Intel ATOM N470 vs N450 – are there any differences?

Ever since Intel announced the N470 processor earlier this year I’ve been waiting to see it put to a test next to its more famous brother, the N450. And now someone finally did it, as Peter at netbooked.net managed to get his hands on a brand new Lenovo S10-3s equipped with exactly this processor and compared it with an older Lenovo S10-3 (with the N450).

So, the question is: is this new processor any better? Taking a look at the specs, you’ll notice that the only difference between the two is speed: N450 is clocked a 1.66 GHz while the N470 at 1.83 GHz. Besides that, both come with 512KB L2 cache and 667 MHz FSB . So, we have a 10% increase in speed for the N470, but is this translated in a noticeable increase of performances? Well, no.

Peter’s tests showed hardly noticeable improvements for the N470 (see details in his post), although Windows 7 rates the CPU with 2.5, as opposed to only 2.3 for the N450.

Windows 7 ratings for the N470 (top) and the N450 (bottom)

Of course, you couldn’t have expected wonders from this processor, after all, very few things have changed. Base part is that you should go for a netbook with it if you have the chance, but expect it to perform the same as the ones with the N450 on-board in real life. Because the differences, although present, are almost impossible to notice with the naked eye.

So, if you had your expectations high for the N470, sry to disappoint you. Things will change though in the next year, as both AMD and Intel are working on developing new platforms for netbooks. Till then though, we’ll just have to settle with these Atoms. Oh, and don’t expect the N455/N475 series to bring any miracles also, but Intel has the dual core Atom N500 in-store for us and we should see some improvements from that one (at least in terms of multitasking if not in terms of speed).

Source: Netbooked

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Tags: dual core processor, Intel Atom

Last updated: August 17, 2010 | Published: April 25th, 2010 | Add the first comment!