Intel Atom has me really confused right now...

[loudrnu]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post, I have been working on desktops and laptops for years now and I just experienced something that is boggling my mind.

I have a HP ProBook with an i3 and 12gb DDR3 that I recently upgraded to a SSD from the stock 500gb hard drive. This evening I decided I was going to take that 500gb that had windows 8.1 installed on it (i had not formatted it since the SSD upgrade) and replace the 160gb hard drive in my Acer Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom. I threw the 500gb in and connected my usb ssd with windows 7 x86 to begin installing the o/s on the netbook. I accidentally missed the boot options time frame and it began booting from the internal hard drive. This is the crazy part, some how this netbook booted and is running perfectly with Windows 8.1 64bit that was installed on my HP Probook. I immediately checked device manager expecting to see several devices requiring drivers or something. Only one device was displaying an issue (cant remember which device).

I am trying to figure out how this is possible, It was my understanding that these Atoms in netbooks are the same atoms used in desktops but Intel supposedly has the x64 feature disabled for netbooks. Also its been an awful long time since i've attempted to get a o/s installation to work from one pc to another, but if I recall i've ran into major o/s issues when just making major upgrades to a pc (mb, cpu and ram).

If anyone could shed some light on as to why they think this would be working & running far much better than Win 7 x86 was running on the netbooks' stock 160gb hdd, i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your time guys and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

[ninaholic37]

Nice! Doesn't your Aspire One only have a 1024x600 screen? I thought Windows 8 Metro only worked with 768p, but maybe they fixed that in 8.1. I know I could boot Linux from USB on my Aspire One out-of-the-box with no issues, so I'm not overly surprised, but still that is good.

 

[myocardia]

Hi, welcome to Anandtech. I also think that it's working because you booted via USB. I'd guess that booting 'normally' wouldn't work as well. Try it, though, and see what happens. Prove me wrong.

 

[pcgeek11]

Hi, welcome to Anandtech. I also think that it's working because you booted via USB. I'd guess that booting 'normally' wouldn't work as well. Try it, though, and see what happens. Prove me wrong.

He installed the 500GB Drive with Windows 8.1/64 bit into the Aspire and booted from that.

Not the SSD with Windows 7 X86 connected via USB.

Windows since 7 for me has been very friendly of massive hardware changes and just as you found moving to an entirely new PC. Not like the older Windows that would simply Blue Screen from a hardware upgrade.

 

[videogames101]

http://ark.intel.com/products/76760/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3770-2M-Cache-up-to-2_39-GHz

says 64-bit compatible, which CPU is in your netbook?

 

[myocardia]

I have a HP ProBook with an i3 and 12gb DDR3 that I recently upgraded to a SSD from the stock 500gb hard drive. This evening I decided I was going to take that 500gb that had windows 8.1 installed on it (i had not formatted it since the SSD upgrade) and replace the 160gb hard drive in my Acer Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom. I threw the 500gb in and connected my usb ssd with windows 7 x86 to begin installing the o/s on the netbook. I accidentally missed the boot options time frame and it began booting from the internal hard drive. This is the crazy part, some how this netbook booted and is running perfectly with Windows 8.1 64bit that was installed on my HP Probook. I immediately checked device manager expecting to see several devices requiring drivers or something. Only one device was displaying an issue (cant remember which device).

I am trying to figure out how this is possible, It was my understanding that these Atoms in netbooks are the same atoms used in desktops but Intel supposedly has the x64 feature disabled for netbooks. Also its been an awful long time since i've attempted to get a o/s installation to work from one pc to another, but if I recall i've ran into major o/s issues when just making major upgrades to a pc (mb, cpu and ram).

If anyone could shed some light on as to why they think this would be working & running far much better than Win 7 x86 was running on the netbooks' stock 160gb hdd, i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your time guys and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

He installed the 500GB Drive with Windows 8.1/64 bit into the Aspire and booted from that.

Not the SSD with Windows 7 X86 connected via USB.

Windows since 7 for me has been very friendly of massive hardware changes and just as you found moving to an entirely new PC. Not like the older Windows that would simply Blue Screen from a hardware upgrade.

You have it backwards. He wasn't running 32-bit Windows 7 from his 160 GB HD, he was running 64-bit Windows 8.1 from the 500GB HD he had been planning on installing 32-bit Windows 7 on, that had never been installed in his Atom netbook. I said that he was able to do so, because the Windows 8.1 drive was attached via USB, not via SATA. Almost all instances I've ever seen just use Windows default drivers for everything, when booted via USB.

 

[myocardia]

http://ark.intel.com/products/76760/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3770-2M-Cache-up-to-2_39-GHz

says 64-bit compatible, which CPU is in your netbook?

Either N270: http://ark.intel.com/products/36331/Intel-Atom-Processor-N270-512K-Cache-1_60-GHz-533-MHz-FSB?q=N270 or N2600: http://ark.intel.com/products/58916/Intel-Atom-Processor-N2600-1M-Cache-1_6-GHz?q=N2600 Since it booted to the X64 OS, it must be the N2600, since that one is 64-bit capable.

 

[jhu]

Not all netbooks had 32-bit Atoms. The 64-bit Atoms started appearing at least in 2010. I know because I bought a 64-bit MSI Wind for my dad back in 2010. It came with 32-bit Windows 7 Starter and I replaced it with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

 

[AtenRa]

Either N270: http://ark.intel.com/products/36331/Intel-Atom-Processor-N270-512K-Cache-1_60-GHz-533-MHz-FSB?q=N270 or N2600: http://ark.intel.com/products/58916/Intel-Atom-Processor-N2600-1M-Cache-1_6-GHz?q=N2600 Since it booted to the X64 OS, it must be the N2600, since that one is 64-bit capable.

Every ATOM since 2011 is 64-bit.

The problem with ATOM Pineview was they didnt have a 64-bit GPU Intel driver. You could install Windows 64-bit on them but you were stuck with native Windows GPU driver. That meant you didnt have all the GPU features.
That was because the iGPU was the PowerVR SGX545 (Intel GMA 3650) and Intel had a problem with 64-bit drivers so they never released any.

ps: n2600 is 64bit

 

[Shivansps]

Every ATOM since 2011 is 64-bit.

The problem with ATOM Pineview was they didnt have a 64-bit GPU Intel driver. You could install Windows 64-bit on them but you were stuck with native Windows GPU driver. That meant you didnt have all the GPU features.
That was because the iGPU was the PowerVR SGX545 (Intel GMA 3650) and Intel had a problem with 64-bit drivers so they never released any.

ps: n2600 is 64bit

Yeah. all 4 digit Atoms are 64 bits, just no IGP driver.

BTW, Atom N4xx and up are 64 bits too, and they even have 64 bit IGP driver since they are packing GMA 3150...

Never understood why Intel went to PowerVR for a Windows Atom, instead of changing the GMA 3150 for the GMA 4xxx of the G4x family.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Doesn't your Aspire One only have a 1024x600 screen? I thought Windows 8 Metro only worked with 768p, but maybe they fixed that in 8.1.

No, metro in 8 works just fine on 1024x600, some of the more "advanced" features just gets disabled. I had the preview version running on an original Windbook (Atom N270, 1GB RAM), it was actually surprisingly useful.

The problem with ATOM Pineview was they didnt have a 64-bit GPU Intel driver. You could install Windows 64-bit on them but you were stuck with native Windows GPU driver. That meant you didnt have all the GPU features.
That was because the iGPU was the PowerVR SGX545 (Intel GMA 3650) and Intel had a problem with 64-bit drivers so they never released any.

This^^

 

[loudrnu]

Thanks for your responses everyone, Windows 8.1 64bit is running on my Aspire one from the internal sata 500gb drive. The task manager shows one core with 2 logical processors. The only driver that needs installed is the Video driver on the netbook. This installation was performed when the hard drive was installed in my Hp Probook. I have two of the same exact aspire one except one has a broken screen. I plan on getting this 500gb drive ready to be used in the aspire with the broken screen. I'm going to connect it to my daughters tv in her bedroom to use for watching her movies via our WD MyCloud NAS. Both netbooks have 2gb DDR2 installed. I'm trying to decide which o/s i'm going to use for this, I could potentially try out the current 8.1 installation since it surprisingly seems to be running well, also was thinking about XP since it will not be used on the web whatsoever. Any suggestions on this? TIA!

 

[pcgeek11]

You have it backwards. He wasn't running 32-bit Windows 7 from his 160 GB HD, he was running 64-bit Windows 8.1 from the 500GB HD he had been planning on installing 32-bit Windows 7 on, that had never been installed in his Atom netbook. I said that he was able to do so, because the Windows 8.1 drive was attached via USB, not via SATA. Almost all instances I've ever seen just use Windows default drivers for everything, when booted via USB.

" He wasn't running 32-bit Windows 7 from his 160 GB HD, he was running 64-bit Windows 8.1 from the 500GB HD he had been planning on installing 32-bit Windows 7 on"

That is what I said...

You Said: I said that he was able to do so, because the Windows 8.1 drive was attached via USB, not via SATA.

This is incorrect as per the OP's post. The Windows 8.1 500 GB drive was installed into the Netbook via SATA. The Windows 7 disk was connected via USB. Read this part of the OP's post:

" This evening I decided I was going to take that 500gb that had windows 8.1 installed on it (i had not formatted it since the SSD upgrade) and replace the 160gb hard drive in my Acer Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom. I threw the 500gb in and connected my usb ssd with windows 7 x86 to begin installing the o/s on the netbook. I accidentally missed the boot options time frame and it began booting from the internal hard drive. This is the crazy part, some how this netbook booted and is running perfectly with Windows 8.1 64bit that was installed on my HP Probook.