Preliminary benchmarks have VIA's Isaiah besting Intel's Atom
By Paul Miller 
posted April 18th 2008 2:34PM
posted April 18th 2008 2:34PM
posted April 18th 2008 2:34PM
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These sort of synthetic benchmarks are entirely useless in the real world. They don't represent real-world workloads, and Atom's architecture is different enough from typical x86 processors that you can't really draw any conclusion from these figures.
Sure, this might tell you how fast you can crunch numbers, but if that's all we cared about, the Cell would be the most powerful consumer processor on the market. In practice, the limitations of the Cell's SPs mean that they're well suited for some tasks, and ill suited for others.
Sorry, I meant SPEs, not SPs.
On these links Celeron 900 seems faster than Atom 1.6:
http://laptoping.com/intel-atom-benchmark.html
http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/03/chip_shot_intel_atom_is_half_the_performance_of_celeron_video.php
even if Celeron 900 has only Alu: 3420 and FPU: 4111 much less than Atom 1.6.
What's the meaning of this test? Which one is the faster for everyday applications?
I was wondering the same thing. Intel's Atom seems to be a step backwards in processing power. The question is, will its power saving make it worth the downgrade in speed. How many more minutes of battery life is the Atom going to gain a user? My guess is not much. CPU speed still matters even when web browsing or watching/decoding Internet video. But the great news is that they'll probably be many CPU options.
There are 2 entirely separate Atom CPUs. The only one thus far tested and not going into the 900, is the way slower of the 2. Look for performance figures on the Atom Diamondville soon.
You are right. There are 2 Atom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom#Atom_architecture
Anyway, seems that the Diamondville is more hungry power than the Silverthorne (and the dual core more than celeron-m ulv) so I doubt we will see it on the eee.
Now lets see power consumption comparisons
Could someone tell me which one of Atoms it is? Silverthorne or Diamondville? One is solo and the other one is dual core and of course dual core is for those small laptops, which are so popular nowadays. And solo is more for smaller mobile devices.
And the power consumption, that's a huge gap, how can they even be compared? VIA requires a lot more power with Atom you would have additional 1-2 hours.
Silverthorne is for Mobile Internet Devices and super small things.
Diamondville is for Low End laptops and Desktops.
Diamondville will be 1 or 2 core
Silverthorne appears to be 1 core with a new version of HyperThreading.
The problem with the comparison is that they're comparing the WRONG thing.
It's easy to make a processor to best the ones listed here. AMD phenoms are way more powerful.
It's also easy to make a processor to use less power than the ones listed here. I happen to have one that consumes ZERO watts. That's right, ZERO watts. (However, it also performs zero apu's and fpu's per year).
The CORRECT comparison for these "low power" parts is NORMALIZED FPU's and APU's. When you divide the number of operations by the power consumed to generate those operations, you get a MUCH different picture and a clear winner; Atom.
Yes when you look at nothing but performance per watt, Atom is the clear winner by a huge margin. But all people care about is USABILITY, who cares if the Atom has 10x the performance per watt ratio when compared to this or that CPU if Atom is still to dirt slow to make decently running device. These benchmarks are performance oriented, which helps establish the usability of a device because you can compare the scores to a device that is already on the market. These benchmarks help you draw an approximate conclusion to the performance of the same device when equipped with the Atom CPU and helps in the buying decision.
Oh and i'm not saying Atom actually is dirt slow, because it actually performed quite well, much better then the C7-M, but we only know that because of these performance benchmarks.
... and if the ratio of operations per unit power used by those two processors isn't that much different, Isiah's got my vote.
What's 5x battery life if applications run 5x longer?
Care to share how you got to that result? Sources?
Everyone waiting for their $750 HP MiniNote should commence crying. Seppaku is an advanced option.
Yep. I've been holding off on the HP Mini-Note to wait till it gets Isaiah, then I will order it in a heartbeat. Hopefully they offer Isaiah in it sooner then the 6 month refresh cycle that HP has mentioned. Since Isaiah is pin compatible, I hope they offer it as an option when it debuts.
Also from the internal pics I've seen of the Mini-Note, the CPU appeas to be soldered to the M/B so the early adopters can't upgrade, or I'd order a mini-note now!
Ok, if you can't beat 'em then buy 'em!
Tried and tested by all the big IT companies. VIA will have to watch out for the men from Intel ...
These benchmarks are meaningless without power consuption data. As far as I've read, they're compating a 2.5 watt Atom to a 3.5 watt (the lowest powered) Isaiah, so although these are syntetic benchmarks and TDP estimates, it's safe to say that at this point the two CPUs are very similar in terms of performance per watt. Neither Via nor AMD have ever come close to besting Intel in terms of an overall mobile platform.
Don't forget that Intel will most likely be making components the platform as well. I'm sure they will have things communicating efficiently.
God, I feel humiliated to have AMD chips in my PC and laptop.
I'll just go and sit in the corner over there. :(