The Netbook Market

Many Netbook buyers are curious about the differences between the Intel Atom N Series and the Atom Z Series. Intel had long planned two different versions of its low power processor with each designed to fill a different market segment. Readers may also have seen these processors referred to by their code names of Silverthorne (Z) and Diamondville (N).

Daimondville (N) is by far the most common and appears in almost all netbooks available today. The N series comes as either the 1.6GHZ N270 or the 1.66GHZ N280. With a marginly higher clock speed and faster FSB (667 over 533) the N280 is the quicker of the two. The Diamondville processor is also paired with the Intel 945GSE chipset and the Intel GMA950 graphics processor.

Silverthorne on the other hand is intended for smaller computers such as Mobile Internet Devices (MID), and as such uses the smaller Intel Poulsbo chipset. While the 945GSE is essentially a re-designed desktop chipset Poulsbo was designed completely from scratch, cutting out a lot of unnecessary devices like an onboard floppy controller. Being physically smaller allows the Atom+Poulsbo combo to fit into smaller devices such as MIDs, and it also has marginally less power draw and produces less heat.

Poulsbo is paired with the newer Intel GMA500 graphics processor and unlike the GMA950, supports Direct X 10. It also has the decoders required to process High Definition audio and video however, in real world tests this has proved unsuccessful.

Therefore the Z Series or Silverthorne processors are essentially Atom with a different chipset and graphics processor.

Yugatech's Test

With few real world tests done it is hard to compare the performance of both chipsets but in the comparisons that can be found online it appears that the Z Series processor at the same clockspeed, despite having a newer chipset, is in fact slower. This is most likely due to the integration of devices that were previously separated on the 945GSE chipset, thus giving the processor more to do under Poulsbo.

So, what does this mean for the Netbook world?

We have started to see the Poulsbo chipset show up in Netbooks such as the MSI Wind U115 and the Dell Mini 10. The theory goes that Intel had given Netbook manufacturers restrictions on what processors they could use based on the specifications of their device. For example, a Netbook with a 1024 x 600 screen resolution cannot use anything other than an Atom N270 or N280. To get around this limitation, manufacturers have starting using the Z Series processor, and Dell has released a netbook with a 1366 x 768 screen.

Bare in mind though that clock for clock the Z Atom appears to be slower than the N, and 1.33GHZ Z520 is most definitely slower than a 1.6GHZ N270.

If faced with the choice between a 1.6GHZ N270 or a 1.6GHZ Z530 the buyer should go with the N270.