Results of Atom cpu vs Core2Solo

So I have been comparing tests between the Atom 270 1.6ghz and a Core2Solo clocked at 800mhz. To emulate core2solo 800mhz cpu I disabled one core on my core2duo laptop, disabled VT support, and locked the CPU at 800mhz with a meer 100mhz FSB. The results.....

VMware : Core2Solo 800mhz was TWICE has fast at running VMware and applications in the virtual machines. No VT support was enabled on the Core2solo.

Youtube : Atom cpu could not render HD videos (Asteroid Impact HD). Core2Solo at 800mhz ran them fine with zero dropped frames at around 68 - 70% cpu usage. The Atom CPU shuttered the video like a slide show.

More to come...

Basically what this proves is that the Atom CPU is about as fast as a 400mhz single core2duo core.

The Atom cpu....Designed to deceive....

Why designed to deceive? Because intel intentionally crippled it so that it can become obsolete in a year which means you will buy another netbook. The more netbooks sold the more CPUs intel sells.

In reality it ALREADY was an obsolete CPU before it was even launched.

Would you buy a netbook with a 400mhz Core2Solo? No of course not but that what you're getting when you buy Atom!!! This is reality folks!

I STRONGLY recommend avoiding the Atom CPU at all costs. Get an AMD NEO or Core2Solo based unit for less than $100 more.

 

From Wikipedia: the Atom N270 found in many netbooks such as the Eee PC can deliver around 3300 MIPS and 2.1 GFLOPS in standard benchmarks, [12] compared to 7400 MIPS and 3.9 GFLOPS for the similarly clocked (1.73 GHz) Pentium M 740.

However, the CPU hasn't been crippled. It's a different core.

The Atom is a low power CPU designed for Mobile Internet Devices, and it does what it's designed to do.

 

Yeah, 2 to 5 Watts is the selling point of the Atom.

 

namaiki, it is clear you dont have any experience with the Atom CPU. You can post all the numbers you want. What it comes down to is REALITY. Running REAL apps in REALITY.

Yes it is a crippled CPU intended to deceive the general public with "1.6ghz".

Yes the Atom was designed to low power and even lower performance. As I said it has obviously been intentionally crippled. You are right in one thing....it DOES do what it is designed to do which is to fool the general public with things like "1.6ghz" but in reality deliver an obsolete CPU equivalent to ~400mhz core2solo. You hit the nail right on the head....

Oh ya, Core2solo 1.4ghz uses 5 watts. A 800mhz Core2Solo would use even less than an Atom....How much would a 400mhz Core2Solo use? 2-3 watts?

 

uuuuu Atom 270 uses 4 watts. 1.4ghz Core2Solo ULV uses 5 watts. A 800mhz Core2Solo would uses even less....


Where is your "selling point" again??? You see how things crumb away when reality strikes...

 

Actually, the numbers that I posted state pretty much your findings; an Atom CPU has half the performance of a Core CPU.

 

People hear me now.....

If you are thinking of purchasing a ultraportable unit get one with the Core2Solo chips. You will have THREE times the performance of an Atom unit.

 

So if we were to buy a netbook, would we be best to try those with AMD Neos(or whatever netbook platform AMD had)?

The problem of Core 2 Solos is that only a handful come inside a shell as small as a netbook.

 

The CPU uses 2.5 W

 

I think you need to recalculate.....the real side-by-side analysis show that the Atom CPU is 1/4 the performance of Core2 clock for clock....reread my first post...

 

Agreed, but it will cost more as well. An Atom CPU is 47 million transistors, $44. A C2D ULV is 410 million transistors, and $200-300.

On what basis would you say something is twice as fast or four times as fast? Were you using a stopwatch and waiting for things to load or what?

 

SIGH.....are you serious? We are talking about core2solo here....

 

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37133 I wrote C2D by instinct; I've never written C2S before.. OK, frankly, the number of transistors is wrong because Intel posts that number for the whole Core 2 line..

uuuuu A laptop with a Core 2 Solo will cost much more than a netbook with an Atom; say 50% more.

 

Why does performance matter anyways? We're talking about netbooks here. Those things are made to do nothing more than surf the internet, word processing and play Diablo 2 on the occasion. The Atom does that so who cares for more power? It's not like you'd do anything more intensive on those tiny 8-11" screens anyways

 

In the HD video test, your logic is flawed. The integrated graphic used with a chipset compatible with Atom CPU is completely different from the integrated graphic used with a chipset compatible with Core 2 Duo. Plus, depending on which chipset you have with Core 2 Duo, there may or may not be hardware acceleration. HD playback depends more on GPU than CPU.
Too many variable means that the test can't be trusted.

 

He HEEE. None of the intel graphics have HD acceleration. All the playback is done by the CPU.

 

The 4500MHD does for H.264, but it doesn't appear to perform Debocking which is part of the specification.

 

Does not matter. In my tests neither machine had videocard capable if HD decoding.

 

Everyone knows the Atom sucks and just about anything will beat it. I mean, I'd rather have a little more power consumption with a slightly larger battery in a netbook than have a crappy Atom in it.

 

the atom is cheaper together with a motherboard than any corewhatever prozessor, that's it's main point. it delivers adequate performance for non-hd-movie tasks, and would be enough for any office work, f.e. (sap, word, excel, internet, intranet, outlook), and is amazingly cheap.


i can buy full working atom based systems for 200$. new systems, with guarantees on it, and all. running well with vista, delivering enough power to "do their job". so yes, iGrim, you hate the atom, but you just don't "get it". it's a great processor for it's price, and great, where it fits. it just doesn't fit your purposes you want to fit it into. hd-video? who cares? not everyone. i like hd movies, i watch them on a core2duo, on a fullhd 2m screen thanks to a beamer. but for a netbook, i don't need hd at all.

so, simply, get over your rant.

 

Again I ask why iGrim, are you so filled with hate? All your posts are mean spirited.

 

My hatred of the Atom CPU is generated by the way it was designed to deceive people.

 

the only person it seems to have deceived is you. everyone else knows its position in the market is a low cost low voltage part. intel is not telling people 1.6atom=1.6core2 solo.

in fact, its common knowledge that a 1.6 atom provides roughly the same performance as a 1.4ghz pentium M (banias) from back in 2003/2004.

as such its more than capable of running office apps, web surfing etc. if you wanted to watch HD video you should have gone for one of those netbooks with nvidia ion or that other one (i cant remember who makes it) which managed to stuff in a 9300GS.

for example, dell's vostro 1220, which is a proper core2duo notebook, starts at $699 USD.

netbooks on the other hand start at $200 and have up to three times the battery life.

also check out the pricing on the core2solo acer timelines...

 

You see this is the problem....Its misinformation like what you are posting....The Atom 1.6ghz is = to 800-900mhz Pentium M NOT 1.4ghz. This has been proven many times yet some people refuse to believe because they cant understand how 1.6ghz can provide such low performance...we have explained why countless times already.

 

it depends on the application, check out tomshardware and anandtech for the benchmarks.

 

Agree with you here, iGrim.

But I don't feel deceived. P-4s had high clock rates compared to Core 2, but their performance was also inferior.

 

didn't the first few netbooks actually have a 900mhz pentium?
So the atom wasn't an improvement?

I wonder what would be better, overclocked atom or overclocked pentium?

 

this is also why intel has the "numbering" scheme in place, not just the clock speed, as it wasnt a good way of indicating performance relative to other architectures in their product line, and i believe the atom has the "lowest" numbers associated with their models.

 

the original EEEPC had a celeron-M, not pentium IIRC. its power consumption is higher than the atom.

 

Just because the GPU doesn't support hardware acceleration doesn't mean that they are equal-powered. The integrated GPU of a laptop will always be more powerful than the integrated GPU of a netbook. And yes, HD video playback depends (quite heavily, in fact) on the GPU. Why else do you think that the Ion platform is advertised as HD playback capable, even though the CPU may still be an Atom CPU?
Get your facts straight before performing comparative benchmarks like this. I would be skeptical of your findings if I was other people.

 

No netbook as far as I know uses a pentium CPU. Pre-Atom netbook uses Celeron CPU.

 

ok, I see.
Thanks.

 

Isn't the GMA500 actually 720p capable vs the gma950? On my Vaio TT I have d/l a few 1080p video and it worked fine with the 4500HD. Hell, Sony, even offers blu-ray as an option on the machine, and touting it as the worlds smallest blu-ray capable laptop. The only HD content that is not gpu accelerated is flash hd, which requires at least a dual core cpu to work with out stuttering and slow downs. But, this is due to Adobe making it cpu accelerated and not gpu or both.

Kind of OT, but I though I read a review saying the Core 2 based Celeron cpu(like in the Dell 11z), isn't that much better than the Atom machine, but of course the 4500hd is better than the gma950. Also, devices like the Acer 1410t only cost $50 more than many higher end atom based netbooks, while giving you a slight larger 11.6in form factor, core 2 solo cpu, and better gpu.

BTW, you do know there is a gma4500 without the HD "enhancements" maybe that is what you tested?

 

yep. the intel 4500 can handle HD, in fact i believe even its predecessor, the x3100 could.

 

Well according to what I was told at the Sony Store the x3100 could not really, hence they quickly took out the option of blu-ray on any machine that only had the x3100 gpu.

 

my girlfriend's acer (c2duo T7300 2gb ram) with the X3100 plays 1080p fine. however what im not sure is if its the processor doing all the work or the X3100, thats why i said i think it can. can anyone confirm?

 

5Mbps 1080P h.264 videos plays fine on my intel atom netbook with gma 950. 720P flash hd video on vimeo.com also plays fine without GPU acceleration on intel atom CPU.

The CPU can handle pretty much everything I do. For more processor/GPU intensive task, i would use my quadcore desktop computer for it.

 

Really? I had problems with youtube HD when I had my HP Mini 1000.

 

I would be interested in how AMD Neo's stack up. Particularly on the power usage front.

 

I use internet explorer. Flash in firefox is very slow compared to internet explorer. I get 15+FPS on vimeo HD videos on my netbook while only getting about 5FPS on Firefox.

 

Anandtech has done several real world benchmarks on the Atom. Conclusion: Atom 1.6 performs like a 1.1Ghz Pentium M. (I don't have the link at hand, but easy to find)

In Passmark CPU Mark, a CPU benchmark that measures CPU performance in 8 tests, the Atom 1.6Ghz gets 306 points. If I clock my Pentium M725 at 1.2GHz I get 311 points. This exactly confirms the benchmarks done by Anandtech.

Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 1.4Ghz scores 490 points in Passmark CPU mark. Attached picture is the Passmark CPU result for Pentium M 1.2Ghz.

 

For something that draws so little power, I think that's highly respectable.

I still use a 1.4 Pentium M laptop (HP Pavillion dv1000) for taking out on the road and it does everything I need of it - including running two large (near 5gb disc space each) automotive expert systems.

If the benchmarks are to be believed, the Atom is only slightly less powerful but is vastly cheaper and more efficient. I think that represents progress.

I have a lot of criticism for Intel's marketing in general, believing it to be intentionally misleading (Celeron/Pentium/Core Duo etc. are basically the same thing). In this case, though, I can't see that they've done anything wrong. They haven't touted the Atom as a big number cruncher or multimedia workhorse, but as a power efficient and cheap platform for general use.

 

Celeron and Pentium are the exact same CPU at that time....

 

I can only laugh at people posting numbers in this thread...

I have many laptops and two different netbooks. It just SO funny when you see people posting nubers from benchmarks..

I tested these units in REALITY with REAL apps.

Again the results show VMware is TWICE as fast on even an 800mhz Core2Solo which results in Core2Solo having FOUR times the performance clock for clock. Dont believe me? Try yourselves and stop posting useless numbers benchmarks that do nothing...

Youtube HD video the 800mhz Core2Solo handled with NO help from the GPU all the while the Atom produced a slide show. Again, Core2Solo is EASILY FOUR times as fast clock for clock. Dont believe me??? Simply try running this video on your Atom and make sure to select HD version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw

So far in REAL world Apps Atom = 400mhz Core2Solo

You guys are having a hard time understanding this but all you have to do is try for yourselves. The problem is most people want to be ignorant to the shockingly awful performance the Atom provides.

I would HIGHLY recommend NOT to purchase an Atom based unit. Im not even joking here people. Get a AMD NEO or Core2Solo based unit. You are throwing your money away on the useless Atom.

 

That clip is causing 100% CPU load on my Pentium M 1.6Ghz and makes it stutter. No wonder Atom can not play it.

I doubt Core 2 Solo can run it on 800Mhz but I will find out.

 

AMD Neos are much more power hungry, but they were never really designed to compete with the Atom in the first place. They're more for thin notebooks (like the HP DV2), so they're aiming more at the CULV line.

 

Neo vs. Core 2 Solo vs. Atom benchmarks.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17435/6

 

Ya but the Atom produces a Slideshow of 1fps. Yes 1fps or so.

You can simply find out by running a Core2Duo clocked at 800mhz with one core disabled. Also note that the Pentium M had a weak FPU. Core2 FPU power was greatly increased since the P-M.

 

how do I dissable one core?

 

Let's look at some real benchmarks. In 7-Zip compression the Atom 1.6Ghz gets 80% of the performance of a 1.4Ghz SU3500 Core 2 Solo.



In 7-Zip decompression the Atom in the Asus 1000H acutally beats the SU3500.

The Core 2 Solo can't even play it at 1.4Ghz.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5307299#post5307299

You can forget it would play at Core 2 Solo 800Mhz.