NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 3, 2009 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Keeping Atom in Perspective
I ran one last benchmark on Ion: SYSMark 2007.
I chose SYSMark 2007 instead of going back to an older benchmark for one reason in particular: people seem to be putting too much faith in what Atom can do. These results here are useful for two things: 1) to showcase the performance of NVIDIA’s Ion platform vs. a standard Atom + 945G, and 2) to remind everyone what sort of performance Atom provides today.
The desktop CPU in the chart above is an Intel Celeorn 430. It is a 65nm single-core Conroe based processor with 1MB of L2 cache running at 1.80GHz. This is a horribly crippled version of the Core 2 processor we all fell in love with over two years ago. A single-core Atom, what’s found in all shipping Atom notebooks/netbooks, is less than half the speed of this processor running a modern day workload.
This isn’t a slight against Atom. Intel’s Atom is an excellent processor. It’s small, extremely power efficient, cool and well architected. But it delivers the performance of a lower-end mainstream notebook from over four years ago. Keep that in mind people, especially before you go out and spend $600 or $700 on a PC based on Atom.
Intel also sees netbooks as $299 - $349 machines. At those price points, Atom delivers good enough performance. But start approaching $1000 and it starts becoming silly very fast. Spend $200 - $300 on a CPU and you’ll easily have 4 - 5x the performance of an Atom in modern tasks.
Atom’s low power consumption gives it the ability to cheaply fit into small form factors. You pay a small premium for that advantage, but let’s not forget that Atom was never designed to be a notebook/desktop replacement. And Ion doesn’t change that either.
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IntelUser2000 - Friday, February 6, 2009 - link
You might want to know that the version of 945 used on the Netbooks is 945GSE. It is a very low power part. It's TDP spec is only 5.5W.Don't be thinking because its 0.13u its a high power part. Chipset TDP of the 65nm 4-series mobile chipsets are higher than 0.13u 945's.
And the 2.5W Atom used on the EEEPCs, the N270s are meant for "Netbooks". The Atom 230's which are meant for "Nettops" are 4W, and 330 is a dual core version of it.
It's 4W vs. 8W.
sprockkets - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Remember the whole CMOS vs. GTL bus stuff. AND, the US15 has NO SATA on it. Kinda useless for the desktop.Of course the laptop variants will pull less power than the desktop variants, but the desktop parts should be cheaper.
Btw, with Zotac set to release an Intel 9300 Wifi mini-ITX board, why bother with Ion on the desktop? The current 7100 Zotac ITX board + 430 Celeron costs around $20 more than the dual core Intel Atom board, and the chipset on it runs at the same temps, 60c (that is, I replaced mine with a Zalman blue heatsink). It also gives you a pci-e x1 slot, DVI, better graphics, two slots for ram, and the fan on the Celeron is much quieter and unlike the fan on the Intel 945 chipsets, doesn't die (check out newegg.com for reviews of people 2 months down the road).
I've tested that board and it rocks. You do give up s video and gigabit eth, but the new 9300 board will fix all that with both DVI and HDMI, and will have a x16 pci-e slot.
sprockkets - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Wait, I replaced the crappy useless heatsink fan combo on the Intel board. The Zotac board went as high as 90c while playing Portal, and didn't miss a beat.sprockkets - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Wait, maybe that whole no SATA thing was the GN40...Necrosaro420 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I dont get it, what is this?mobilecomputing - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link
Its a graphics chipset that processes video so the main CPU doesnt have to as much cos the piddly little Atom processors cant take the heat. Not even the new ones http://news.idealo.co.uk/news/4844/intel-atom-n280...">http://news.idealo.co.uk/news/4844/inte...maller-c...Slash3 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Obviously, it is a watermelon.JTBM - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I think for Ion it would great to see Bittorrent results. For example can it run Vuze (Azeorus)?mrsmegz - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Bitorrent clients would run extremely well on this machine even if it was clocked at 800mhz. Your bottleneck here is in your internet connection. Of course you could be planning to hide one of these tiny boxes under a floor tile in a server room at work.ssj4Gogeta - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Azureus is a quite heavy application compared to other clients.