Intel, king of processors is also king of marketing spin.  In an effort to help their partners charge more for their netbooks while squeezing more money from an existing product Intel introduced the N280 processor.  The largest and seemingly only difference between the N270 and N280 is the bus speed.  By raising the bus from 533 Mhz to 667 they’re able to enable the processor to run at 1.66Ghz instead of 1.6.

The difference in 1.6 and 1.66 is small.  Very small.  So small that in the image above you see that the performance difference is almost invisible between the two processors.

If Intel really wanted to make these Atom processors fast, they’d do other things like add more cache to the processor.  That’s the kind of thing they did the their Core2Duo processor and the Pentium 4 before it to help show people that if you’re willing to pay more you’ll get a much faster machine.  An update of this magnitude is most likely not going to happen for two very good reasons.

1) Intel would start cutting into it’s revenue from other processors.  Those processors make them much more money and they’d be stupid to cut into their own profits.

2) As processors get faster, they use more energy and that would neglect the limited battery capacity already present in most netbooks.

1. Intel To Face More Anti-Trust Charges For Pineview?

2. Intel Confused About Their CULV Netbook Chips

3. AMD Market Share Increases Due To Netbook Chip Sales

4. Supercharge Your Netbook By Overclocking Your Atom

5. Intel: Atom Processors Are Fast Enough