Did AMD miss the boat in these Nettop boxes?

[paulsiu]

Recently, I notice that various vendor are selling these tiny desktops sometimes call Nettop. All are powered by Intel Atom chip and sell for about $135 or so barebone.

From what I can determine, Intel Atom is not a fast chip. The slowest Sempron sold is probably faster. While the Atom is very low power, its chipset is not. AMD could have made a comparable MB and cpu combination.

Did AMD miss the boat?

Paul

 

[Andrew1990]

Well the new low power Athlon64 1.5GHz 15w processor and the Athlon X2 1.5GHz 22w Processor will be out soon. Just pair that with a 740g and you got yourself a nice low power PC much more powerful than an atom at a comparable power draw.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i'm not too crazy about the Atom...
we have 2 variables: power usage & performance

with the way technology grows everyday, power usage should go down WHILE performance should go up.

the atom has the performance of a p4, so its power usage isn't so outstanding considering it is pretty damn slow by today's standards. single core was so 2003. my last single core was a p4 3.2ghz and that was a POS. the atom is slower than that 5 year old cpu.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Having used both an Atom and P4, I can defiantely say any of the later model P4 chips are quite a bit faster than an Atom. No out of order instructions really shows in many cases. It's like running a Pentium or Pentium II at much higher clock speeds.

 

[nosfe]

actually the atom at 1.6ghz is about the same as a P3 at 900mhz
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3321&p=7

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: nosfe
actually the atom at 1.6ghz is about the same as a P3 at 900mhz

...making it absolutely perfect for use in netbooks. They are low power for long battery life and provide adequate performance for email, browsing, word docs and maybe watching a DVD (note - not HD or bluray).

For power users or gamers? Not so much...

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: paulsiu
The slowest Sempron sold is probably faster. While the Atom is very low power, its chipset is not. AMD could have made a comparable MB and cpu combination.l

There low power Geode's are Socket A which extremely low wattage. I'm not sure on performance compared to atom.


Not to mention I'm not sure if the have the R&D to take the chance there.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
i'm not too crazy about the Atom...
we have 2 variables: power usage & performance

with the way technology grows everyday, power usage should go down WHILE performance should go up.

the atom has the performance of a p4, so its power usage isn't so outstanding considering it is pretty damn slow by today's standards. single core was so 2003. my last single core was a p4 3.2ghz and that was a POS. the atom is slower than that 5 year old cpu.

your missing the concept of the atom entirely... ;

If you need something small with power and performance, you get a socket p penryn or a monetivina platform. But it would cost you $$$$

The atom is a basic box. Probably only intended to for open office and web sufing, with possible HTPC roles.

If your getting an atom to replace your desktop, then you better have an old desktop.


I can careless about the atom on desktop or notebook.

I want an ATOM smart phone tho!
This was intel's objective with atom, to make a chip small enough to fit in a pocket PC or smart phone.

Those of you with smart phones know how many multi tasks the phone does. Would easily make the best smart phone if you could get a platform for one and draw little power.

 

[Phynaz]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
the atom has the performance of a p4

Performace of a P4 in a two watt power envelope is pretty f'n sweet.

 

[Ares202]

Originally posted by: Phynaz

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
the atom has the performance of a p4

Performace of a P4 in a two watt power envelope is pretty f'n sweet.

Problem is with the chipset its more like 25w and the cpu itself is not even close to the even the first pentuim 4 and thats nearly nine years old, its about as good as 10-12 year old tech

my PDA's cpu is good as 15 year old tech and uses <1w so the atom is so overatted in a technological perspective

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: nosfe
actually the atom at 1.6ghz is about the same as a P3 at 900mhz
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3321&p=7

A Pentium M (Dothan) is not the same CPU as a Pentium 3.

I own a HTPC running a Pentium M 750 (Dothan) (in an AOpen i915-HFS motherboard for the curious). I had a 733MHz Pentium III server in the basement that was my main backup server for the house until I replaced it with an Atom-based PC. An Atom-based PC is definitely faster than a Pentium 3.

If anyone really doesn't believe me, I can go dig the thing up and get you some SSL and SSH benchmarks (running CentOS), but I can say that the Atom is both lower power and higher performance by a considerable margin compared to the Pentium III that used to be my file server (before I replaced it with a Via C3 900MHz and then replaced that with a Atom-based motherboard). I was impressed enough with the performance of my Atom fileserver, that I bought my daughter an Acer Aspire One netbook for her to do her schoolwork on. As everyone has said, it's not a speed-demon but it works for my daughter and it works great as a fileserver. And the Atom motherboard cost $70 at Newegg.

That said, the Pentium M is on a whole different level - I have that running on a HTPC and the system works great recording and playing back 1080i OTA HD (using a TV Wonder 650 HD and BeyondTV) and for playing Blu-ray (using that $95 LG Blu-ray drive they have at Newegg).

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: pm

Originally posted by: nosfe
actually the atom at 1.6ghz is about the same as a P3 at 900mhz
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3321&p=7

A Pentium M (Dothan) is not the same CPU as a Pentium 3.

Was Pentium M the precursor to Core 2? Wiki basically says so but I'd like a little more authority on the subject to comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M

Is the first paragraph of the wiki on Pentium M acceptably accurate?

I'm keen to know because I spent the last 6yrs working with an 800MHz Pentium III laptop from 2002 and I'd like to know if an Atom would be on-par of notably faster than my experience with that system (was a DELL X200, 12" screen, loved it).

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: pm

Originally posted by: nosfe
actually the atom at 1.6ghz is about the same as a P3 at 900mhz
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3321&p=7

A Pentium M (Dothan) is not the same CPU as a Pentium 3.

Was Pentium M the precursor to Core 2? Wiki basically says so but I'd like a little more authority on the subject to comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M

Is the first paragraph of the wiki on Pentium M acceptably accurate?

I'm keen to know because I spent the last 6yrs working with an 800MHz Pentium III laptop from 2002 and I'd like to know if an Atom would be on-par of notably faster than my experience with that system (was a DELL X200, 12" screen, loved it).

So I wasn't actually involved in the design of any of these CPU's and so I know them more as a user than I do as an Intel employee. But I'd be interested enough to collect any Unix based benchmarks that you want on all three. Just tell me what you want to see and then give me a few days to get the data. I think it's as simple as dragging a USB key from computer to computer and running a few commands... if the Pentium III can boot from USB... I can even grab data from the Via C3 900MHz if anyone is curious.

I have a Kill-o-Watt too. It'd be a fairly interesting project in an of itself, but if it helps someone, then I'll do it for the fun of it.

I believe the summary that says that the Pentium M is a heavily modified Pentium III is more or less correct. But adding a new FSB, an improved branch-predictor, a heavily modified and increased cache, and new instruction sets among other changes makes a pretty big improvement in my mind. As I recall, at the same clock frequency in something like Drystone MIPS, a Dothan is about 1.8x faster than Pentium III, and then in FPU Ops, using SSE2 code, more than 5x faster.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: pm
So I wasn't actually involved in the design of any of these CPU's and so I know them more as a user than I do as an Intel employee. But I'd be interested enough to collect any Unix based benchmarks that you want on all three. Just tell me what you want to see and then give me a few days to get the data. I think it's as simple as dragging a USB key from computer to computer and running a few commands... if the Pentium III can boot from USB... I can even grab data from the Via C3 900MHz if anyone is curious.

I have a Kill-o-Watt too. It'd be a fairly interesting project in an of itself, but if it helps someone, then I'll do it for the fun of it.

I believe the summary that says that the Pentium M is a heavily modified Pentium III is more or less correct. But adding a new FSB, an improved branch-predictor, a heavily modified and increased cache, and new instruction sets among other changes makes a pretty big improvement in my mind. As I recall, at the same clock frequency in something like Drystone MIPS, a Dothan is about 1.8x faster than Pentium III, and then in FPU Ops, using SSE2 code, more than 5x faster.

Well now that would be an intriguing set of data to have :thumbsup:

I appreciate the enthusiasm and offer but I don't really have any *nix apps of interest these days. Gaussian98 and Guassian03 were about my peak of using linux for HPC efforts and I wouldn't really put much merit into the floating-point results such a bench would generate with atom and the likes.

I'm more interested in knowing the superficial performance stuff...as in "compared to my 800MHz P3, a 1.6GHz Atom would prolly feel (1) on par in windows office apps, (2) slightly snappier in windows apps, or (3) prepare to have your friggen mind blown by the performance increase of Atom over P3!

Likewise I'd be interested in understanding the relative battery life improvement. Although this seems to be a moving target because the OEM's like to take lower power platforms and just pair them with commensurately smaller/cheaper/lighter batteries so the consumer is perpetually locked into this 2-3hr battery life. (Same with cellphones, argh)

But a 3-way review of P3 vs. Atom vs. C3 would be nice just to start building a working database of relative performance and performance/watt of these new netbook-class compute stations.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Ares202


my PDA's cpu is good as 15 year old tech and uses <1w so the atom is so overatted in a technological perspective

how would an atom chip inside a smart phone be overaited? If you could lower the wattage on the controller, and keep the low power off atom, maybe get a better battery.

How can you say a smart phone of this class would be over raited?

I bet you it would be TONS better then my sony Xperia X1.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: pm
So I wasn't actually involved in the design of any of these CPU's and so I know them more as a user than I do as an Intel employee. But I'd be interested enough to collect any Unix based benchmarks that you want on all three. Just tell me what you want to see and then give me a few days to get the data. I think it's as simple as dragging a USB key from computer to computer and running a few commands... if the Pentium III can boot from USB... I can even grab data from the Via C3 900MHz if anyone is curious.

I have a Kill-o-Watt too. It'd be a fairly interesting project in an of itself, but if it helps someone, then I'll do it for the fun of it.

I believe the summary that says that the Pentium M is a heavily modified Pentium III is more or less correct. But adding a new FSB, an improved branch-predictor, a heavily modified and increased cache, and new instruction sets among other changes makes a pretty big improvement in my mind. As I recall, at the same clock frequency in something like Drystone MIPS, a Dothan is about 1.8x faster than Pentium III, and then in FPU Ops, using SSE2 code, more than 5x faster.

Well now that would be an intriguing set of data to have :thumbsup:

I appreciate the enthusiasm and offer but I don't really have any *nix apps of interest these days. Gaussian98 and Guassian03 were about my peak of using linux for HPC efforts and I wouldn't really put much merit into the floating-point results such a bench would generate with atom and the likes.

I'm more interested in knowing the superficial performance stuff...as in "compared to my 800MHz P3, a 1.6GHz Atom would prolly feel (1) on par in windows office apps, (2) slightly snappier in windows apps, or (3) prepare to have your friggen mind blown by the performance increase of Atom over P3!

Likewise I'd be interested in understanding the relative battery life improvement. Although this seems to be a moving target because the OEM's like to take lower power platforms and just pair them with commensurately smaller/cheaper/lighter batteries so the consumer is perpetually locked into this 2-3hr battery life. (Same with cellphones, argh)

But a 3-way review of P3 vs. Atom vs. C3 would be nice just to start building a working database of relative performance and performance/watt of these new netbook-class compute stations.

bump for Pentium 3 vs. Pentium M vs. Pentium 4 data -- for example, when I see a refurbished IBM Thinkpad on buy.com with a 1.6GHz Pentium M, what exactly am I getting with that CPU?

My brain works in terms of P4 speed. What speed P4 would equal a 1.6GHz Pentium M?

 

[pm]

I haven't forgotten about it. In fact, I have the USB key that I created with unixbench in my pocket right now. I need to change a few more things - I got an error running make on it - and it didn't boot on the Pentium III system and so I need to make a liveCD out of it. Once I have unixbench running I can get the Pentium M and Atom data pretty quickly.

But I haven't forgotten. I was a bit distracted this last week getting my new X25-M SSD drive up and running.

 

[magreen]

I just discovered a fascinating old article over at THG. I usually consider THG beneath contempt, but this article is pretty amazing. They basically pegged it back in May '05 that the Pentium M architecture would send the Athlon 64 packing if Intel would just ramp the clockspeeds on the Pentium M. And eventually this happened with Core 2 Duo a little over a year later (with quite a few architectural changes along the way as well).

link

It looks to me like a 1.6GHz Pentium M is about in the class of a 3.0 GHz desktop P4.

Edit: Here's AT's article on the same topic. link They also had some good info from Mooley Eden and the eventual Core 2 Duo design team that something was in the works. Looks like in lots of the benchmarks a 2.0 GHz Pentium M trades blows with a 3.0 GHz P4.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: paulsiu
Recently, I notice that various vendor are selling these tiny desktops sometimes call Nettop. All are powered by Intel Atom chip and sell for about $135 or so barebone.

From what I can determine, Intel Atom is not a fast chip. The slowest Sempron sold is probably faster. While the Atom is very low power, its chipset is not. AMD could have made a comparable MB and cpu combination.

Did AMD miss the boat?

Paul

AMD Geode has been around for over 5 years and is the basis for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). I think they cost $400 but that includes a 'laptop' donation in addition to 'your' laptop. I believe total platform power consumption is less than 5w.

The latest Geode 'commercial' iteration IIRC is a 15w version 'roughly' based on old socket A Mobile Athlon XP-M. Total power consumption of the platform maxed around 50-60w.

There are some other platforms based upon the original socket S1 for the Turion X2 - I think they are more 'AM2' as opposed to 'AM2+' and might not support the latest socket S1 split power planes and power management. I'm guessing power consumption would be between the OLPC and the socket A.

Same goes for the AM2+ mini-ITX AMD 780g and nVidia 8200. Probably consumes 30-40w at idle and 'zooms' to 70-80w when playing a bluRay disc.

I hate to utter the blasphemy in the land of Intel/AMD but Via seems to have the best overall platform for 'Nettop Boxes'. They are not the best at anything - except they have daughter cards for about any expansion.