How does Atom compare with Pentium III?

[mfeller2]

I have an old Sony Vaio "netbook-sized" laptop. Even with an 850 MHz Pentium-III, 256MB RAM, and runs XP, I find the performance to be excellent for what I use it for (and I have another PC if need "more").

The battery, however, is dead. I am thinking about a Netbook for a new battery, and for the additional memory vs. just buying a new battery for the Vaio.

Question: From Anand's article on the HP Mini 311, he states that even the new low-power Celeron will offer an improvement in performance over Atom. I want to make sure...will a 1.6GHz Atom be at least as fast or faster than an 850 MHz P-III?

I just want to make sure I'm not taking a step backwards on performance.

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

You will gain performance over your P3/850. Even the little Atom 1600 MHz can compete with the P3/850. You are not stepping back IMHO.

 

[Paperlantern]

A PIII, we'll say a coppermine since that was one of the most popular chips, has only at most a 133MHz Front side bus, and 128KB of L2 Cache for the Celeron and 256KB for the straight PIII's. An Atom chip at 533MHz front side, 512KB L2 Cache, and DUAL CORE, would not only compete, but absolutley destroy your PIII 850. Youll be fine with the netbook, especially since it will probably come with faster RAM, and a faster and larger hard drive (most notebook drives are 5400 RPM, the one in your PIII notebook is probably 4200 or even less if its one of those disks similar to those found in iPods).

The netbook will more than likely be MUCH faster on all levels.

 

[Ayah]

Yeah, an atom would probably kill that P3. A lot of netbooks have 1GB of ram. Mucho improvement over 256MB. Dual core the atom a showstealer compared to the P3.

 

[Aluvus]

A PIII, we'll say a coppermine since that was one of the most popular chips, has only at most a 133MHz Front side bus, and 128KB of L2 Cache for the Celeron and 256KB for the straight PIII's. An Atom chip at 533MHz front side, 512KB L2 Cache, and DUAL CORE, would not only compete, but absolutley destroy your PIII 850. Youll be fine with the netbook, especially since it will probably come with faster RAM, and a faster and larger hard drive (most notebook drives are 5400 RPM, the one in your PIII notebook is probably 4200 or even less if its one of those disks similar to those found in iPods).

The netbook will more than likely be MUCH faster on all levels.

You gloss over the fact that the Atom's micro-architecture is radically different from (and, clock-for-clock, performs significantly worse than) the Pentium III. Atom is in-order rather than out-of-order, and that is a huge disadvantage.

Additionally, the two processors available in the HP Mini 311 are not dual-core. The only dual-core Atom listed in Intel's ARK is the Atom 330, which rarely shows up in netbooks. This is, again, a large performance difference (particularly since Atom is in-order). Nearly all Atom products (all but the Z510) support Hyper-Threading, which is not quite as good as having another hardware core, but should help quite a bit.


@OP:

I have one of Intel's desktop boards with the Atom 330 (which is the highest-end product in the Atom family; 1.6 GHz, dual-core) and 2 GB of memory, running Linux. Performance is adequate for my purposes (it mostly sits, quietly doing its job without human interaction). It is not especially responsive, and if I had to use it as my primary system it would drive me up the wall, but it's good enough for what I use it for.

The closest I've ever been to your situation was a Pentium III 450 MHz running Windows XP (yes, I had the slowest PIII that Intel ever sold), which was significantly more painful. If you are happy with what you have now, you will probably be happy with something Atom-based. But you will not be blown away.

 

[frostedflakes]

Yup. P3 is an out-of-order, superscalar processor. Atom is in-order and scalar. It's an incredibly simple architecture, was one of the compromises necessary to reduce transistor count, cost, and power consumption. That said, single-core Atom is probably slightly faster than an 850MHz P3. It really depends on what you're doing, though. Atom has some newer instruction sets than the P3, so if software is optimized for SSE2, SSE3, etc. it will help. Also, applications that require a lot of memory bandwidth will probably perform better with the Atom for obvious reasons.

For basic computing tasks, you won't be able to notice any difference between the Atom and P3.

 

[pukemon]

Not a direct comparison but my Atom N270 based Acer Aspire One (with Intel 945GME) is somewhat faster than my old PIII-933 Coppermine (with i815G chipset) It's not really a fair comparison for a netbook and a nine year old desktop though.

And the Atom N270 and N280 are single-core processors that support hyperthreading. It's not a dual-core chip.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Depending on your budget, your might want to consider an Intel "CULV" processor instead. They're normally prefixed by "SU," such as the SU3500, SU7300, etc. Generally, they're found in notebooks that bridge the gap between full-blown notebooks and netbooks; they tend to be physically smaller, have excellent battery life, and still carry good performance. The Acer Timeline and ASUS UL series are both examples.

They come in four flavors: Pentium / Celeron-based or Core 2-based (should be the same difference between them as in desktop chips), and single core or dual core. Something with a SU2300 (dual core Celeron) or SU3500 (single core Core 2) can usually be found in the $500-600 range, while a dual core Core 2 (SU7300 or similar) will run you $700-800+.

The dual core SU7300 at 1.3GHz has a TDP of 10W. The single core SU3500 at 1.4GHz has a TDP of only 5.5W. For comparison, an Atom N270 or N280 have a TDP of 2.5W. However, both of the Core 2-based CULV processors will run laps around Atom. If you find that the processor isn't up to the task of what you're trying to do later down the road, you always have the option (though it may not be safe) of overclocking a lower-clocked processor for more performance. You can't exactly change a processor's architecture if that's what's holding it back (as is the case with Atom), though.

Having used my UL30A for a month now, I HIGHLY recommend them. Plenty of processing power if I need it, and yet I can still get 8-10 hours of battery life without trying very hard.

 

[MJinZ]

I believe all of the Core processors (aside from Nahalem) stem from Pentium 3 architecture... so it really is not too shabby.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Atom seems clock for clock fairly comparable to the first generation Pentium 4's. Not the comparison you're looking for, but I'm sure there's Pentium 4 1.6ghz reviews from back in the day compared to the fastest Pentium III's.