Intel Atom....any good?????

[Vic Vega]

atom processors are great for the person that needs maximum battery power and is only doing email/general office/web.

For one most gaming video cards kill the battery efficiency of any laptop. The dual video options today are a nice deal.

I feel really bad for the people that went whole hog into a netbook and bring it to me because it's "never ran right and much slower than my old laptop".

My Atom 330 netbook was slllooowww out of the box. It had so much crap on it from Asus task manager listed something like 75 processes running. I immediately did a complete reinstall with Win 7 Enterprise... now it's snappy and doesn't bog down. Atom can be good, at least the dual core variety, pending the machine is setup right.

 

[Zap]

DPI scaling in windows 7 is actually quite usable. There is no excuse anymore for low-res displays.

The thing is that some people don't care. I know, amazing, right? However, every time I see an LCD running below native resolution and I point it out, the person using it doesn't know what I'm talking about or doesn't care. Oblivious is happiness, I guess. If it works for them and they're okay with it, I'm not going to preach to them.

 

[IntelUser2000]

There's 10-15% or so people out there that's totally satisfied with Netbooks. They don't need high performance, cause they watch low-quality free stream service videos, and they don't even have more than 3 tabs open in internet at one time, let alone multiple applications. The simple flash games and apps run fine, so they buy it solely for the ultra-low price.

You can probably tell I like the Atom chip itself, but I'm definitely not a fan of the chip in the Netbook category(Core i7 2657M on a 10-11 inch screen, under 1 inch thickness, 8 hours of in moderate use battery life with standard, 16 hours with double capacity, switch from tablet to clamshell, that's my dream, then I could pay $2000 for that). Still, can't blame the market for wanting super-cheap but functional computers, which also has to do with the instant gratification mentality people have nowadays.

 

[Vic Vega]

There's 10-15% or so people out there that's totally satisfied with Netbooks. They don't need high performance, cause they watch low-quality free stream service videos, and they don't even have more than 3 tabs open in internet at one time, let alone multiple applications. The simple flash games and apps run fine, so they buy it solely for the ultra-low price.

You can probably tell I like the Atom chip itself, but I'm definitely not a fan of the chip in the Netbook category(Core i7 2657M on a 10-11 inch screen, under 1 inch thickness, 8 hours of in moderate use battery life with standard, 16 hours with double capacity, switch from tablet to clamshell, that's my dream, then I could pay $2000 for that). Still, can't blame the market for wanting super-cheap but functional computers, which also has to do with the instant gratification mentality people have nowadays.

lol

 

[IntelUser2000]

See this? This is my Atom system. Currently broken due to a spindle HDD(hugs the X25-M SSD). Works anywhere from 5-30 mins before crash.

Viliv S5-Atom Z520 WinXP UMPC

Runs XP, and on such a small screen with only touchscreen as a input, the performance is perfectly fine. 5 hours playing videos, and it fits in a big pocket. You double the screen size each dimension, width and height, and put in a 95% size keyboard with a mouse, then you feel the speed. Installing Windows 7 on it doesn't help either.

 

[zCypher]

Atom is great for netbooks. I've seen the Samsung NF310 in action and it worked perfectly fine for YouTube on Chrome, in Win 7 even while running bloated IM software. It only had 1GB, too.

It's about expectations. If you're expecting it to do the same as your desktop or even a normal laptop, that's your own fault. It's called a netbook for a reason.

That said, personally I would never buy an Atom for anything but a netbook. The system I'm typing from right now, $300 includes = Antec Earthwatts 500w, Athlon X3 445 3.1GHz, Biostar A880G+, G.SKILL 4GB DDR3, WD Black 500GB. I was able to unlock the 4th core. Even crammed in a small case with no extra cooling, it all runs surprisingly cool.

Not an Atom hater, but I would definitely look to AMD for a cheap and small build.

 

[Zap]

It's about expectations.

I think you nailed it.

 

[gdm40]

I know this is an older posting but had to comment on how information changes over time.

A lot of posters stated that a D525 was on the sames lines as a P4 2.6 Northwood my response (hardly)

I use a D525 Atom in my workstation a 1.8ghz dual core hyper~threaded CPU runs circles around the old workstation a P4 3.4Ghz.

According to the Passmark scores submitted by (REAL) users of the processor. My own score included. It scores higher than a Pentium D 2.6 GHz. So it's obviously way faster than a single core P4.

And it does all this with a 125w power supply.

 

[sm625]

Next time I upgrade parent's computer, I'm just going to throw a pentium B950/B960 notebook in there. It costs about the same as a desktop and as an added bonus it can be removed and taken to the doctor's office and bingo or wherever. lol

 

[gramboh]

I bought an Asus 1015PN about a year ago for $400, I think it has the D525 (dual core 1.x GHz, can't remember), I upgraded it to 2GB memory and it has ION2. It can decode HD (most 1080p mkv) and is fine in software gpu mode for 720p YouTube and the battery lasts forever, it comes out of standby fast, Chrome browsing is good, runs full Office fine.

The main reason I like it is that my wife and I travel with it, it's small/light and if it is ever lost or stolen, its just $400 out the window, not $1,000-2,000 on a nice machine (e.g. Macbook). Tablets do not have the functionality I want at this point (need full Office and want a keyboard).

Atom is plenty for my purposes. Only thing I really dislike is the crap low res LCD.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I do have a 1.6 Ghz Atom nettop and it can't even play Blu-Ray rips properly. Waste of money on my part.

 

[janas19]

It's great for net surfing, documents, java games - basically anything you could run inside a VM an Atom can do quite well.

 

[ultimatebob]

Geez... why don't we let this thread die? There must have been at least two new product line upgrades for the Atom since the OP's original post.

The latest D2700 (for example) should be able to mop the floor with that 2.6GHz Pentium 4.