Atom Benchmarked: 4W Of Performance

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[citation][nom]tennisballg[/nom]Seems like it's performance is comparable to an Athlon XP 2400 or so. I don't see how that's not acceptable for office use. Our whole site had PIIIs running XP up until 2005.[/citation]
It's performance is comparable to a 900-1,2 Ghz Celeron
 
[citation][nom]Parkerochik[/nom]I don't understand why Intel chose to have an elongated rectangular shaped die. Common sense dictates that the die be as square shaped as possible to minimize the surface area to pack more dies per wafer.[/citation]
this is due to the fact that the little cache memory the Atom has, takes up nearly 1/3th of the processor's size.
In a situation with increased transistors a more squared version would be more likely.
 
Why does everyone assume all HD video is h.264? The 945 chipset DOES have mpeg2 acceleration but nobody tries that beyond simple DVD. I use the HDHR to record all my HD video OTA in 1080i or 720p HD mpeg2. It can be fairly taxing on single core systems but this processor with the 945 just might be able to handle it. Why is nobody who benchmarks this processor trying HD mpeg2? Am I going to have to buy one to find out if I can build a slim client for OTA HD?
 
[citation][nom]TeraMedia[/nom]Please elaborate on this:I use a VGA connection to a 1920x1200 LCD panel all day long (through a KVM switch, no-less). It doesn't look washed out and it is completely usable on a daily basis. And how would an LCD panel look "blurred"? The pixels don't move, don't shift, and don't require focus? Are you using a CRT, and that is exhibiting timing issues with the VGA output that are not visible with a higher-quality VGA output driver chip? I just can't make sense out of your statements about video output.[/citation]

LCD's can be very blurry when say you have a 640x480 source and are trying to display it on a 1650x1050 native LCD display the output will look very "blurry" since the image will be stetched.
 
I'm not impressed, actually. I guess the efficiency is impressive, but a 1.6 Atom can't even touch a 1.2 Ghz Celeron? Come on.

Now, I know these aren't gonna be used for anything hardcore (gaming, 3D, video conversions, etc.), and it's just a mini-system, but still, that's not very good imo.

I'm sticking with VIA and ARM for the mini stuff.
 
omicron_15, fair enough re: blurring caused by scaling. But the author makes a comparison between the IGP and "traditional graphics cards", claiming that the IGP is more blurry when doing such scaling (though with many displays, you can tell it not to scale and avoid such blurriness). That would implicate the display's scaling engine, not the GFX chip.

And I still am curious to know what the author means about the image looking washed out at 19x12? I ask, because I am curious if the VGA output is not functioning properly. Obviously a screen shot wouldn't help, but a photo of the screen compared to the same screen and image from a different computer would be useful to back up such a statement. I wouldn't want to purchase a MB w/ a faulty VGA output, especially for use as a simple DVR or whatnot. Autoboy above is contemplating exactly this, but he might reconsider if the VGA output does not function properly.
 
Thats the funny thing. Intel wanted this for a UMPC chip and I think people puleld too much hype out of it. For UMPCs it will probably be a great chip and the HT will help boost performance while using less power.

Too bad. Maybe when Intel gets a better chipset for it (based on the 45nm process and a better IGP) maybe it would be viable for the desktop but as it stands Atom is a UMPC chip at heart.
 
Ok, my question is, how did ASUS managed to achieve 20W under full load with their EEE Box? I mean, all these custom builds with ITX boards with atom consume a minimum of 40W, where's the catch?
 
Any chance of adding to this comparison another designed-to-be-low-power CPU?
The Core 2 Duo U7600 (as in the Sony Vaio TZ series, Toshiba Portege R series, Fujitsu Lifebook T series and likely some ultraportables I've forgotten) with its 1.2GHz and around 12W power draw would make and interesting contender for the Atom's power consumption/performance crown.
Most of the above laptops use the mobile 945 chipset too, which I know doesn't entirely level the playing field on power consumption but should at least provide a fair performance comparison.
 
good tests, linux testing (for example on most popular Ubuntu distro) would be great 😉 I wouldn't buy it to run windows on it. pleeeease 😉
 
TeraMedia> There is little difference when you use D-SUB and not DVI on a LCD panel.
 
ProDigit80 - 15m*40W=12m*50W so they are equal so no advantage power-wise for the atom with your example. It takes longer to do the same thing with the atom and the power savings just doesn't justify it.
You are not going to use the atom as a workhorse true, but the fact is that the atom is slow and most of the time it will be used at high load even doing simple things and as I already demonstrated, the atom (platform) is inefficient power/performance.
The problem is not with the atom, the CPU has excellent power/performance ratio, but with the chipset witch uses lots of power. The rest of the CPUs tested have worse power/performance ratio but are performing better and the chipset power use is about the same. The power used by the chipset dilutes the power/performance of the atom processor and that is a shame.
I know some of you will likely contradict me on the power saving issue (estimating power usage on different scenarios) , but really it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong, it's a desktop and it's only a few W, it won't change the global warming.

I consider the atom CPU a great product, but not for desktop use.
Other (bad) things to consider about the platform:
The CPU is week. Users expect the same level of performance from a ITX as a midrange computer, after all it is a desktop. Already there are ITX boards that use regular desktop CPUs and there are no thermal issues with a small from factor. People buying SFF are interested in design, performance, features not necessary power savings, and as already demonstrated, the atom desktop platform isn't delivering those power savings.
The price needs to be low. Lower then the current ITX platforms since the atom doesn't perform as well. To keep the prices down the platform will use the cheapest chipset/chips available. That's why we have a chipset that uses so much power. It doesn't have a modified mobile chipset or any power efficient chips. All of those cost extra money and will make the atom platform more expensive than the current ITX lineup.
In the end I don't think the users will go for that. Atom for desktop needs to be more powerful and already Intel is working on a dual core version and probably will increase it's speed also.
If Intel pushes atom to a level of performance that the users will be comfortable with, the platform can change the market the same way ultra portables did. Intel might even design a cheap power efficient chipset so the whole platform to be power/performance and price/performance efficient. Imagine a 200$ sexy SFF ... might convince many to abandon the uglier, noisier cousin.
Intel is going in the right direction, but it has a long road ahead and the competition isn't staying idle.
AMD has great chipsets and VIA has power efficient CPUs.
Sorry for the long post
 
I don't found the complete test bed used. I'm looking especialy for the power suply, that should be responsible for more than half of the power consumption in those tests, leaving the results and conclusions partialy meaningless.

Simply going from an (gross oversized)550W to an (very oversized) 220W PSU shaves 20W from the total system power consumption on this atom plataform. More here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3176757&postcount=42
 
Given these products are targeted at basic workloads, I would have expected a little more testing on the web surfing side. The web page loading is good, but it really depends on what kind of page and the content. With most sites and advertising based on Flash 9, my personal experiences on these new CPUs is that they come to a real crawl (70-100%) CPU utilization when surfing even kid's sites like "disney.com" and "nickjr.com". Any chance you will be going deeper on web sites and show how these platforms stack up?
 
i have intel945GCLF motherboard that also the same with this ecs system. and i'm very happy with it. i've install many thing and perform very smooth with all yada yada enabled. ubuntu 8 super fast. i also have supercomputer and this this tiny thing just slip in my 5.25 bay drive. now i have 2 x86 inside one cpu case. so while i'm just browsing the web or downloading stuff. i even write this on post in it , i switch to the atom gear... that;s what i called speedstep. and one more thing. i bought it only $69. i think it because the ecs way. try another mobo with atom please..
 
"I don't understand why Intel chose to have an elongated rectangular shaped die. Common sense dictates that the die be as square shaped as possible to minimize the surface area to pack more dies per wafer."

2x8 arrangement of rectangles is the same as a 4x4 arrangement of squares. And a rectangle has more perimeter, so more sideways conduction of heat. And a hexagonal array would pack even more dies per wafer than squares.
 
i just purchased an atom 230 with 2 gig 160gb sata2 on a gigabyte gc230d. it is replacing a q6600+4850 system for day to day office duties. both running xp. and you know what? as long as you don't ask it to encode video or play proper games it wurks fine. think single core athlon 64 with 1 gig ram speeds. it burns dvds, plays itunes and surfs with mozilla all at the same time. the only downside is the load times of apps. horses for courses. as they say in the uk.
 
my question is, , qhere is the nano from via ?
I want to compare before buy. but I cant find it anywhere, on stores to know the price and think ...

 
I have an Inspirion Mini 10 and it can't play games for shit thanks to this supposed "fix all". FUCK INTEL!
 
I have an Inspirion Mini 10 and it can't play games for shit thanks to this supposed "fix all". FUCK INTEL!
 
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