Intel today has made a somewhat unexpected launch of its new-generation Atom platform. Pine Trail platform, which has Intel's new Pineview Atom processors have on paper a lot of pleasant news. Atom Pineview may both memory controller and graphics core integrated in the processor package; with everything except the less I / O functionality directly integrated into the processor increases the efficiency significantly. But even if Intel undoubtedly created a very effective platform has lost the plot on the other points.

Shall we sum up the positive points are that the performance of the new Pineview Atom processors are generally higher than those of today's Diamondville Atoms. This thanks to an integrated memory controller.

Battery life is frequently much superior at power utilization of Intel's new-fangled 2-chip solution (CPU + NM10 south bridge) is approximately halved in the last generation 3-chip solution (CPU + Northbridge / GPU + Southbridge). In tests, published in the Pine Trail-based ASUS Eee PC 1005PE sees up to 27% longer battery against the earlier generation.

The negative aspect is that the integrated GPU is anything but powerful. The performance is marginally better than the Intel GMA950 chip and is still far inferior to Nvidia's Ion. Biggest problem is the lack of hardware accelerated H.264 decoding. Something Intel's partners may use third-party circuits.

Intel Pine Trail platform gives ultimately a somewhat faster and significantly more power-efficient Atom generation than today, making the choice among Intel's two platforms snap. But with the limitations of today's 45nm technology, Intel, after all, leaving the door open to with Nvidia to advance performance further in Pine Trail with external graphics chips.

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