14 DAY TRIAL // Intel’s low-performance Atom D7500, D2550 and D2500 is all that the company is planning to offer for nettop and low-power desktop systems for the next year and a half. Many of our readers were hoping to see a more capable desktop version of Clover Trail, but Intel doesn’t have such plans.
The world’s biggest CPU designer is planning to skip releasing desktop versions of its Clover Trail and Medfield architecture.
We’re not saying that such versions were ever in its plans, but considering how low the performance abilities of the current Atom processors are and the fierce competition from AMD’s Brazos 2.0, many were already thinking about upgraded desktop Atom CPUs.
Intel’s Medfield is a quite capable low-power chip, and clocked at over 2 GHz it might have been able to give Qualcomm’s SnapDragon S4 and AMD’s Brazos 2.0 a run for their money in the netbook and low-power desktop market.
Current Atom versions are clearly inferior in performance and 3D abilities compared to AMD’s Brazos 2.0, and they are also far behind ARM implementations such as Qualcomm’s SnapDragon S4.
Intel reportedly has no plans to upgrade its desktop low-power Atom lineup and will only release improved versions in Q4 2013.
These improved Atom processors are currently codenamed Bay Trail and will be built in 22nm technology.
Bay Trail will have to fight a plethora of dual- and quad-core ARM Cortex A15 processors by then, and they will also have to face AMD’s new Jaguar low-power cores paired with new GCN iGPUs.
We don’t believe Bay Trail stands a chance in front of such fierce competition, but considering that Intel might decide to license a more powerful 3D core from PowerVR, we’re not betting on any side for now.