Intel Atom 1.6Ghz

[tjpark1111]

I have a HP laptop that i bought for $500 from bestbuy 3 years ago, and it has a 1.46Ghz celeron M 410 with 1MB L2 cache. Is the atom 1.6Ghz which is now so ubiquitous among netbooks faster/about the same/slower than my current processor? A $300 Lenovo S10-2 I'm looking at right now has an atom 1.6Ghz, 1GB memory, 160GB HD, and comes with windows XP. the laptop i'm using right now has the 1.46Ghz celeron, 512MB memory, and a 80GB HD. it's obvious more memory will help, but what about the processor? the only thing that's bothering me about this laptop is that it won't play youtube HD videos smoothly, although it plays 720p files saved on the hard drive fine through VLC media player. will the 1.6Ghz atom play youtube HD videos smoothly? btw, i'm interested in this $300 netbook as a companion to a desktop i will build separately for any serious tasks. thanks for any help ^_^

 

[SunSamurai]

Slower.

 

[hans007]

i've had 3 netbooks with 1.6 atom.

its is a lot slower than a 1.46 celeron M 410. I'd say probably barely half as fast. for example, if you use a netbook with ubuntu, and do not turn on the compiz fusion effects it will have problems with youtube. no not youtube HD. regular youtube flash.

 

[Qbah]

2 YT videos running at the same time and my Atom tanks. Hell, a MSN Messenger flash advertisement in the main screen (the minimized one >.> ) and I can't do shit on my netbook. Need to put the MSN friends list to tray first. Yes, it's that slow. DivX video is fine though (then again I could watch DivX back on my old PII-350!). It's okay for web browsing though. Supposedly, it can run a 720p movie fine (never tried it though... why bother on a 1024x600 screen?).

 

[PlasmaBomb]

You are probably better keeping the old laptop and throwing some more ram in. If you are feeling more adventurous you could go for a new bigger HD and reformat (or even just a reformat to get rid of the windows clutter).

What is the laptop model?

 

[California Roll]

The main problem with netbooks for "everyday" usage is YouTube or more specifically, FLV (flash) videos. As OP mentions and several other posters confirm, HD YouTube will not play smoothly on netbooks. Flash videos depend entirely on the CPU as opposed to other video types that use the GPU. This is why that even the new Atom/IONs can play 1080p/Blu-Ray perfect but still have problems with HD YouTube.

Hopefully Adobe can "fix" FLV my utilizing more of the GPU, but I have no clue if/when this will happen. Until then, Netbooks/Atoms are going to suck at playing HD Flash content which really limits their usefulness for "mom and dad" pc's.

 

[tjpark1111]

I have an HP dv5218nr, it has an 80gb hard drive but its annoying how 20gb takes up a recovery partition so its basically a 60gb hard drive. the dvd burner also wont work anymore but oh well. i guess this is another topic entirely but i hate having dust clog up the heatsink on laptops with bottom air intakes (which is like 90% of laptops except the macbooks) and having to clean it out. I know when it clogs since it gets realllly hot and eventually shuts itself down. Its even worse on this laptop because i have to take apart the ENTIRE (and i mean entire) laptop unlike my older toshiba thwt just had a door to the processor and the heatsink. Anyone else having this problem? I was thinking of taping a dust filter to the bottom of my laptop.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: tjpark1111
I have an HP dv5218nr, it has an 80gb hard drive but its annoying how 20gb takes up a recovery partition so its basically a 60gb hard drive. the dvd burner also wont work anymore but oh well. i guess this is another topic entirely but i hate having dust clog up the heatsink on laptops with bottom air intakes (which is like 90% of laptops except the macbooks) and having to clean it out. I know when it clogs since it gets realllly hot and eventually shuts itself down. Its even worse on this laptop because i have to take apart the ENTIRE (and i mean entire) laptop unlike my older toshiba thwt just had a door to the processor and the heatsink. Anyone else having this problem? I was thinking of taping a dust filter to the bottom of my laptop.

a dust filter will just make your laptop even more hot.

i've noticed theres 2 things that dramatically improve cooling in laptop.s. they usually use some really crappy metalic film as a heatsink contact material.

remove that and use real thermal paste.

Also why buy a new laptop when a 500gb laptop hard drive costs something like $80?

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Qbah
MSN Messenger flash advertisement in the main screen (the minimized one >.>) and I can't do shit on my netbook. Need to put the MSN friends list to tray first.

Try assigning CPU priority in task manager. It's amazing what can be done with this option. I can let Windows Movie Maker encode a video at low priority while I play games!

 

[RaptureMe]

Yeah I was thinking about getting one too for travel but I want the one with 2 cores and 4 threads.
Pretty much need something for light media "movies and music" and very very light gaming chess,monopoly,uno stuff like that well and keeping up on day to day stuff on the web.
Seeing how I am headed over to japan I figured having one of these wold keep me busy enough and keep me from spending all my money since everything overthere is so darn expensive.

 

[formulav8]

Unforunately those Atom cpu's are dirt slow. The netbooks i've messed with (Repairs, ect..) are all sluggish mainly do to the cpu and those slow flash drives they put in them for hard drives.

I definitely would recommend users to avoid them if at all possible. The only thing those cpu's has going for it is low power consumption. But its somewhat obviously why its as low at it is.


Anyways, just my penny on the matter.


Jason

 

[RaptureMe]

cool thanks for letting me know I could have screwed the pooch
I still need a cheapy netbook so can you suggest one?

 

[rchiu]

I hope the slow performance is because of the ancient 945chipset. I am waiting for the new generation n330(dual core atom) +ion chipset and hopefully that will be fast enough for day to day use.

 

[California Roll]

Originally posted by: rchiu
I hope the slow performance is because of the ancient 945chipset. I am waiting for the new generation n330(dual core atom) +ion chipset and hopefully that will be fast enough for day to day use.

Don't get me wrong, even single core netbooks are fine for everyday use. The main issue for me is anything related to Flash (Youtube, Hulu, etc.). Dual cores are better but they still have issues with Flash. It just pwns weak processors.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: California Roll

Originally posted by: rchiu
I hope the slow performance is because of the ancient 945chipset. I am waiting for the new generation n330(dual core atom) +ion chipset and hopefully that will be fast enough for day to day use.

Don't get me wrong, even single core netbooks are fine for everyday use. The main issue for me is anything related to Flash (Youtube, Hulu, etc.). Dual cores are better but they still have issues with Flash. It just pwns weak processors.

With ION platform, you also get a pretty decent gf9400 integrated video. That's gonna help video stuff quite a bit. Intel is known for it's suckass integrated video solution and we are talking about a solution that was already suckedass back in 2005.