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Intel Atom vs old Athlon XP, advice please

N

NME2rules

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Oct 21, 2002
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Dear informed computer user community,
How do current low power processors like the Intel Atom and Via C7 or Nano compare to old AMD Athlon XP processors like the 1800+ (single core/non 64ext)?
I find the low power processors very attractive and would like to get one, but am not certain how they stack against my old workhorse, which could give out any day. My current needs are very light, much like my wallet. I only need to surf the web and watch the occasional video (non HD). Would run either Linux or WinXP.

Would I be severely limited by the processing power? would I be severely dissapointed with the performance?
Considering my old Pentium 3m 1ghz Vaio laptop with WinXP was more than enough for everything I did and do nowadays. From what I have been told the Atom n270 is far superior to the Pentium 3m. I personally haven't tested this though.
I like the idea of replacing my old perfectly adequate system with something far quieter, smaller, and less power hungry.

My Google searches on this have left me even more confused and with limited information. I would like some clarification.
I thank you for reading my post, your patience and any advice/knowledge you impart

UPDATE: more questions
How do multitasking capabilities compare?
Is the memory bandwidth an issue with any of the Intel Atoms?
Has anybody realistically used the Via C7? does it even compare?

According to the benchmarks on http://www.cpubenchmark.net (thanks to enginurd)
an Intel Atom 330 or n270 would be much better than my old Pentium3m, which I expected. But it also scores higher than an AthlonXP 1800+.
Would an Atom really outperform an old AthlonXP in every way?

Would a current Mobile Celeron be a better alternative to an Atom 330 performance wise and monetarily?
taking into account I want something quiet, small, and less power hungry
 
Atom mini ITX desktops are actually not that cheap, they fill a niche where some people think a mATX is intrusively large. An AMD 4850e low power CPU (or any of the Athlon X2s for that matter) paired with a 780G chipset is the ultimate HTPC and general tasking combo; Intel doesn't have an edge here since they're stuff is based on their X3100 and X4500 asscrap whereas the 780G is a HD3200 that will play any 1080p and blu-ray/hi-def video without qualm. Atom will not fill the need if you watch HD streaming videos which it can't handle.

Atom and i7 are very different pricepoints. Decide what your needs are then ask again after reading the 1st stickied thread on this section.
 
From this benchmark page... http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
312 - XP2100+
492 - Atom 330
491 - Pentium4 3.2Ghz HT
1027 - Athlon X2 4850e
1444 - Athlon X2 7750
1572 - Pentium Dual Core E5200
1992 - Core 2 Duo E8400
2464 - Phenom X4 9850
2707 - Core 2 Quad Q6600
4050 - Core 2 Quad Q9550
5803 - Core i7 920
Click to expand...

It looks like there's negligible performance difference unless you're multi-tasking a lot.

I wouldn't buy now if your current system is doing fine for your needs. Wait as long as you can. Buy when you can't wait any longer. Buy for your current needs, and whatever you can afford.

If you want to save money and don't plan on OC'ing, AMD is great, especially if you want onboard graphics, as lowtek mentioned. If you want to save money AND OC, then you want Intel. If you don't want to save money, you want i7.
 
That benchmarking page actually helps a lot "enginurd". I couldn't find anything like it when searching, due to never having looked for such information before and never having done benchmarks of my own.
Are there any other web pages like this with more detailed information and specs?

Another reasons I posted was to ask what peoples experience with the platforms are and how they would compare them to systems 4 or 5 yrs ago.

How do multitasking capabilities compare?
Is the memory bandwidth an issue with any of the Intel Atoms?
Has anybody used or benchmarked the Via C7?
 
Didn't HardOCP do a benchmark review of the Atom vs Nano as well?
 
I can only answer the first question... In my personal experience, multi-tasking is the biggest area of improvement from single core to dual core, as far as popular everyday tasks are concerned.
 
Seeing how you're going to be just web surfing and non-HD streaming, an atom will be way more than fine. I watch 720p crap on my NC10 netbook (1080p is big no-no) and it does non-HD streaming just perfect (again, HD is big no-no). Even play WC3 on it (Vista wc3 performance is ass, XP is way better). Have you considered an EEEBOX for like $320 including keyboard and mouse? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220005

Let's see again what I'am doing right this moment on my NC10 netbook..
1. Firefox with 8 tabs open
2. Vuze torrenting
3. Using some online Firstclass education software.
4. MSN
CPU usage 10%, 427MB ram available (out of 1GB)
 
I just finished building an Atom 330 and without the aid of any pci video card it can handle 1080 streams just fine like the ones on Apples site. Granted thats not what I built it for mostly for htpc netflix/hulu/etc... I would go with the atom over the xp any day.
 
I replaced a dual athlon 2200+ MP using and MSI MPX board with 2GB (4x512 ECC).
I used that machine primarily as a thin client into an 8 core box but also for occasional 32bit testing.
The atom 330 with a 64bit OS is slightly faster cpu wise for compilation and high performance scientific processing than the 2200MP. Biggest advantages are dramatically smaller case, dramatically less heat and dramatically quieter working environment. Biggest disadvantage is not having DVI-D. I have a 28" 1920x1200 monitor plugged into a 2400pro pci card. The video is noticably slower than the radeon 9600 in the 2200MP. Switching virtual desktops can result in a 2sec redraw time on the window because of the PCI bus.

I'd like to replace this setup with a mini-itx core i7 quad when those become available and redeploy the 330 as a dev server/source code repo box.
 
NME2rules said:
...UPDATE: more questions
  1. How do multitasking capabilities compare?
  2. Is the memory bandwidth an issue with any of the Intel Atoms?
  3. Has anybody realistically used the Via C7? does it even compare?
  4. Would an Atom really outperform an old AthlonXP in every way?
  5. Would a current Mobile Celeron be a better alternative to an Atom 330 performance wise and monetarily?
Click to expand...

  1. Atom 330 is dual core, so it will smoke an Athlon XP in multi-tasking.
  2. I haven't looked into this, but I suspect not.
  3. I've tried it in-store... its not even close.
  4. Yup.
  5. Not really, pricewise.
 
Well, one area where the Athlon would blow the Atom away is in cases where the code is poorly optimized. As the Atom is in-order, it will have to live with whatever the compiler created, whereas the Athlon can optimize the code on the fly prior to execution. Naturally, dual-core and HT make up for a lot of this deficiency :)
 
sorry about posting in the old thread but I just did a search and google and found this. Hard to believe that an Intel Atom will beat a Athlon.

I still have my AMD Athlon Barton 2500 XP+ OC to 3200 XP+ which equates to 2.0ghz and that thing is a lot faster than the Intel Atom 330 that I have.

Here's my setup
1) AMD Athlon Barton 2.0Ghz running Windows XP with 2.5GB DDR Ram
2) Giada Cube N3 Intel Atom 330 running Windows 7 32bit with 2GB DDR2 Ram

Although the Athlon can't play 1080p movies it is considerably faster for multi-tasking than the Atom 330 1.6ghz dual core. I'm not sure why but for some reason opening multiple tabs on the Atom is extremely slow compared to my Athlon.
 
Renegade_09 said:
sorry about posting in the old thread but I just did a search and google and found this. Hard to believe that an Intel Atom will beat a Athlon.

I still have my AMD Athlon Barton 2500 XP+ OC to 3200 XP+ which equates to 2.0ghz and that thing is a lot faster than the Intel Atom 330 that I have.

Here's my setup
1) AMD Athlon Barton 2.0Ghz running Windows XP with 2.5GB DDR Ram
2) Giada Cube N3 Intel Atom 330 running Windows 7 32bit with 2GB DDR2 Ram

Although the Athlon can't play 1080p movies it is considerably faster for multi-tasking than the Atom 330 1.6ghz dual core. I'm not sure why but for some reason opening multiple tabs on the Atom is extremely slow compared to my Athlon.
Click to expand...

That's because the benchmark linked scales perfectly to multiple cores (you'll note that the Atom 330 scores 634 while the 230 (same clock, single core) scores only 314. A single Atom is outclassed by the Athlon XP 2100+ (370) and is destroyed by your 3200+ (500). The numbers provided for the Atom are further deceptive because Hyperthreading boosts the Passmark score by about %9 (compare the Atom Z510 and Z515 - %9 clock speed difference, %18 more performance, and the only other difference is HT support in the 515)

Web browsing is *mostly* a single-threaded experience (depends on your browser), so the second Atom core is not helping you any.

(note the numbers in the linked benchmark set have changed)
 
Last edited:
Forgot to mention that I was also using Jdownloader and google chrome as my browser.
I just restarted the atom 330 and it's a little better but it still performs slower than my Athlon 3200 XP for my use. Maybe if I upgrade to 4GB on the atom it will perform better. It's just that DDR2 SODIMM ram are so expensive.
 
Last edited:
Renegade_09 said:
Forgot to mention that I was also using Jdownloader and google chrome as my browser.
I just restarted the atom 330 and it's a little better but it still performs slower than my Athlon 3200 XP for my use. Maybe if I upgrade to 4GB on the atom it will perform better. It's just that DDR2 SODIMM ram are so expensive.
Click to expand...

Well no, did you misread my post above?

The reason the Atom has such a high score in Passmark is because Passmark can use both cores at the same time. The two Atom cores *combined* are a little faster than your Athlon XP 3200+.

The reason your Athlon XP 3200+ is faster than your Atom 330 for web browsing is because, regardless of what browser you use, the BEST you can get is one processor opening each new tab (they cannot be COMBINED like in the Passmark benchmark). So, unless you open new tabs 20-at-a-time, the single core of the Athlon XP is going to be a lot snappier at it than the Atom.

This will not change if you add more ram.
 
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