Intel Atom Performance Comparison

Even since Intel released its Silverthorne project as the Atom, I have been salivating at finally picking up a small, cool, light desktop that is a cheap and versatile performer. Why do I need a power-guzzling Core 2 Duo when everyday tasks don’t need something more powerful than a Pentium III? I know because I have run XP on a 866 MHz P3 and thought the experience sufficient for the internet, music, office, and basic 4+ year old games(AOE2, Starcraft, Rise of Nations, Rome Total War). Since we passed the gigahertz threshold, I’ve been asking why the regular PC user needs anything more powerful? Sure, if you’re a gamer or a video ripping fanatic, you’ll need all the power you can get, but really for basic office tasks, is the Atom up to the task?

Since I do not own an Atom, I thought that the best way to do a comparison is to find which old CPU is the most comparable to the Atom. In terms of transistor count, the Athlon XP at 37.5 million and Willamette P4 at 42 million were good initial guesses for appropriate counterparts to the Atom, standing at 47 million. Benchmarks were few and far between, but I did dig up the following:

Tomshardware says that the Atom with HT passes PCMark05 with a score of 1478. Not bad. How does the Athlon XP compare? Well, the Athlon XP 1800+ with a score of 1497 came close. On the Intel side, the Celeron (Willamette edition) 2 GHz scoring 1449 was the closest comparison.

The verdict? Having owned an Athlon XP 1800+ and having played with a friend’s P4 @ 2 GHz, I can confidently say that all users with basic requirements (office, internet, email, music, basic video playback, and light gaming) can get by fine with an Atom CPU. Watch out, Intel. Don’t be caught cannibalizing your own products!

Now I am interested in whether the Atom is capable of playing 1080p x264 video, which is typical of most anime fansub encodes these days. If it can handle that, I’m sold on selling off my existing desktops and replacing them with Atom-based machines.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Intel and Atom (Redux)
• Netbook Atom N280 Play High Definition Video
• Dell Mini 12 My review