Intel Atom gets speed bump

... but I wish they'd put as much effort into improving the standard chipset. Really, for typical applications, the extra MHz will make precious little difference.

I think Intel is using the Atom to clear out excess stock of obsolete chipset parts

the comments are idiotic. This is the Z series Atom guys hello?!? It doesn't use the 945 chipset like the celery-like Atom N used in netbooks.

I've got the MSI wind with it's "turbo" button set to 2GHz.

There is very little difference in performance between the stock 1.6GHz and the 2GHz settings.

Dual core is MUCH more useful IMHO.

I thought the N280 had ushered in 667MHz FSBs for netbooks?

And why can't computers use 666MHz FSBs? Do people worry Satan will emerge from the USB port and take you to hell? ;)

He'd obviously come through a firewire port, don't u think?

I believe the FSB is 666.6MHz, which is why they call it 667 (rounding up to the nearest MHz) while 333.3 is just 333 (rounding down).

Right ! And if your Aunt had balls she'd be your Uncle.

I don't think many get the reason why Atom for NetBooks and NetPCs is stuck at 1.6Ghz. It's because the Windows XP license for NetBooks OEM states that it can only be SHIPPED with a computer with a processor running on a clock speed no faster than 1.6Ghz, and with no more than 1GB of RAM. MSI has a devious little workaround in the BIOs of recent netbooks - there's a little "overclock" feature that can bring the speed up to 2.0Ghz. And many dealers have been instructed how to upgrade RAM to 2GBs once the computer has left the factory and enters the distribution channel.

Shipping a faster 2.0Ghz chip, or a multi-core chip in a shipping laptop would force the manufacturer to ship it with Vista. A NetBook with Vista would have to compete with other Vista notebooks with Dual Core processors, hence would not have much of a market.

Thanks, Maccess! Any references, sources, documents, statements, usable in a court of law? :-)

Any comment from The Inq?

This sounds 100% like Microsoft. Why don't Acer, Asus, MSI et al. sell netbooks with 2 GB RAM and the CPU frequency set to 2 GHz, with Linux and OpenOffice, for less money? They could. The MS Windows license would easily compensate for the extra gigabyte of RAM. Let's see how quickly Microsoft will change the contracts...