You know the drill: the Atom is the king of all netbooks, with a domain stretching as far as the eye can see. But, upstarts like the
Via Nano and AMD's
Athlon Neo are encroaching on Intel's domain, and
Crave took the time to pit examples of the three against each other in a series of benchmarks to see which should rule the land. Rather sadly for us, each of the three tests had a different winner, with the Atom N280 excelling in multi-tasking, the Nano U2250 best for iTunes encoding, and the Neo MV-40 quickest under a Jalbum-based benchmark. So you know what that means: everyone gets a prize, nobody has to go home crying, and you should just go ahead and buy whichever netbook you like best already.
Update: It's actually unclear which proc won which test, as the table at the source shows one thing, but the text swaps the Neo and Nano around. But, again, there's not much between these three.
posted April 14th 2009 7:23AM
For a netbook processor, so long as it can run a brower nicely all I care about is power consumption.
Get the battery life right and the rest can follow.
I would like more processing power, who wouldn't, though it isn't necessary. I do want more battery life though.
I would like to add why everyone wins. Having three very competitive netbook processors on the market would give wider choice for buyers. For example, I prefer AMD products over Intel products. Also, realizing that their processors have similar speed ratings Intel, AMD and Via would search for other competitive advantage. Probably it would be lower price. Here every buyer would definitely win :)
It's a trap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"the Nano U2250 best for iTunes encoding, and the Neo MV-40 quickest under a Jalbum-based benchmark"
Ummm Tim read the CNET article again, you mixed them up, the AMD Neo was best for iTunes encoding and the VIA NANO quickest under a Jalbum based benchmark.
Maybe some kind of proof-reader is in order ?
@ Major4Play, look at the table at Crave. It indicates one thing while the text another.
All I want is to be able to play flash games. The n270 Atom cannot process fast enough for even the most basic game.
Anyone see the stupid Video 'feature' on Netbooks by NY Times Technology writer David Pogue - where he belittled them as doofus machines for people who like compromised crap that doesnt work? Typical Apple Fanboy stuff, deriding an innovative product that millions of people buy affordably, use daily and love. Of course Apple doesn't have one (yet) so how can they possibly be any good? silly us.
Video Library Player: The Great Netbook Compromise
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?_r=1
It's like David Pogue never tried to type on a kiddie sized 10inch keyboard, control his cursor from a postage stamp sized track pad, squint to reach text on a 9 inch screen, or test his patience running a modern OS and applications on a processor comparable to a PowerPC G4 or early Pentium IV. Of course, if he'd done all that he'd have loved netbooks, right?
@ bioadam
You are missing the point. A Netbook is designed to fit into a small category (in my opinion) of people who just want a laptop to be really portable and can browse the net. If you are buying a Netbook, then you are not going to need a lot of power. The most these machines will be used for is browse the net, play some music, check your e-mail, and maybe play a video (or Flash game as someone pointed out). That is it. No one who buys these is expecting to encode a DVD, multitask 10 programs, browse the net with 12 tabs open, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I will never buy one, but it is because I have no need for it. That doesn't make it a bad product, just not one for me. I guess what I am trying to say is if you have no opinion of your own then NOT POSTING is simple.
I hate to be "that guy" but I'm posting this from my netbook that has a keyboard that's only 2% smaller than a normal size keyboard and a multi touch track pad that's bigger than many other notebooks. I'm having no trouble using it and I have gargantuan hands.
Reading this on a 10" screen is a lot easier than you would think
I'm using Windows 7 and it runs just great.
Of course there are limitations but, for the portability and 7 hour battery life it's amazing. I can do most of the tasks I do normally on a computer all for $300. Heck I'm using Opera right now with 16 tabs open and listening to music with the Zune software and I'm only using 41% of my RAM.
error: When netbook processors compete, everyone LOSES
What does Jalbum mean?
Oh nevermind... I see....
Ion is the future
yeah, surely the atom wins overall because of ION
Athlon Neo systems use ATI integrated/discrete graphics so you can get equal/better than Ion performance already :)
In my opinion, the Atom is the winner because of how easy it is to turn netbooks based on it in to a Hackintosh.
I just want a netbook with Ion in it so I can play some games on the plain. Please NVIDIA, force Ion on the Dell Mini 9 so I can have an OS X machine with decent fps in... oh wait, OS X has no games. Never mind...
You just HAD to do it didn't you? FLAME ON!
snakes on a plain
These tests are just crap, i expected more from CNET.
It should be called "Eee 1000HE vs. Samsung NC20 vs. DV-2" not making judgments on the platforms altogether.
Although not stated, it appears they are all running a different operating systems which will effect bench performance, battery life etc.
The DV-2 has discrete graphics which will kill battery life, would have only been fair if all systems used integrated graphics
etc.
Effect = to cause
Affect = to change
If the VIA and AMD processors are so competitive, how come they score almost no design wins?
Because no one pays attention to VIA and hating on AMD is more in than hating on Vista.
It's surprising how many people still look at low-end CPUs as a bad thing.
I was able to build a high end machine still, Core i7 and the thing rocks.
Do I need that power to surf Engadget? Vermilion Hells NO!
Nothing is going away, sillies.
Pick yer poison, or don't...whatever.
Agree with others. The article is pretty pointless, typical Ackerman stuff. Testing multitasking or iTunes encoding on a netbook? Who uses them for that? Come on. Benchmark the things these were desiged for:
Boot time. Launching Firefox. Battery life. Flash video playback.
The only thing I think I can conclude from the article is that the HP dv2 has crap battery life. Is that a Neo limitation? Hard to say. Different screen sizes, manufacturers, batteries, etc etc.
If you really wanted to you could try and make the systems more comparable. Find systems with the same sized LCD screen at least. Or turn the screen off during the battery drain tests. Use the same battery to power them all, soldering if necessary. Eliminate variations in OS (yes, I mean install XP on the dv2). Use the same hard drive in all three. Etc. Then you *might* be able to draw some conclusions about the processor/bridge/graphics in your comparisons...