Speculation is mounting that Intel's Pineview Soc (part of the Pinetrail platform for notebooks), will integrate a GMA500 style (i.e. SGX) graphics, and not GMA950 graphics (Which was previously using for netbooks along with the N atom series)
http://www.netbookchoice.com/2009/0...el-‘pineview’-atom-n400-d400-d500-processors/
That info is not official Intel stuff, but a summation of info received by hkepc.com
The official line from intel can be seen in this .pdf:-
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/reference/Pineview_Moblin_disclosure.pdf
All that says on page 6 is that there will be "increased graphics performance". Yet it is common knowledge that GMA500 on the Zseries Atoms has consistently performed worse than the 950 graphics using in the G945 chipset (for the N series Atoms)
Now the info from the first link above,and also various other sources, are stating that the graphics will run at 200MHz. Thats the same clock speed at the GMA500 currently runs on most versions of Intels SCH chip. So if thats the case, where is the performance increase coming from ? Other than the improvement in having the processor and the graphics on the same die, there isn't one ? Is Intel merely stating that in thier opinion GMA500 is better than GMA950, and that the actual poor performance to date of GMA500 is down to driver issues ?
Another site today stirred the story more.....
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/06/14/4224804.htm
THis site states "the graphics chip Intel is said to be planning to pair with the upcoming Atom CPUs will only be slightly faster than its existing one".
Now I'm not sure what they are comparing too, but I'm assuming its the existing GMA950 being using in existing netbook platform. It goes on to say
"The upcoming Pineview Atom N450 will reportedly be paired with Intel's GMA 500 graphics chip. The GMA 500 will run at a faster clock speed and double the number of graphics "pipelines" to four. But it will still run at half the speed of Nvidia's 9400M chip and boast only a quarter of its graphic pipelines.", and quotes Jon Peddie as saying,The GMA 500 is "indeed better than the old 945," .
Again, I feel that the "faster clock" is relative to the 133Mhz that the existing netbook chipset graphics runs out. Can anyone confirm the number of "pipes" that SGX535 has ?
I wonder if we might see SGX540 in pineview, at 200MHZ it should provide a good performance increase over SGX545, and given that SGX540 taped out in Oct '08, the timing would be about right ?
To confuse the situation even more, the last link says that "For consumers demanding HD video, Intel reportedly plans to offer Broadcom Corp.'s Crystal HD video decoder chip as an optional add-on."
And yet we know that one of the main strengths of poulsbos GMA500 over the existing N-series graphics is its video decode ability, GMA500 can decode 1080p in hardware. So if its GMA500 that is being put into pineview, why the need for an optional separate HD decode chip ? Here's another separate article which would seem to confirm the optional separate HD decode chip:-
http://apcmag.com/intels-next-gen-atom-platform-gets-hd-decoder-chip.htm
Its all very confusing