Bay Trail's not so bad... (N2830)

[ninaholic37]

I've recently bought an ACER 11.6 inch laptop with Pentium N3540 to replace an old first generation (Arrandale?) Core i5. Since I got myself a desktop PC it was pointless for me to have a powerful notebook. I bought this laptop mostly to replace an old ASUS Transformer tablet, since Android does not cut it for me if I need to do some work on the move.

Let me say I was pleasantly surprised! The laptop is very light, fanless, noiseless (especially after I replaced the HDD with an SSD) and fast enough. Boots in a few seconds and is extremely rare for it to crawl into a standstill. It only happened once when a chrome tab stopped working. I even tried to use PCSX2 (PS2 emulator for those who do not know) and it worked well enough with FPS between 50 and 60 on native resolution. I tried to scale up to HD but FPS would drop to 20-30. But that is because of the slow GPU. Nevertheless that was just to see how far it went, since I did not buy this machine to play games.

In my opinion, Bay Trail in Pentium N3540 form is a clear winner for the market of people who only need a computer to browse the web and office apps, with good battery life (7h+). Of course the hardcore enthusiast (and I also have a faster Haswell/nVIDIA desktop) will ditch these processors, but they are very good for what they are.

The Pentium N3540 at 7.5W TDP Acer laptop is fanless? That's interesting, even a lot of 3.5W TDP Acer netbooks weren't, but I guess having a bigger 11.6" chassis helps Atom spread the heat. I hear that it being a fanless design makes it throttle down a lot more though, making the performance even worse. Have you tested this with something like CPU-Z? It would be interesting to see how much time your fanless model can actually stay at 2.66GHz, say, when playing an intensive game.

 

[Shivansps]

The Pentium N3540 at 7.5W TDP Acer laptop is fanless? That's interesting, even a lot of 3.5W TDP Acer netbooks weren't, but I guess having a bigger 11.6" chassis helps Atom spread the heat. I hear that it being a fanless design makes it throttle down a lot more though, making the performance even worse. Have you tested this with something like CPU-Z? It would be interesting to see how much time your fanless model can actually stay at 2.66GHz, say, when playing an intensive game.

If a Z3735D can mantain the quad turbo in a tablet im sure that the N3540 is not going to have a problem in a netbook, so long you dont try to use the igp.

Using the IGP (games) auto disables the CPU turbo to allow the IGP turbo (BT cant turbo both at the same time), and it cant mantain that for more that 5 minutes if all cores and igp are always at 100%, but that does not really happens in a game.

So in a game you are most likely gona see the cpu at base and IGP at turbo since the first second.

 

[waltchan]

The Pentium N3540 at 7.5W TDP Acer laptop is fanless?

Actually, they all have a fan. My Acer 15" Celeron N2920 has one as well as Toshiba 15" N2830 (both are going on eBay soon after I found a new Dell with Celeron 2957U Haswell). The Pentiums should be no exception.

I also have a first-generation (launch-date release) Toshiba 15" N2820 I'll keep that is completely fanless. It has a larger battery than the newer models, plus SSD upgrade, and battery-life one time ran 14 hours of use for me with LED brightness all the way down and power plan set at "power saver" with CPU speed set at 0% (locked at 1.4 GHz minimum Bay Trail speed, or 800 MHz Haswell).

Most of the new Bay Trail laptops in stores have a fan, plus 50% smaller and lighter battery than before, so less battery-life. Manufacturers are always finding ways to cut production cost.

 

[ninaholic37]

Actually, they all have a fan. My Acer 15" Celeron N2920 has one as well as Toshiba 15" N2830 (both are going on eBay soon after I found a new Dell with Celeron 2957U Haswell). The Pentiums should be no exception.

That's what I thought too, but apparently there is an Acer V3 11.6" that has Pentium N3540 7.5W TDP and is fanless. Maybe that is the one Picao84 is talking about:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.308409300

Bads:

1) Don't let the specs fool you. Due to the fanless design the CPU might be throttled slowing down the computer. Will give 6/10 in terms of speed.

2) The Trackpad could be better (scrolling gets harder at times). I will give it 7/10 on the trackpad

3) Screen is hard to see in bright daylight but it's workable. Will give 7/10

4) Hard to upgrade RAM for most people will give it 5/10

I haven't looked at any extensive reviews of how this affects performance though.

 

[seitur]

About battery, OEMs also goes with smaller bats for BT devices, so, its something you need to check device by device.



if you where right, there should be no difference at all, if in NO WAY we use 4 cores in a daily basics i shouldt be seeing any difference in a quad vs dual of the same ST perf.

The thing is, there is always load on all 4 cores because Windows is very good at assigning tasks, so unless all you do is do 1 thing at the time you will be always better in a quad with a considerable MT lead than in a dual with about 20% more ST perf, for the simple fact that its likely that the "20% extra" will be used in some other thing anyway in a dual.

A very different thing is if we are talking about games, until DX12 at least, ST perf is always better.

Seriously, you're overanalyzing.

Average user have better experience on 2 core 1,4ghz Haswell than on 4 core Bay-Trail even though in Multithread loads they are relatively close to each other in perf.

That is because Single Thread perf is more important for average user.

What more is there to say?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Seriously, you're overanalyzing.

Average user have better experience on 2 core 1,4ghz Haswell than on 4 core Bay-Trail even though in Multithread loads they are relatively close to each other in perf.

That is because Single Thread perf is more important for average user.

What more is there to say?

Just browsing on my ASUS X205 (1.33Ghz BT quad) the CPU usage hits 80%+ and turbo to 1.5Ghz on a single page of this forum using chrome. That's over 3 cores completely used by one process. A massive part of the average users tasks are web based and modern browsers like Chrome are fully multithreaded. They are also video accelerated, making the igp on Bay-Trail utilized as well. My wife browses image and flash heavy sites on it and it performs wonderfully.

Multithreaded performance is actually more important, especially in the long run. Just compare the E8600 to the Q6600, it's pretty clear what is better today.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Multithreaded performance is actually more important, especially in the long run. Just compare the E8600 to the Q6600, it's pretty clear what is better today.

Interesting that you should bring that up, as I read someone's comment in another thread a few weeks back, that they were replacing their slower Core2Quad CPUs, with faster clock-speed Core2Duo CPUs off of ebay, because of the even greater need for single-threaded performance these days, especially with web browsing.

 

[coercitiv]

That is because Single Thread perf is more important for average user.

What more is there to say?

Interesting that you should bring that up, as I read someone's comment in another thread a few weeks back, that they were replacing their slower Core2Quad CPUs, with faster clock-speed Core2Duo CPUs off of ebay, because of the even greater need for single-threaded performance these days, especially with web browsing.

This is how Chrome loading pages from TheVerge.com in a single tab looks like on a Haswell CPU @ 1.4Ghz with the browser artificially restricted to 2 Threads. (Thread 0 and Thread 2)

This is what happens when I restrict Chrome to 4 Threads.

And this is what happens when I use Chrome with no thread restriction.

Seems to me there's quite a bit of multithreading going on and that's just with 1 browser tab and no other active user app loaded.

 

[waltchan]

Interesting that you should bring that up, as I read someone's comment in another thread a few weeks back, that they were replacing their slower Core2Quad CPUs, with faster clock-speed Core2Duo CPUs off of ebay, because of the even greater need for single-threaded performance these days, especially with web browsing.

That's correct and not a surprise. The Core 2 Quads were clocked only around 2.33 GHz to 2.66 GHz on average, depending on model, but Core 2 Duos were clocked over 3.00 GHz, and up to 3.33 GHz. Everything has got to do with the frequency number, not the number of cores.

Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33 GHz, while showing its age, is still holding its resale-value well, over $30 shipped on eBay. But if you look one model down, E8500 at 3.16 GHz, less than $15 shipped on eBay. The slowest E8200 2.66 GHz sells for only $7 shipped on average. Over 85% of other older LGA775 processors are now priced below $5 shipped, lowest is $2 for all Pentium 4 processors right now.

 

[waltchan]

I think I should bring this up. In the "Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!!!" thread, I wrote why AMD C-50 1.00 GHz APU from 2011 is the worst processor I've seen in my life. I rated C-50 1.00 GHz dual-core worse than C-30 1.20 GHz solo-core because it loses 200 MHz (20%) of single-thread performance.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+C-50

Who's ready to work with 263 single-thread, plus only 2GB RAM?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think I should bring this up. In the "Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!!!" thread, I wrote why AMD C-50 1.00 GHz APU from 2011 is the worst processor I've seen in my life. I rated C-50 1.00 GHz dual-core worse than C-30 1.20 GHz solo-core because it loses 200 MHz (20%) of single-thread performance.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+C-50

Who's ready to work with a 263 single-thread rating laptop?

I had a C-60 based Netbook, kind of liked that little sucker. It was pretty slow. An SSD helped, marginally, but it was still pretty slow.

 

[waltchan]

I had a C-60 based Netbook, kind of liked that little sucker. It was pretty slow. An SSD helped, marginally, but it was still pretty slow.

Single-thread is 321 for C-60. AMD was forced to release the revise C-60 in 3 months that added a 300 MHz turbo-boost (up to 1.3GHz), because people were returning their C-50 laptops (1.00 GHz with no turbo) like crazy.

263 vs. 321, that's 18% loss.

 

[Picao84]

That's what I thought too, but apparently there is an Acer V3 11.6" that has Pentium N3540 7.5W TDP and is fanless. Maybe that is the one Picao84 is talking about:

http://www.microsoftstore.company/s...-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.308409300

I haven't looked at any extensive reviews of how this affects performance though.

Yup it's a variation from that one, the Aspire V3 111P.
Concerning throttle, like I said I don't use it for gaming so that's something that doesn't happen neither I care.

EDIT: here is a review of my model:http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-V3-111P-P06A-Notebook-Review-Update.125102.0.html

EDIT 2: actually it's not exactly my model, since mine has the 3540, but close..

EDIT 3: now compare to the battery life of the Ivy Bridge Pentium of the review and tell me it's not a good tradeoff.. Yes it's not Haswell, but it's not like there is a huge difference between it and Ivy Bridge..

 

[Shivansps]

Seriously, you're overanalyzing.

Average user have better experience on 2 core 1,4ghz Haswell than on 4 core Bay-Trail even though in Multithread loads they are relatively close to each other in perf.

That is because Single Thread perf is more important for average user.

What more is there to say?

im not, this a single page browsing

this is a more real everyday usage

It does not even need to keep turbos or the base frecuency, the clocks goes up and down depending of the demand.

And this is the slower BT quad, along with the G/E.


Again, if you gona do gaming, BT is not a good idea, CPU turbo does not work along with the igp, and the igp is just not good, in a Z3735D its like a 780G, in a N3540 is a little better than a HD2000 but thats it, it also does not have pci-lanes for dgpu gaming either.

But for a everyday machine, it works ok and its a better choice than the Celerons U.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But for a everyday machine, it works ok and its a better choice than the Celerons U.

Maybe only if you use Chrome heavily. For those of us on Firefox or Waterfox, the Celeron U is a far superior choice.

 

[Seba]

Yeah, great. Your Bay Trail reaches 100% (or near 100%) on all cores at the same time just while browsing.

 

[waltchan]

Maybe only if you use Chrome heavily. For those of us on Firefox or Waterfox, the Celeron U is a far superior choice.

I agree. A Haswell notebook processor will easily beat any Silvermont tablet processor. The bigger the processor is with larger cores, the faster it runs. Period.

 

[Picao84]

Yeah, great. Your Bay Trail reaches 100% (or near 100%) on all cores at the same time just while browsing.

Keep in mind that's an Atom @ 1.33Ghz. My Pentium goes all the way to 2.58Ghz. It makes a big difference. Nevertheless, I've seen even my Core i5 4590 load at near 100% when browsing the web. It just depends on the sites you are viewing. Plus, in the end what matters is system responsiveness and at least my BayTrail is always responsive.

 

[Picao84]

I agree. A Haswell notebook processor will easily beat any Silvermont tablet processor. The bigger the processor with larger cores, the faster it runs. Period.

You don't get it do you? These are mobile chips we are taking about. Faster is not the only important metric, battery life is also extremely important. Enjoy your 3 hours Haswell battery life.

 

[Seba]

Nevertheless, I've seen even my Core i5 4590 load at near 100% when browsing the web.

On all four cores at the same time?

 

[VirtualLarry]

You don't get it do you? These are mobile chips we are taking about. Faster is not the only important metric, battery life is also extremely important. Enjoy your 3 hours Haswell battery life.

My 1007U gets 8 hours web browsing with wifi enabled. (At least, it did, when the battery was new.) How long does your Atom laptop last? (Oh, did they put a smaller battery in your Atom laptop? Too bad.)

 

[waltchan]

You don't get it do you? These are mobile chips we are taking about. Faster is not the only important metric, battery life is also extremely important. Enjoy your 3 hours Haswell battery life.

No, I understand. I also own a first-generation, completely fan-less, Toshiba C55-A5190 Celeron N2820 Bay Trail 15" laptop that gets up to 14 hours of battery life.

Different PC makers put in different size and weight of the battery, so battery life always differs in each brand. If the battery is small and miniscule, and built-in, expect shorter life than the detachable battery ones. Newer laptops today come with lighter and smaller battery than before, so battery life is reduced or about the same as the bigger battery but with higher-wattage processor.

My Toshiba C55-A5190 was built on a Ivy-Bridge chassis with the larger battery type. Toshiba was grateful to install a Celeron N2820 Bay Trail processor while keeping the same big battery part number, so that's how I got 14 hours.

Due to high-cost of production, Toshiba replaced it with C55-B slimmer-chassis (C55-B5299) in 3 months, with battery reduced weight by 65% (no, it doesn't get 14 hours anymore).

 

[Picao84]

On all four cores at the same time?

Since I was looking at the processes tab and not CPU tab, I guess so. It was showing 90+ % on one Chrome tab. Luke I said it depends on the webpage and some can be littered with garbage.. But it can happen.

 

[Picao84]

My 1007U gets 8 hours web browsing with wifi enabled. (At least, it did, when the battery was new.) How long does your Atom laptop last? (Oh, did they put a smaller battery in your Atom laptop? Too bad.)

First of all, I don't have an Atom, I have a Pentium. Second, if you would have bothered to read the review, you would have seen I get 8+ of battery life as well. Third, how much did you pay for the 1007U laptop? I paid 300 Euros for mine. Fourth, how heavy is your laptop? Mine is 1.35 Kg.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Third, how much did you pay for the 1007U laptop? I paid 300 Euros for mine. Fourth, how heavy is your laptop? Mine is 1.35 Kg.

Mine was $350 with Windows 7. You can get the same model with a 1017U (1.6Ghz) for $320 at Newegg now.

Edit: I'm not sure how much it weighs. It's an 11.6" Acer, with a six-cell battery. Not too much.