ASUS Eee Box Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Intel’s Atom Processor: Benchmarked
ASUS did not want us publishing benchmarks using the Eee Box until it was final, so we had to turn to a competing platform to actually measure the performance of Intel’s Atom. The setup we have here is similar to the Eee Box with three changes: 1) we’re running Vista, 2) we’re using a desktop hard drive and 3) we’re using 2GB of memory. The processor is clocked at the same 1.6GHz as the Atom in the Eee Box and although the motherboard is different, the chipset/graphics are the same.
Intel has frequently promised performance close to that of a Pentium M processor with the Atom, and now we’re finally able to investigate that claim. We compared the Atom to three CPUs:
Intel Celeron 420 (1.6GHz) - The Celeron 420 based on a 65nm Conroe-L core, which is a single-core member of the Core 2 family with only a 512KB L2 cache. Clock for clock the Conroe-L should be much faster than Atom, but this comparison is nice to give a reference point for Atom's performance today.
Intel Pentium M "Dothan" - This has always been Intel's comparison point for Atom. Based on its architecture, Atom should have lower performance than the Pentium M at the same clock speed but we tested at two clock speeds to hopefully find a reasonable range of performance where Atom behaves similarly. Dothan, if you don't remember, was the second Centrino CPU built on a 90nm process and equipped with a very large 2MB L2 cache.
| CPU: |
Intel Atom Z530 (1.6GHz) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS P5LD2EB-DHS (Atom) Intel DG35EC (Celeron 420) ASUS P4P800 (Dothan) |
| Chipset: | Intel 945G (Atom) Intel G35 (Celeron) Intel 865 (Dothan) |
| Chipset Drivers: |
Intel 8.1.1.1010 |
| Hard Disk: | Western Digital Green 1TB |
| Memory: | DDR2-667 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) DDR-400 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | IGP/GeForce 6600 (for Dothan platform) |
| Video Drivers: | Intel 15.7.3.1409 NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 (Vista Basic Theme) |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1 |
We kept all variables the same as much as possible, obviously the Celeron 420, Pentium M and Atom all had to use different motherboards but we kept everything else from memory size to hard disk the same in order to make this as much of a CPU comparison as possible.
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Casper42 - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Gigabit Network with 2 USB Ports means you could make a sidecar that holds a small Power supply and 2 Desktop Drives (1TB Each) and plug them in USB.That gives you a SATA Boot drive and then either 2TB in RAID0/JBOD or 1TB in RAID1
Small enough to not run up your power bill like crazy and yyet still flexible enough to run your OS of choice for the hosting platform and any other little utilities you might want (cough BT Client cough).
erikstarcher - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Looks like it would make a great car pc. hook up a 7" touchscreen to it for control and you are set. I bet it would do music, video (non hd) and gps without a problem. And it won't kill your battery as fast as some other solutions (like the laptop I am now using).Yooshaw - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
This was my first thought - you could really make a killer Carputer with this thing.strikeback03 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - link
I thought that as well, though would almost certainly need a USB audio solution due to lack of other expansion. And the loud fan would be annoying too. I hope some more small devices/components come out for Atom/VIA Nano soon.MooseMuffin - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Splashtop is a killer idea. There's been plenty of times where I've hosed my OS in some way, and this provides a way to still go online and google a solution.LuxZg - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
I agree, and this is one thing that is nice about Eee Box. But since it IS available on other MBOs as well, it's not huge advantage..pnyffeler - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
How does the Atom perform for Remote Desktop and/or any other remote connections, with or without VPN? I just wonder how well this would work for working from home if your company offers such remote options.Martimus - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
I like seeing that Microsoft isn't allowing Windows XP on machines with larger than 80GB HDs. That should help establish a larger foothold for Linux on these types of computers. Of course when marketshare gets bigger, so will the compatibility which means that an alternative OS might actually be feasible. All this caused by Microsoft's attempt to maximize profits in the short term. Looks more like they are shooting themselves in the foot in the long term. I hope this type of computer really catches on and causes Linux or some other OS to really become mainstream.Griswold - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Put a VIA Nano (C8) in that thing and I'm interested. Atom looks like s ure loser (but will be punched through with Intels might) for anything bigger than Intels envisioned MIDs.eeebox - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
People go on about it not being usable as a Media streamer, can't do HD yada yada...but is it powerful enough to be used as a SDTV recorder using a USB DVB-T tuner? I'm not even too fussed about record and play at the same time, simply record. It's been confirmed it can play 4.5Mbps 720p H.264 at 90% and 720p Divx fine so that means it should be able to play SD perfectly fine, so how would it handle the encoding side of it for recording?Seeing as though it'll cost only a little bit more than an average HDD TV recorder I want to get an eeebox for use as a compact low power HDD SDTV recorder with easily replacable HDD and a web browser (Splashtop ftw) and the VESA mounting to the back of a TV is perfect as I use my TV as a monitor.