Celeron N2840 2.16GHz Bay Trail vs. Celeron N3050 1.60GHz Braswell single-thread...

[Cakefish]

CPU performance isn't the only important factor. You must take into account GPU performance too. That is very important for a modern PC.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

nm

 

[dave_the_nerd]

CPU performance isn't the only important factor. You must take into account GPU performance too. That is very important for a modern PC.

Not really that important. If you're talking something this slow, it's not really suited for gaming anyway - what matters for the IGP is featureset, (DVD decoding, driver support for modern OS, etc.) not absolute performance, which is usually fast enough for what the GPU needs to do. (UI effects and Candy Crush.)

In comparison, the old D2550 Atoms had a PowerVR GPU in them that Intel only released 32-bit Win7 drivers for. The CPUs weren't much more than a shade slower than the N3050 (and they're almost four years old now) and the GPUs were powerful enough to be credible as HTPCs. But anybody who wants to use Linux or Windows 10 has to get different hardware because of the GPU.

It's also attached to a $200 device that will probably be replaced sooner rather than later. So there's no reason to over-spec it. Flipside is that the user experience is rubbish. But hey, it's cheap.

As far as battery life goes - Personally, I'd rather have to occasionally plug my computer in than have one that's so slow, it's frustratingly painful to use. As it stands now, I'm fortunate to have a shiny laptop with an SSD, a "big core" CPU and a ~6 hour battery life under typical use. I don't have the patience to use one of these Braswell devices long enough to wear down the battery, but then again, I have an option, some people don't.

In other words, I don't find these CPUs very interesting because they go primarily into disposable secondary devices for nontechnical users who replace rather than upgrade.* I'm also suspicious that there's some planned obsolescence going on, which is doubleplusdonotbuy to me.

*And VirtualLarry, which is the true mystery of our times.

I hope that's not too much threadcrapping.

 

[Cakefish]

GPU performance is more than just games. It's used for HD video streaming at 60fps. It's important in rendering fonts and pictures smoothly in Microsoft Office. It's crucial for providing a smoother web browsing experience in a browser with decent hardware acceleration, such as Edge or IE11.

And the importance of battery life cannot be underestimated. 11.6" netbooks are designed for portability first and foremost.

Plus, I've already proven that N3050 has equivalent single threaded performance to the higher end Bay Trail netbook SOCs in Passmark. I'll run Geekbench tomorrow and see the results.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's also attached to a $200 device that will probably be replaced sooner rather than later. So there's no reason to over-spec it. Flipside is that the user experience is rubbish. But hey, it's cheap.

In other words, I don't find these CPUs very interesting because they go primarily into disposable secondary devices for nontechnical users who replace rather than upgrade.*

*And VirtualLarry, which is the true mystery of our times.

LOL. Yeah, I seem to have an affinity as of late for lower-end devices. I'm having fun with them, though... well, mostly.

I finally got Linux Mint 17.2 64-bit MATE edition shoe-horned onto one of my MeegoPad T02s, but I can't seem to get the HDMI audio to work.

Linux Mint is very snappy on those devices, with the updated video drivers. After switching back and forth with my G3258 Windows 7 64-bit box, there's really not all that much difference web-browsing on either machine. So I'm guessing it's the latency of the internet connection and server at work here, once the client device is fast enough. (I'm using a RealTek 10/100 USB2.0 ethernet adapter for the MeegoPad T02, not using the onboard wifi, which isn't that great. Though it works in Linux once you install the driver package.)

I'm basically forced at this point to try installing Win10 on that device, though, and installing all the relevant drivers, to see if HDMI audio is borked on that device in 10, because if it is, the hardware is defective, and this particular device needs to go back.

Edit: Oh, yes, btw. In Win10, being on a Skype call, causes the CPU to throttle down to 0.49Ghz from 1.33Ghz, due to heat. In Linux Mint, it simply spontaneously restarts. But it's a controlled restart, not a complete shutdown. But then, even after I shutdown, it was restarting, even after a forced power-off by holding in the power button for 4 seconds. So I suspect bad hardware. (At that point, it should have nothing to do with Linux.)

 

[happy medium]

Here's the results. As you can see, the N3050 is actually faster than the N3150 in single-threaded workloads and equal to Bay Trail. Maybe something to do with the fact that it's a dual core at 6W TDP instead of quad core at 6W TDP?

Compared to my 2 watt TDP Z3745 Atom quad core that scores 151, that's good.
Its in one of those Winbook tablets from Microcenter. Its running windows 10 and has 2gb ram.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

GPU performance is more than just games. It's used for HD video streaming at 60fps. It's important in rendering fonts and pictures smoothly in Microsoft Office. It's crucial for providing a smoother web browsing experience in a browser with decent hardware acceleration, such as Edge or IE11.

Which has been a solved problem for years - as long as the driver support is there, and the hardware support for specific features like h.264 decoding, even relatively weak IGPs from the previous couple generations can do that stuff. The IGPs in Baytrail are slower, and a generation behind, but they're not going to be inferior enough to matter for anything you've mentioned.

Featureset > Absolute Performance

And then h.265 or h.266 or whatever will make them all equally obsolete.

And the importance of battery life cannot be underestimated. 11.6" netbooks are designed for portability first and foremost.

They're designed for price first and foremost. Otherwise, they'd be doing like Apple and cramming every available milliliter of internal space with a couple hundred bucks worth of MOAR BATTREE!!!

 

[ninaholic37]

Nice. My Atom N270 (2008) got 108 and my Atom N2600 (2012) got 112, and they were both 1.6GHz. That means your Z3745 (@1.86GHz turbo - 151) would be about 16% faster, and your N3050 (@2.16GHz turbo - 188) would be about 24% faster than my old Atoms per Hz at these kind of single-thread tasks.

 

[Cakefish]

Which has been a solved problem for years - as long as the driver support is there, and the hardware support for specific features like h.264 decoding, even relatively weak IGPs from the previous couple generations can do that stuff. The IGPs in Baytrail are slower, and a generation behind, but they're not going to be inferior enough to matter for anything you've mentioned.

Featureset > Absolute Performance

And then h.265 or h.266 or whatever will make them all equally obsolete.



They're designed for price first and foremost. Otherwise, they'd be doing like Apple and cramming every available milliliter of internal space with a couple hundred bucks worth of MOAR BATTREE!!!

They are squeezing more battery in. My Acer ES1-131 has a 3500mAh battery; 31% larger than the 2670mAh battery its direct predecessor, the ES1-111, had.

And Gen 8 graphics has several notable feature upgrades over Gen 7. Here's a quote from Anandtech's own Surface 3 review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review/4

"In addition to the GPU update, the ISP and hardware decode capabilities get a bump as well. There is full hardware acceleration for decode of H.263, MPEG4, H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, MVC, MPEG2, VC1, and JPEG, as well as hardware encode for H.264, H.263, VP8, MVC, and JPEG.*This marks the first Intel product to ship with the company's full, fixed-function HEVC decoder, making Atom the company's most advanced media processor, at least for this short moment."

 

[waltchan]

Here's the results. As you can see, the N3050 is actually faster than the N3150 in single-threaded workloads and equal to Bay Trail. Maybe something to do with the fact that it's a dual core at 6W TDP instead of quad core at 6W TDP?

Dual-cores have higher frequency speed to fill-in and match the 6W TDP there is available. Quad-cores need to be clocked down a little due to two additional cores enabled, and they do consume 20% more power. I seem to favor more on the Celeron J1800 2.41GHz dual-core than the J1900 1.99GHz quad-core right now. AMD caught this trick now, and now all their quad-cores have higher frequency speed than dual-cores.

But still, I think Intel are being too obsessed in saving an additional 1.5W in power from 7.5W Bay Trails, which won't gain us anything in life.

 

[Cakefish]

My Geekbench result: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/3338895