Atom question

[judasmachine]

I remember running XP on an athlonXP with around 512MB with an IDE 5400RPM HDD, and it seemed fine. That was ages ago. Here I am about to buy a netbook with an Atom at 1.6GHz with 1GB, and I hear they are slow. I figured it can't be that slow, when compared to a CPU of that generation. So how fast/slow is the Atom compared to the old P4s and AthlonXPs?

 

[an51r]

It is IMO faster than both those older CPUs but the I am running Ubuntu on mine as my HD is itty bitty.

 

[heyheybooboo]

The Atom 230 at 1.6 GHz is approximately 13% slower in our benchmark set than the Athlon 64 2000+ clocked at 1 GHz.

 

[polarbear6]

i would recommend adding one more 1gb stick if possible
u knw make it a 2gb one who knows u might see some diffrence
and if u ever ran out of hdd space i heard u can even add an extra hdd(i never had a laptop iam just guessing)

edit: u can be sure that u will not be able to run gta 4 at some good fps

 

[judasmachine]

All I'm going to be doing on the netbook is writing, and surfing, so I'm not too concerned. I was just thinking that my old (read waayyyy old) sys ran XP just fine, so the Atom should be fine too. Oh and I believe my first venture into XP was on a 900MHz Duron Spitfire.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

The Atom 230 at 1.6 GHz is approximately 13% slower in our benchmark set than the Athlon 64 2000+ clocked at 1 GHz.

According to Tomshardware's conclusion, in comparison to AthlonXP, it should be equal to a 1.2-1.3GHz version. Athlon 64's are much faster than Athlon XPs.

 

[SpeedEng66]

my 1000ha is as fast(just slightly faster) as my t23 ibm p3 1166 1gb ram

atom vs 900 spitfire I think the atom is faster

atom vs my xp1800 t-bred.. the t-bred seems like it was faster..

 

[judasmachine]

Yeah I'm just really trying to get a mental image of what I'm in for. I know it will do what I want it to. And when I had that Tbred (1700+) it was OCed to 2.1GHz IIRC, and I didn't expect the Atom to match that, but figured it'd beat my old spitfire.

For reference: (all from memory, so it won't be exact)

900MHz Duron
256MB DDR3200
Shuttle mobo with Via chipset 266A
40GB 5400 IDE HDD
RADEON 7500
WinXP

When I upgraded, I went to the AXP 1700+ and added another 256MB of DDR3200

It seemed to be OK with XP.

 

[Keysplayr]

Atom will do what you need it to do, but the main selling point is the low power it uses and long battery life of netbooks. Especially if you use SSD drives.

 

[superunknown98]

I have an acer aspire one, with 1Gb of memory. I will say general typing and web surfing are acceptable and even SD video playback. However If I have a torrent downloading while streaming a video, or If i have 5 or six web pages open it can get a bit sluggish. It's an in order CPU so it will always be a bit slower in most applications than other processors from a few years back.

 

[CU]

I watched the 3rd matrix movie streaming from netflix on my Asus 900ha using wireless on battery power (so it was down clocked some) and it ran fine. I would agree that it seems about as fast as a low in Athlon XP, so It should be faster than your 900mhz Duron for sure.

 

[dbcooper1]

If you can get a 330, it alleviates some of those performance issues since it has two cores, each with HT. I'm running WHS on one and it performs well for what it is and does.

 

[judasmachine]

My 904HA is on its way, probably Friday. I'll chime back in then, with my impressions.

 

[phaxmohdem]

I have an Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67gHz) system still in commission running win XP... If you are interested, just post what benchmarks you'd like me to run on it and I can post scores for you. And if somebody here has a Atom 1.6GHz netbook/nettop they could do the same?

I've also got a Thinkpad T40p that has a Pentium M Banias @ 1.6gHz I could bench under XP for your amusement.

Edit: Just found an old 478 Pentium 4 1.8gHz, a Thunderbird 1100 and a Duron 750 laying around I could bench as well for comparison sake if you want.

 

[judasmachine]

I don't know really. I guess some CPU benchies from SANDRA and the like.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Alrighty, I'll dig around for some common CPU performance benchmarks, run them on all the above CPU's I listed, and post a list of results a little later this evening.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
I remember running XP on an athlonXP with around 512MB with an IDE 5400RPM HDD, and it seemed fine. That was ages ago. Here I am about to buy a netbook with an Atom at 1.6GHz with 1GB, and I hear they are slow. I figured it can't be that slow, when compared to a CPU of that generation. So how fast/slow is the Atom compared to the old P4s and AthlonXPs?

XP has gotten much larger/slower since it came out. After updating to service pack 3, my laptop was much slower.
No, I would only get an atom if I were buying the Linux version.

 

[MustangSVT]

I own a 904ha and it is good for what its intended for but dont expect too much.

However, it runs most apps fine and I love it.

it runs 720p videos FULL speed even when using vga output on normal clockspeed.

and mine can oc to 2.1ghz and has no issues but it gets rather hot.

It runs XP perfectly fine and with 2nd partition I tried Win7 and it runs smooth as well without any issues. mine has 2gb memory and I suggest you do the same.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

atom gives the performance of a 5 year old PC. why would anyone pay $400 for it?

i just sold my 3 year old USED
sony Vaio T350P
10.6in
P-M 1.6ghz
512mb
60gb
DVDRW
for $400

and a P-M will run circles aroud an Atom.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Alright, at long last I have the bechmarks complete. I ran each benchmark on each CPU three times and averaged the scores.

CPU's Tested:
Pentium 4 2.66/512K/533
Pentium M Banias 1.6GHz/1M/400
Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67GHz/266 FSB
Athlon 1100MHz Thunderbird
Duron 750MHz

Benchmark Programs Used:
PcMark 2002 Build 100 CPU Score
Prime95 v. 23.8.1 Benchmark
SuperPi Mod 1.4 (1 million)
Sandra Lite 2009 SP1 Arithmetic Test
ffmpeg FPS encoding a 35 second DV-AVI file into WMV

Here is a link to a folder containing my original spreadsheet I made while benchmarking (for more detailed benchmark info) and the program install files I used to test with.

http://www.TechTimeMachine.com/files

Results:
PCMark 2002 (Pts. Higher is Better):
P4 2.66 ---------- 6542
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 4884
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 2876
Pent-M 1.6 ----------5131
Duron 750 ----------1984

ffmpeg (FPS, Higher is Better):
P4 2.66 ---------- 58
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 45
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 29.3
Pent-M 1.6 ----------47.6
Duron 750 ----------21.6

Prime95 (Avg. Time (ms) Lower is Better):
Note: Prime 95's benchmark spits out 11 different times for various size fft's. I added all the returned times together and divided by 11 to find the average, and that is what is reported below.
P4 2.66 ---------- 37.33733
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 111.9293
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 164.2003
Pent-M 1.6 ----------109.843
Duron 750 ----------261.9173

SuperPi 1mil. (Seconds, Lower is Better):
P4 2.66 ---------- 56.31767
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 71.74
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 126.8623
Pent-M 1.6 ----------61.582
Duron 750 ----------166.833

Sandra 2009 Drhystone ALU (MIPS. Higher is Better):
P4 2.66 ---------- 5816
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 4626
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 3043
Pent-M 1.6 ----------4657
Duron 750 ----------2068

Sandra 2009 Whetstone FPU (MFLOPS. Higher is Better):
P4 2.66 ---------- 4936
A-XP 2000+ ---------- 2670
T-Bird 1100 ---------- 1740
Pent-M 1.6 ----------3832
Duron 750 ----------1173

 

[LOUISSSSS]

now wheres the atom benchmarks!

 

[dug777]

Clock for clock an Athlon XP should be faster than Atom.

Atom is dog-slow clock for clock. It's amazingly efficient however.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
now wheres the atom benchmarks!

Unfortunately, I don't have an atom device laying around Hopefully someone fortunate enough to have an Atom netbook, or similar device can finish the benchmarking for us. I am curious as well to see how it stacks up.

EDIT: I've added a readme.txt file to the link I posted. (http://www.TechTimeMachine.com/files)
This should help out anyone that wants to try to benchmark their Atom for us.

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
now wheres the atom benchmarks!

Mine comes in tomorrow. I'm gonna run the benchies then.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

the atom isn't. its not even as efficient as the intel e7200. the dual core atom is even less efficient than the single core atom. but most likely limited to the benchmarks being single threaded.