Netbook platforms: VIA Nano v. Intel Atom

Kai Schmerer ZDNet Germany

Published: 10 Feb 2009

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Go to section: Introduction Test models & platforms Memory & CPU tests 3D performance Compression & encryption Internet performance Multimedia Power consumption & conclusion

Test models and platforms
We looked at the two main netbook processors, the 1.8GHz VIA Nano L2100 and the 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230. We used standard motherboards from the two manufacturers — VIA's Epia SN and Intel's 'Little Falls' D945GCFL, which are both equipped with 2GB of RAM as standard. Intel manufactures the Atom using a 45-nanometre (nm) feature size, while VIA still uses 65nm technology. For this reason, the VIA Nano uses more power than Intel's Atom. But there are some particularly energy-efficient models in the Nano range, which can match the Atom for power consumption. Samsung's new NC20, for example, uses a 1.3GHz VIA Nano that consumes a nominal 8W.

The internal architecture of the two processors differs significantly. To save power at the expense of speed, the Atom dispenses with out-of-order instruction processing, unlike the Nano which in theory can thus offer faster instruction processing. But the Atom partly makes up for this disadvantage by using hyperthreading. Our benchmarks show which of the two architectures performs best in practice. For reference, we compared the netbook results with a conventional desktop machine based on a 2.5GHz dual-core Pentium E5200.

 

Go to section: Introduction Test models & platforms Memory & CPU tests 3D performance Compression & encryption Internet performance Multimedia Power consumption & conclusion

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