later, or from N270 to 330 without changing the whole motherboard all at once.
Despite lacking important features 330 can be found in a few select netbooks where battery life is not really an issue, or priority. Asus’ 1201N comes with Nvidia ION and Atom 330, note that the battery life is closer to that of a full size notebook and the price is not as friendly as you’d think. At $480 you can have the most powerful netbook of 2010, but do you really need one?
Where to look for additional info?
Looking around online helps you get more information about the subject. You can try looking around my site, but there are some external resources you may put into good use.
Intel’s official Atom 330 page
Wikipedia page on Intel Atom
Atom 330 Motherboard – Asus AT3N7A-I
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