The MSI Windpad 120W is the Cedar Trail version of the Windpad U110W – an AMD Fusion device. We reported on the 120W in June where it showed at IFA with a Cedar Trail 1.86Ghz CPU. We saw it at IDF a few weeks ago and it had a low-power platform inside. We had the chance to give it a few tests.
The Windpad 120W shown at IDF used the Intel Atom N2600 with 32nm CedarView-M with dual-core, 2-threads per core (contrary to specs) and 1.6Ghz clockrate. The PowerVR SGX545 graphics operates at 400Mhz and forms part of the GMA graphics unit. The TDP is 3.5W and it is coupled with a communications chip (NM10) that uses 1.5W.
We only had time to do some CPU and battery tests but in Cinebench R10 we get a good idea of the CPU performance. A multi-core result of 1507 matches Atom N550 and very closely.
The 120W comes with 2GB of RAM
And after a good 10-15 minutes of testing, we saw over 4hrs left on the battery (97%) which is an indicator of working time. Given the low TDP of the Cedar Trail platform we expect it to idle down well to add a few hours to that.
One thing we still haven’t worked out is the screen resolution although the 110W has 1280×800. If that’s the case, this could make the perfect entry-level Windows 8 tablet.
Still outstanding from Cedar Trail tests are definitive 3D graphics performance tests. We’ve seen an indication that the N2800 with the graphics clocked at 650Mhz will be twice as good as the graphics on the Pine Trail generation but remember, the N2600 graphics are clocked lower. Don’t expect anything ground-breaking here.
It’s like a winpad 110W but with the specter of driver issues for the rest of your life. Nice work on ruining your entire Atom line, Intel.
Still premature to be assuming it’ll have anywhere near as much problems at the GMA 500 originally caused. There’s a difference between promoting caution and trying to induce panic aftermath!
Intel has much better resources for providing driver support this time around and they’re far more heavily invested in making sure it works. Along with the previously pointed out examples like them getting MeeGo to work on a Oak Trail tablet that shows they have already done significant work on developing Linux drivers and their more recently announced continued support for MeeGo suggest they will continue to help develop those drivers.
Imagination as well is no longer opposed to the development of Open Source drivers for their products. While there are plenty of other products that have to work with proprietary hardware and manage to make it work just fine!
So assuming nothing goes seriously wrong then it is interesting from a performance stand point. Back in Computex Taipei 2011 they originally showcased this same model with the more powerful N2800, but apparently the power and heat may have been too much and they decided to go with the N2600 instead, or maybe they’ll release two versions.
The GMA 3650 (640MHz) should be a little over twice as good as GMA 3150 (200MHz). So the GMA 3600 (400MHz) should still do noticeably better, which along with the improved power efficiency should make this more attractive for tablet use.
Actually its the N2600 with the 400MHz core that was 2x fast as Pine Trail. The N2800 with 640MHz is 3x as fast.
http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusive-first-intel-cedar-trail-benchmarks/13413.html
Pretty close, though a little less than a full 2x and 3x respectively vs the two tested Pine Trail. While it does show N2600 gets double the Oak Trail Z670 with GMA 600 and just over triple for the N2800.
So since the GMA 600 is clocked at 400MHz means that at equal clock speeds the 400MHz GMA 3600 performs twice as well. Though 3DMark 06 is not a modern benchmark and they aren’t yet using final drivers. So we’ll have to see if this still holds true once they get more reliable benchmarks done with the official release.
Sorry for late reply but, 1.8x is pretty much what they promised. They said “up to” 2x. Even against N550 the N2800 is way out of that range. 3.1x divided by 1.1x is 2.8x.
Drivers-Generally don’t do anything. 3DMark generally represents the most optimal scenario, which isn’t always the case for games.
3DMark06-At those scores, it’s pretty much a GPU-only benchmark, and it does do a fair job at representing games that perform similarly to the benchmark.
Intel processors appear to have some head room for max clock speed for CPU performance at least…
http://www.mobilitymagazin.de//wp-content/uploads//2011/10/Cedarview-TDP-01048b20b8b427bd-500×210.png
N2800 can apparently be clocked as high as 2.13GHz, and D2700 up to 2.4GHz, if Intel wanted to push it. Though likely they’ll save that to help extend the life of Cedar Trail until they can get Silvermont out in 2013.
While true that benchmarks represent ideal conditions and don’t necessarily reflect real life use, but improvements in drivers can help assure actual performance is closer to what is expected from the hardware.
Also, some capabilities and features can be enabled through improved drivers. Especially if Intel’s original drivers left some things disabled on purpose for say keeping to a price point.
While benchmarks can also be effected by the drivers and results can vary upon how the benchmarks test the system. So results can be either worse or better than actual user experience will show. Meaning we should reserve final judgment until actual systems get hands on reviews.
Are there any hints as to when the U120W is due?