HP Mini 311 on sale!

I never said that, you need to reread what I wrote.

I'll help clarify now that I have some time.

In our hypothetical example, we will pretend we have a game that executes two threads perfectly parallel. So moving from 1 physical core to 2 physical cores would increase performance 100%. you get double performance, because you added another core on a perfectly parallel dual threaded application. Now, what happens when you add a third physical core? Nothing. There is no performance gain.


Ok, what does this have to do with hyper threading? It has everything to do with it. If we take a dual core that is hyper threaded, we essentially have 4 logical cores that we can use. That means we can execute 4 threads at once. What does this do for a dual threaded application? It does nothing. So what happens? Well, the system uses the best 'two' cores, which are of course, the physical cores. The logical cores do not get used in this situation.

Ok, so that explains the Atom 330. So what does this have to do with the Atom 230? Everything. The Atom 230 has one physical core, or two logical cores. In our dual threaded application we now have two threads we can execute at the same time. So what is better, one physical core or this physical core split into two logical cores? If you have a dual threaded application, the logical cores are better (this is true 99% of the time, there are always exceptions). So we have basically four scenarios in our Atom 230 Versus Atom 330 for 'our' dual threaded application.

We have the Atom 230 which can utilize 1 physical core, or split that physical core into 2 logical cores. In most cases, the two logical cores will perform anywhere from 20%-50% faster than the single physical core. So if we take a performance value of 100 for 1 physical core, we can now say that with hyper threading, our Atom 230 will give us a performance value of anywhere from 120 - 150.

So, lets pit that against out Atom 330. Will the Atom 330 use the logical cores or the physical cores? Well, this is obvious, since we are limited to two threads, it is going to use the stronger physical cores. What does this mean? It means our performance value will go from our base 100 all the way to 200. So, our Atom 330 now has the best case scenario of 200 in our dual threaded application.

Now, lets go compare... The Atom 230 gets what? 120 - 150. What does the Atom 330 get? 200. Is the performance difference less than that of going from 1 physical core to 2 physical cores? Absolutely it is. There is STILL a performance increase when moving from an Atom 230 to an Atom 330, but it is not as great as it would be should hyper threading be taken out of the picture. Again, this is limited to our dual threaded app/game scenario. As we add the ability to add more threads to our program, the Atom 330 will distance itself further from the Atom 230. But for the time being, instread of the Atom 330 being 100% better than the 230, it is quite a bit less than that in most situations.

This scenario is also assuming an application is perfectly parallel. That isn't the case with games, so the performance difference shrinks further in most cases from the Atom 230 to the Atom 330. To sum it up, does that mean the Atom 330 isn't an upgrade? Hardly, because it is. It just would have been an even larger upgrade should hyper threading not be in the picture.

 

*pops popcorn* Yeah!

 

Plus, the Atom 330 should further differenciate itself if run under a 64-bit Operating System. The N270/N280 have no support for x86-64.

Damn these choices!

 

Well, both the Atom N230 and N330 are 64-bit. There is nothing stopping the mobile platforms from going 64-bit other than intel deciding not to make them 64 bit for the mobile version (yet). In time we will see the 64-bit ones released for mobile use.

 

Installed the 2GB stick.

*Windows 7 Ultimate 32 Bit w/ Everything Enabled.*

3DMark06 on default settings: 1602 Marks.

 

Future,

Where did you obtain the drivers for Windows7? For nVidia I headed to their website. I took the latest ION LE drivers for Windows 7 32-bit, and also the latest graphic drivers as well. Some of the other drivers I could not find, however Windows 7 did have a generic driver for it.

 

Looks like im using 8.16.11.9107. I uninstalled the other one from nvidia's site and got it from Windows Update.


For the Nvidia chipset drivers at HP.com in the search box you type Mini 311-1000 CTO. You will then find the generic CTO model (HP Mini 311-1000 CTO PC). Its has XP,Win7 32&64 drivers. I just grabbed the Alps and Chipset only. Windows 7 update took care of the rest except for the wireless driver. The one posted on this fourm for windows XP works just fine. Thank You very much.

FYI for all those who dont know. Windows Update has been totally changed when it comes to driver updates. Instead of Microsoft telling your computer what the best drivers are for your system it has contacts with the manufacturer and they chose the best one. So in the end NVIDIA or HP chose the best VGA driver for my system. I dont know which one though.

 

hey future.. what cpu do u got? the n270 or the n280 u got a good 3dmark06 score there.. also what ram did u get to upgrade to?

also if u want u can run gpu-z look for it on google and it will tell u exactly what video driver is installed... I tried 186.18 like i suggested earlier in win7 on fresh install on new hard drive and im only getting 1464 compared to xp score of 1508 in 3dmark06. I got the n270 and a 2gb stick of patriot ddr3 7-7-7-20 timings at 1066mhz

my 3dmark03 score in win7 was 4272 and in xp 4471

 

Cut alot out to keep from having huge posts.

Its very simple. A single core cpu will only ever keep up with a dual core cpu in single threaded apps. In dual threaded or higher apps it has no chance even with hyper threading.

It doesn't split the core into anything , it simply uses extra hardware on the chip to run a second thread in the unused registers of the cpu basicly impoving schedualing.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=664&type=expert



Both atoms have hyper threading on. Its the same cpu with one core disabled for the atom 230 numbers.

As you can see adding the second core almost doubles the performance of the single core in sisoft cpu arithmetic test , more htan doubles in sisoft multimedia test .

In cinebench 10 single thread its faster by a small margin . Why ? Because the os is able to use the idle core.
Cine bench 10 multi-thread can use the 4 threds on the dual core and we see once again almost a doubling of performance over the single core. 816 vs 1543.

POV Ray Render test sees a more than doubling of performance for the dual core over single core.

Lame is interesting. You see that the dual core is faster even on a single core agian. Its very slight though. First time we see such a small bump on multi threading about 13%. Whats interesting is how much faster the nano by via is. Its faster than the dual core multi threaded benchmarks by a decent amount.

windows media encoder x64 shows the dual core gaining 65% performance increases on the single core.

hand break shows a more than two times the improvement of the single core atom

winrar is the first time the single core is faster than the dual core

with 3dmark vantage look at the cpu scores it shows a 76 and 68% improvement over the cpus

valve source particle simulation shows another almost doubling of performance.

valve source map compilation also shows an almost doubling of performance with 89% improvement.


Hyper threading doesn't improve things much. Most reviews show a normal 5-15% imrpovement over non hyper threading. Real dual core can alost double performance because you are actually doubling the cpus .


Basicly what your going to see is better minimum framerates in games and snappier os . What would be really interesting is the ion with a dual core via nano though. Should make for a fast netbook.

The benfits of the dual core are vast and you will allways get much more performance with a dual core cpu than a cpu with hyper threading. You could get as much as 80% improvement actually .

If you want to see more you should google for athlon 64 x2 benchmarks and p4 benchmarks. Not so much to compare them against each other , but because you can normaly find reviewers who used athlon 64s and athlon 64x2s at the same clock speed to compare results and p4s with and without hyprethreading at the same clock speeds and then you can view the increases relative to each other.

 

pasta4u and archangel777, you are both viciously agreeing with each other.

ArchAngel is arguing that in games (which is probably his goal with the 311) there is only a small speedup from HT to dual core. Not a doubling of speed. This is true.

Pasta4u is arguing that in multithreaded applications (that can harness more than 2 cores) dual core w/ HT beats the pants off single core w/ HT. This is true.

You are both right, but you have different priorities and goals for the laptop, meaning that you value different upgrades at different amounts, making the upgrades "worth it" or not.

Purely for the sake of gaming, a bump to the dual core processor will only help a little, as ArchAngel suggests, especially since many games are not multithreading very well (certainly not "perfectly parallel").

I, for one, will be waiting for dual core w/ HT, because to me it's worth it. There are two applications that make sense for me: Google Chrome and running my test-suites for work (which are multithreaded).

Now let's go back to talking about the 311! I'm really hoping the price doesn't change on the win7 model.

I know ion2 comes out near the end of the year, how long will it take it to make it into netbooks? And when do you think we'll see the 330 in netbooks?

 

I guess I am amazed... Am I not writing in English? Do we not both agree that a dual core will perform better than a single core? Do we both not agree that a single core with hyper threading performs better than the same single core without hyper threading? Because if we do both agree on those two statements, why are you posting the above? I am confused at this point.

 

Did not see this until I made my post. ION 2 is probably going to be a while (if ever) depending on the lawsuit from Intel versus nVidia. It remains to be seen... Also, since ION itself took a long time to come to the market, I can only imagine ION 2 taking a long time as well.

Pasta,

To make things simple it effectively does split the core. I can get into the details of the extra data execution unit, as well as the shared resources of the core, but why get technical? Wasn't my post long enough? And, there is really no point to get into what hyper threading does on the technical side. Forums are often times already too technical, especially for a thread like this.

All the tests you pointed to were synthetic tests or tests that used 4 threads. Unfortunately, most of those are invalid for what I am stating in my post. As I said in the previous post about this one. Do you dissagree with my two statements in my previous post. I'll post them here again, so this discussion can end.

Is a dual core faster than a single core? Yes.

Is a single core with HT faster than a single core without HT? Yes.

Ok, do you not agree? If you agree, were done and don't bother posting more on this topic because all of my posts reflect the above two statements as being true.

 

While I appreciate both of your viewpoints, can we please get back to discussion specific to the 311? Many of us are still concerned with drivers and performance. I'll be getting mine tomorrow and I hope the ram comes today!

Sooooo excited!

 

Yes, I will stop the discussion in this thread. You can PM me if you want to discuss this further.

 

This is starting to get my interest again since the Acer 1810TZ is around $600 for the retailer version.

So anyone who's running Windows 7 and upgraded their RAM, how's the boot time and multi-tasking on the HP mini 311?

 

I've tried playing the Machinarium demo on this system which I believe is flash based and have found that the game runs smoothly until I take too long between clicking on something and then the games instantaneously comes to a slow crawl.

Anyone else given this demo or other flash based stuff a try on this system?

 

we are arguging about the performance diffrences between hyper threading and actual increases in cores.




anyway back to mini 311 , you don't think they will allow 64bit support for greater than 4 gigs ? I hope they do

 

Why do you want a 64 bit OS w/ more than 4GB of ram on a netbook?

 

I have been having great difficult getting Bluetooth to work properly on my system. I think it has to do with HP not providing the driver on their website under the HP 311.

The driver it installes is a Bluetooth 2.1 driver. But everything I read according to the card installed in my system, is that it is a Bluetooth 3.0/Wifi G combo card. I pulled the card out to look at it.

Now, BT does not detect any devices, and it is enabled. I can disable it, enable it... The driver reports that it is working correctly, but it unable to discover any devices. This is rather frustrating. So I looked up the model number of the card and found an alternate driver that was posted. Ran the install, looked like everything was good to go until I did a reboot. Then - BAM - Windows failed to load the login process - fatal error- and nothing could recover from it in the F8 options. This was a HUGE bummer

Ok, so I decided tonight to create an XP disc with every driver I need sliptreamed into the install.... I have about 10 more minutes before I figure out if that does the trick or not.

I have said this before and I will say it again, HP is irrisponsable for not providing all the drivers for their products under the HP MINI 311 page. You can go to XP and you get about 1/2 of what you need to actually use the system. This is poor support. Ok, enough about that, but still... How lame.

 

Its just weird. Why some people are trying to beef the Netbook is beyond me. Win XP with 3 gig ram, dedicated GPU and decent processor. As whole they all complement eachother from Netbook prospect. I have said it befor. Its a netbook, nothing more. Its good it can do so many things as a netbook.

Wanting dual core, more then 3gig ram and Win 7, 64bit. That to me is just illogical for a netbook. Even if you can put powerful CPU and GPU. What will you accomplish from netbook point of view. You just made a Laptop.

I see and hear alot of people say, they just want one system that can do it all and its small. Which is just funny, because why will you want; do it all netbook, with such a small screen. Where you cant enjoy good game with intense graphics.

Personally when i travell. I have my 7811 laptop, with upgraded processor and 9800 GT. Plays any game i want on 17" high res screen. When i need to be in conference i take my netbook. As for portability, they both fit just fine in my carrying bag without a problem.

 

its up on Newegg btw,tho out of stock

$399

N270
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD

 

I was able to slipstream the BT drivers into my custom XP install CD. So that is good... Ok, now my laptop is setup and working ace.

 

haha you're too funny. why have a smartphone when you can carry a phone, an mp3 player, a digital camera, a dvd player, a paper calendar, and 10,000 pages of medical and drug reference that do each of those things better? why do people buy playstation portables? what's so special about paying $1000 more for a mac? there's a market for everything, and all that matters is that some company can make money off of it. for us, it's just nicer to have less things to carry and worry about.

what i really want is to know is what's the pricing and true battery life on the 1201n ... i just don't get how it has a 12.1" screen with 8 hours battery life unless it's idle or it's a really big battery, yet the size is only a few millimeters larger than a mini 311 ...

 

We really need to spend some serious money in R&D for batteries. So far that is the technology that is holding us behind. Intel, AMD and the rest are already doing their part to bring power consumption down, but what we also need is for battery tech to improve.

 

You completely miss the point. You dont see people moding the hardware on PPC or smart phones to watch high def movies and play pc games. Every thing has its place where it belongs.

All i am saying is people need to stop trying to make netbook a laptop. They are better off buying a small laptop in that case.

 

haha, you completely miss the point. other than the fact that technology improves so the games of yesterday are playable on "weak" computers of today, and people used to think computers "belonged" in an office, not in your lap, and people DO watch movies on iphones, and people DO play (REALLY old) pc games on smartphones -- as long as there is enough of a market to make money, then someone will make it. just because i'm not interested in a 10 lb, 18" laptop with 2 hours battery life doesn't mean nobody else is. i want a primary computer that i can carry with me all day and work on anywhere in a hospital, i'm tired of having data on 3 different computers each with different purposes, and the most intense thing i do (cs:s) is just within reach of this computer. and i'm too cheap to get two computers when one cheap computer will do. and i'm a midget so a netbook is "regular size" to me. haha j/k.

anybody try a dreamcast emulator yet? if you play cs:s without aa and some things set to medium details what fps do you get? does the residual stutter go away? what about with 30 bots?

 

will you guys get lost and go start your own thread to complain about everything and debate. THIS THREAD is for the mini 311 and related hardware and software issues and solutions and tips and tweaks and what not related to the NETBOOK!

 

On subject, what bios version is others running out there on the mini 311? I have version .02 and on hp site tehre is a .04, which is better?

 

I think heat is a bigger concern. The netbook arena is a little diffrent but thats the major problem with notebooks. There simply isn't the room to cool down better processors.

 

Why do people want faster atom processors or the ion chipset or a 11.6inch or adding an ssd ?

8 gigs or even more (12 gigs drool) with an ssd would be a huge boon to battery life. The less you have to hit your hardrive the less power your going to use and the faster things will load up.

A netbook last i check is just a smaller notebook. Why wouldn't I want more power ? Everyone has diffrent needs and wants. I'm never outside of battery range for more than 4 hours and thats even pushing it , why would i need 9 hours of battery life ? I rather have 4 hours with more power to get things done faster. I would love dual core , more ram , ssd and a decent gpu. Why ? Because it compliments what I want to do with my netbook more than what is avalible now.

The current netbooks don't suit my needs , they wont let me play games or watch decent res content on it , they last a long time but what does that mater if i'm by a charging area at almost all times ?

Current laptops don't suit my needs either. They are way to big to be portable and battery life is so bad I almost have to be plugged in at all times.

The ultra portable has a huge screen which makes it much to wide for me and of course they are over $1 k

I rather buy a $400-$500 competent netbook that can play current games barely but games slightly older games really well and in 2 years or 3 years spend another $400-500 and have better performance than what that $1k would have gotten me.

Really thats all I want a fast netbook that will play SW TOR when I need too.

I don't see how a 17inch laptop is remotely portable for having it on your person all day. I don't want to carry 8-12lbs with me all the time nor do i want to devote 17 inchs plus to my person to carry. Right now a 11.6 in a hard shell slip sleeve will fit in my messanger back just fine and I can put the rest of what i need in it.

Also hardware may get more powerfull as you move up in laptop physical size , but the screens and resolutions also go up requiring more power for gaming to begin with.

We are at such an interesting point in time for netbooks. A dual core atom and ion together will use about 30watts or basicly what the 1.6ghz atom with the old intel chipset would use but will actually give you 1080p video and decent gaming. But if intel wants to gimp the cpus by not allowing them to use plenty of cheap ram we have a problem. That is why i'm also looking into congo from amd a dual core 1.2 ghz neo cpu with 8 gigs of ram and a hd 3200 would do very well against the ion + dual core atom .

 

agreed with pasta

 

My Compaq Mini 311 arrived this afternoon and so far I am very impressed. As an opening test I dropped the Medievel 2 Total War gold demo on and it handled Agincourt flawlessly at low settings. I think there is room to beef the settings up a touch.
Just steaming Half Life 2 at the moment as I am hoping it will handle that ok. I will post my results shortly.

Very happy with the machine I have to say. Its the ultra portable gaming machine I have been waiting for. I am going to stick Battle For Middle Earth and Start Wars Battlefront on it later

 

so far with stock install of xp with sp3 and stock nvidia drivers the mini 311 came with, steam and half life 2 default to 1024x768 I think almost all settings on high and reflections on lowest setting, and i get 31-32 fps not bad for a netbook..

in fear (1) default detection it is 1024x768 res with cpu settings on medium and all gpu related stuff the majority maxed out and i get 32fps average

the atom cpu does indeed suck, but the gpu in this thing out does alot of others since it has alot more umph to it..

 

The two posts above mine - I am happy overall with my Mini 311 as well. I don't think congo is going to end up that great performance wise, or battery life wise. So I don't believe were going to see anything much better than the 311 until AMD gets power consumption down in line with Intel, or until Ion 2. I'd say we have another year ahead of us before any huge improvements are going to be made. Sure, something might be faster, but will suck battery life quicker. As far as I am concerned, 3 hours under CPU+GPU+Wifi load is ace. I don't think I can go back to my DV5T which will only last 45 minutes or so on load. The DV2 will only last maybe 75-90 minutes tops under full load, so that stinks, too. The Acer 11.6" congo might be able to go 2 hours under full load, but I'd doubt that. For some people though, 2 hours is just fine. So it all depends on what the individual is looking for in a notebook.

 

This full review is stating they experienced unaccelerated video under Win7 on the XP version. I thought the frame rate comparisons posted earlier in this thread were very comparable, correct?

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/HP-Mini-311.htm

 

Thanks for the link. I really like that reviewer, seems very similar to myself when looking at the bigger picture and came to very similar conclusions. I'll have to bookmark that site.

 

Lisa here, the reviewer from MobileTechReview. Video performance under Win7 has been a big headache and consumed 2 days extra time. I worked with the mobile ION group at NVIDIA and they say there's an issue with either the graphics firmware or BIOS under Win7. I tried a variety of their experimental drivers and none worked. Conversely, the Mini 311 that ships with Win7 runs fine with the latest NVIDIA driver downloadable to the public.

HP's not very forthcoming about the issue. They told us that both the XP and Win7 version of the Mini 311 ship with identical hardware and BOIS when that's flatly wrong: the XP version ships with the ION LE while the Win7 version ships with ION. HP's own driver for the Win7 Mini isn't even compatible with the XP machine and refuses to install.

 

Thats strange. Thanks for pointing that out since I do plan on using Windows 7, I'll be sure to get the HP Mini with the DX 10 ION.

 

Thanks for chiming in here Lisa. Was your unit running 3g RAM? Some folks here have been getting decent results with Win7 and I'm wondering what was difference is.

Mine comes today and now I'm struggling with the decision of putting Win7 on it!

 

Yes, I upgraded it to 3 gigs of RAM. I also tried removing the RAM. NVIDIA stated that there's currently an issue with Win7 on the XP version and that the XP version was only QA'd with XP. I saw some posts earlier in this thread about unaccelerated graphics perf in Vista and 7 (ArchAngel777, wasn't that you?).

If you don't try HD content, the problem isn't as glaring. Games like FEAR 2 lose about 5 to 8 fps and easier games like Rise of Nations (that will even run on Intel integrated w/o a problem) run very well. But when playing non-Flash video like iTunes HD, run the system resources CPU gadget on the desktop and you'll see the CPU hit 100% since it's not using the GPU

 

I am having no issues what so ever with 720 or 1080 video on my netbook w/ Win7. I did notice though that my BIOS is different that the starting BIOS for the normal CTO which is F.04F. Mine is F.02 something. I dont have it with me atm. ill look it up later. Let me know what yours is.

My main issue is the random half second lockups every 10 minutes or so with streaming Netflix (Silverlight) video.

 

My netbook shipped with F.02 and HP has an upgrade to F.04 on their website. I tested it with both versions (assumed F.04 would offer improvements but there was no diff). Futureperfect, have you tried iTunes HD content, which is very demanding (very high bitrates)? 1280x720 at over 4800kbps. Under XP, that same HD content plays decently.

 

Hey Lisa great review, although WMP9 does not hardware accelerate video in xp nor does itunes hardware accelerate video. If you want hardware acceleration you would have to use a commercial player (such as cyberlink powerdvd9) or VLC player, Splash Lite Player, MHC, media player classic which can enable the gpu to play the video types. Now on the other hand Windows 7 is suppose to have hardware acceleration built into WMP12 as well into everything else in win7. I tested win7 ultimate OEM on my mini 311 and the hardware acceleration was not there for wmv files and so forth. I tried using the latest nvidia driver for win7. in windows xp i was using the 186.27. my system bios is f02..

What exact problem are you refering to as far as between hp and nvidia regarding the hardware? can you please elaborate? thank you!

P.S. : Quicktime and itunes does not use nvidia to hardware accelerate quicktimes

the best way to do that is download splash lite player and select gpu hardware acceleration in the settings then watch 720p and 1080p high bitrate play perfect
you can also use MPHC

 

Yes, I was using an RC1 build 7260, I think. It was horrible... After trying a few different drivers I immediately wiped the system clean and installed Windows XP.

I don't mind Windows XP though. But I do mind that HP doesn't post all the drivers on their website for Mini 311 XP. I won't shut up about that either. That is just stupid. I had to slave the drive that came with it and copy them to another drive and burn them to a CD so that I have them in the future.

 

Skyhawk, iTunes does use video acceleration (some cards and platforms, not all). It certainly supports NVIDIA under XP .

 

One more thing in WIN7 WMP12 does support playing quicktime files and uses less cpu utilization that quicktime software

 

Ive been using quicktime from apple for ever and none of my desktops neither my laptops/netbooks use hardware acceleration for video when using apple software to play apple file formats..

I have a quad core desktop with 4gigs of ram and a 9800GTX+ nvidia gpu card and still IN APPLE stuff the cpus are being used fully to play content using apples software. now If I play it with the players i listed in the other msg, then it lets me select PUREVIDEO hardware acceleration that puts all load on the gpu.

Then on my quad core i have 0% cpu utilization and full gpu load

 

the question, though, is really about the asus 1201n having an n330 ion -- how much will it cost, and what will be battery life be?

i was thinking about trying out ubuntu but from what i've been reading it's not terribly battery-friendly ...

yeah, just from initial benchmarks congo didn't seem much better than the ion in either performance or battery life ... in 5 years, though, i bet the landscape will be totally different, since everything is moving onto the cpu. thus nvidia probably doesn't have a long-term future in this since intel insists on their super-ridiculously-fantastically-crappy-less-than-afterthoughts-cold-war-era excuses for graphics chips, and amd has ati. i wonder who's going to win ... amd is behind right now but they're probably going to have the best graphics long term ...

 

Just wanted to thank you for the well writen review and posting here. Amazing ! I sent it to some friends that were interested in the mini 311 so hopefully it brings you in some well deserved hits.

 

Not to rain in your parade Lisa, but if you put false info into a review it gives the wrong impressions to the audience..

Heres proof to back up my claim

Main PC:
Q9400 intel quad core cpu
4gigs of ddr2-800
Nvidia 9800GTX+
WINXP/SP3 182.08 nvidia drivers

Using apple quicktime playing a video clip encoded in 1080p 8mb data rate from my cheapo aiptek ahd+ camera I get 20% cpu load across 4 cores using apple software (no gpu acceleration for nvidia gpus, ONLY ON A MAC do you get hardware acceleration for a nvidia gpu for certain models)



using splash lite player that has a codec that uses nvidia pure video hardware acceleration, 0% across all cores on same video 1080p clip, since gpu is full load playing video. Also in screenshot video is not present in 2d windows desktop since its using the gpu to decode it so its on a hardware layer the video and windows cant save a screenshot of it, in apple software it uses 2d and was able to be screenshotted!



I suggest you update your review