14 DAY TRIAL // The Atom N Series of central processing units is moving to a new generation, the Atom N2X00 line to be exact, even though the process has yet to reach the official stage.
Market watchers being who they are, Intel has once again failed to reach the official launch date of its upcoming chips without leaking information about it.
Granted, it is also possible that this is one of those controlled leaks meant to raise expectations and draw attention to the next product line.
Whichever might be the case, the company has published a nice data sheet with the specifications.
The Atom N2600 is the cheaper, less mighty one, while the N2800 is almost as strong and resourceful as the desktop D2X00 chips, which we covered here.
The units support eDP/DisplayPort, HDMI 1.3a, LVDS (single-channel) and the D-sub/analogue display interfaces.
The resolutions supported by each connection, however, vary quite a bit, some of them being artificially limited, or so it would seem.
Fortunately, the HD quality (1,366 x 768 pixels) is supported by all of them and, in some cases, even the 1,920 x 1,200 resolutions is possible.
For those that want to know the other numbers, the N2600 is a dual-core model with a frequency of 1.6 GHz, while the N2800 works at 1.86 GHz.
The former has support for 2 GB RAM (a single DIMM) and a GPU frequency of 400 MHz, while the latter operates at 640 MHz graphics clock and can handle up to 4 GB of memory (two slots).
This was perceived, as another deliberate limitation on Intel's part, to make the processors as distinct from the D2X00 as possible, even if consumers might get somewhat peeved at it.
Nevertheless, the CPUs do have video decode support at either 720p60m 1080i60 or 1080p24 for videos encoded at up to 20Mbps in MPEG2, WMV, H.264 and VC-1 formats.
As such, even with the limitations above, the Atom N2X00 processors are still a clear upgrade compared to the existing line.