14 DAY TRIAL // In the fourth quarter of this year, Intel will release a new generation of Atom processors that is known under the code name of Cedarview, which Soyo plans to use for an upcoming motherboard using the micro-ATX form factor.
The most distinctive feature of this Soyo solution is the large blue-colored aluminum radiator that stands over the Atom D2700 processor and the Intel NM10 chipset in order to passively cool the two.
Right under this heatsink, Soyo has placed a pair of full size DDR3 memory slots, while the rest of the board's expansion options include two 32-bit legacy PCI slots as well as a PCI Express x16 slot.
The Intel NM10 chipset limits the latter to x4 PCIe speeds, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem considering the target market of the motherboard.
The rest of the layout is pretty basic and doesn't hold anything worth mentioning outside of the two 3Gbps SATA ports placed right near the 24-pin ATX power connector.
Taking a look at the available I/O connectivity options, we get to see yet again that we are dealing with an entry level motherboard, since there isn't much else to find here except the usual ports and connectors.
The good news is that Soyo has installed an HDMI video output, so the board can be used to build an HTPC system.
The Atom D2700 is the fastest Cedarview processor to be released by Intel as it includes dual processing cores clocked at 2.13GHz, 1MB of Level 2 cache, a DDR3 integrated memory controller as well as an on-die GPU.
This is based on a PowerVR design that is fully compatible with DirectX 10.1 and features HD decoding (MPEG2, VC1, AVC, and H.264) with Blu-Ray 2.0 support.
Pricing for the Soyo motherboard wasn't reveled, but such information will most likely appear as we are getting closer to the Cedar Trail platform launch. (via Expreview)
