The Pine Trail platform may have improved battery life in netbooks, but the newfangled Atom N450 processor that came with it wasn’t really any faster than its forebears. Earlier today, however, Intel updated its PR Chip Shots blog with news of a faster Pine Trail Atom: the N470, which runs at 1.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz.
Other specifications are identical to the N450’s. That means 512KB of cache, a memory controller with support for DDR2-667 RAM, and GMA 3150 integrated graphics, all housed on the same piece of silicon as the lone microprocessor core.
Intel writes that major PC vendors will release Atom N470-powered machines in the coming months. This new CPU should help "further differentiate [those companies’] netbook offerings with a higher frequency to deliver additional responsiveness for online and basic computing tasks," the company adds.
According to Intel’s latest price list (PDF), the Atom N470 will sell for $75, making it the most expensive member of the Atom lineup. The February 8 price list (PDF) quoted a price tag of $64 for the N450, although strangely, there’s no trace of the N450 in the latest list. Perhaps the new entrant has simply replaced its slightly slower sibling.