In our Munich lab’s duel of the energy-savers, the AMD Athlon 64 2000+ beats the Intel Atom 230 in energy consumption and processing power. Each of the systems was based on a desktop platform. The Achilles heel of the Intel system is its old system platform with the 945GC chipset, while AMD offers a more modern 780G platform. The energy-saving solution from AMD offers more possibilities: it has three times as many SATA ports, possesses better onboard graphics performance, and can also support two monitors. Unlike the Intel solution, an HD resolution (1920x1200) with high picture quality is possible through DVI/HDMI ports. And early information suggests that the AMD Athlon 64 2000+ should cost close to $90.

Would you pay for a Dual Quad Core gaming system, that also has support for 4 way SLI multi-GPU configuration? Well, if you would, then its almost near with the new platform from Intel called Skulltrail. Specifically for gaming, its also possible that this rig could used for other applications. I'm sure Intel will be releasing a server/enterprise version shortly after.