14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, several rumors were making the rounds, saying that AMD was expected to release a new low-power processor, completely designed to compete with Intel's highly popular Atom CPU. Ultimately, all speculation came to an end once claims were made that the Sunnyvale-based chip maker was not even considering releasing an Atom competitor anytime in the near future.
On that note, it looks that AMD has strong reason for not releasing a new low-power CPU designed for small-sized netbooks and nettops. According to a recent article on the Tom's Hardware website, the maker already has a decent competitor for Intel's Atom, and it is actually "more economical, faster and quieter" than Intel's product. After running a comparative test between the Athlon 64 2000+ CPU and Intel's Atom 230 processor, a single, yet surprising conclusion was reached: the Athlon 64 processor is overall better than Intel's solution.
The CPUs were tested on two desktop platforms and, according to the test results, AMD's Athlon 64 2000+ has a better energy consumption than Intel's Atom and provides a better processing power. One of the highest strong points for AMD's Athlon was the 790G platform, on which the CPU was tested. Compared with the 945GC chipset, the 790G platform offers three times as many SATA ports, has better integrated graphics and can also support two monitors. There's also support for an HD resolution (at a maximum of 1920 by 1200), while high picture quality is achieved through a DVI/HDMI port.
As far as noise level is concerned, the Atom is once again surpassed by the Athlon processor, which, thanks to the energy-efficient 790G platform, does not require an active cooling solution.
On the downside, the Athlon 64 2000+ processor has a higher TDP level than Intel's Atom, with 8W compared with the 4W for the Atom. There's also a disadvantage for the energy-efficient 790G platform, which is currently available only with a microATX form factor, while the Intel platform has a significantly smaller miniITX board. Also, according to Tom's Hardware, the price tag of the AMD processor should be somewhere in the $90 range, almost double the amount you'd need for an Atom processor.
Despite all of that, there's only one conclusion to this, and that is that AMD has something to seriously compete with the Atom.