The new Atom Cedar Trail delayed by DirectX?

The PowerVR circuit chosen by Intel for its new Atom platform would pose it serious problems to pilots because the DirectX 10.1 support.

It is not the Cedar Trail platform, expected to boost the interest of the Atom processors which will be engraved in 32 nm and embarqueront a PowerVR graphics circuit. What, for Intel, try to come back in the race to the APU Brazos of rival AMD. On the graphic part, Intel has decided to separate his old - and very few performance - GMA 3150 for the benefit of a PowerVR SGX545 circuit. The latter found in certain ARM tablets, is compatible DirectX 10.1. But problem, if according to the information obtained by Digitimes, this compatibility is not optimal and currently pose real problems at Intel who have choice to delay the release of its new platform.

Indeed, the graphics drivers fail to be validated by Microsoft with respect to the Windows 7 operating system, which is more than a hassle. It is not impossible to see Intel move out of Cedar Trail in November. Not to mention the concessions that the caster is going to do, since there is talk of a limitation of the pilots the 32-bit for the launch, and restricted to DirectX 9 compatibility. Necessarily, it's chaos and if this is really the case, Cedar Trail could lose part of its interest, especially among the manufacturers of netbooks which will no doubt appreciate such restrictions. 64-Bit compatible DirectX 10.1 drivers could arrive to many weeks later. Follow.

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DirectX problems delaying new Atom to november?

Last week there were various rumors that Intel announced the launch of its new generation Atom processors would postpone from september to november. In the meantime, it is suggested that this is due to driver problems with the new DirectX 10.1 video chips in the processors. This would be that such far-reaching introduction possible only DirectX 9 graphics supported will be.

The next generation of Atoms bears the code name Cedar Trail and will as usual his way into netbooks and nettops. Although the chips will be combined with the already existing NM10 chipset, they have a number of innovations on board. The main of this are the presence of Intel's 64-bit instruction set (EM64T) in the D-models and the switch to PowerVR video chips, the PowerVR SGX545 to be exact. The latter now seems only a spanner in the works.

Although initially it was suspected that the driver problems were related to accelerate multimedia, speaking the latest rumors of a number of DirectX-hordes that still with Microsoft, the developer of the API, to be taken. The PowerVR SGX545 can handle with DirectX 10.1, but aforementioned issues would Intel possible emergency Affairs at the launch only DirectX 9 drivers ready to have. However, it is still unclear why Intel not opt for the reference drivers from Imagination Technologies, the producer of PowerVR chips.

Also it seems that the driver team of Intel still some other creases smooth ironing, because despite the added support for 64-bit operating systems, 64-bit DirectX 9 drivers even until the end of this year. Also will the Wireless Display drivers in the first instance does not yet support the latest features of the wireless standard. This will only be in the first quarter of 2012 come available, at the same time with Smart Connect, a technology that allows a netbook in hibernation still emails can receive.

The prices of the new Atom D variants were also known as ago already and are determined on respectively $ 42 for the dual-core D2500 and $ 52 for the faster D2700 with HyperThreading.

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