Netbook CPU shootout – AMD vs. Intel vs. VIA
April 14, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Whilst Intel’s Atom CPU is found in the majority of netbooks released to date, it is facing competition from other vendors who are looking to jump onto the netbook cash-cow. Apart from prospective ARM processors, AMD recently launched the Athlon Neo which is found in the 12-inch HP Pavilion dv2 and is meant to be a step-up from Intel Atom CPUs. VIA also launched the Nano chip, intended specifically for netbooks and has first been seen in the Samsung NC20.
Crave looked to try to compare these CPUs against each other, however it is not a precise comparison as they effectively benchmarked three different netbooks. Fighting Intel’s corner was an Asus Eee PC 1000HE complete with 1.66GHz N280 Atom CPU. VIA’s representative was the afore-mentioned Samsung NC20 with 1.3GHz Nano U2250 CPU. AMDs benchmarks were conducted by a HP Pavilion dv2, which came with an Athlon Neo 1.6GHz MV-40 processor.
Crave ran three different benchmarking tests and unsurprisingly there was no clear winner, with each CPU winning one test each. Intel’s Atom was the fastest in the multi-tasking test, the VIA Nano won the iTunes encoding test while the AMD won the Jalbum photo-program test. Since this is not an apples-for-apples comparison I would take the results with a pinch of salt. Each netbooks configuration would affect the outcome and they each have different clock speeds. Check out the table after the break.
November 14th, 2010 10:21 PM
Greetings.
Maybe its just me, but I am astonished at how it’s possible to advertise 1.6Gh when its true speed is 996Mh! (my “!” is not a factorial, unfortunately…).
Yes, the Eee 1005P is sold stating its processor: Atom™ Pineview-M N450 has 1,66Gh (1660Mh) but when I check the speed with different tools (like PC Wizard) it reads 996Mh (not even 1000Mh…).
This was the first time I was confronted with a processor that has a “Marketing Speed” and a “Real Speed”. So, if I understand it right, my money went to the Marketing Universe but I’m stuck with a Real Universe Netbook.
We see advertising to yogurts that solve all your health problems, canned tuna with Omega3 that lasts for the rest of your life, and internal combustion engines that are “environment friendly”, but I never expected that this outrage was allowed in such a flagrant way! I mean, its written 1,66Gh but it works at 996Mh (0,97Gh)…!! Maybe I’m being unfair; this machine has a “Hybrid Engine” system that allows me to overclock the processor up to a dazzling 1024Mh… Uau, its closer to 1660Mh.
Well, now I am stuck with a slow netbook, but at least I hope people will be warned.
If someone knows how the relation between Marketing and Real speeds with Via and AMD processors is, please leave a message here too.
Many Thanks