Conclusion
The results of our comparison between Intel’s Atom 230 and a Core 2 Duo E7200 with an efficient G31 platform were interesting, to say the least. We learned several things, which should be taken into consideration before purchasing a low-cost or low-power computer, as these things have a larger impact than the performance difference between the two machines. Let’s sum up the findings:
Beware Of Over-Doing It On Your Power Supply!
Purchasing an oversized power supply unit may look attractive as an investment for the future, but it is an issue if you want your system to be power efficient. Matching your power supply’s output to the real power requirement of the target system will make sure that the power supply operates at a load level at which it is truly efficient. If your power supply is extremely powerful, but operates at extremely low loads, then it will operate at very low efficiency and have the system require much more power than necessary. Selecting an appropriate power supply is the key, as it will help to reduce power waste much more than going for more efficient components!
Efficiency And Performance Per Watt
Atom 230 is extremely power-friendly, it’s tiny, and it’s very affordable. This is important for mobile devices, where requirements are limited. But Atom is not an efficient product if efficiency is defined by performance per watt or power. We found that the Core 2 Duo, in our case the model E7200, can be operated at an equally low idle power as the Atom 230 (less than 30 W total), while still delivering between 50% and up to several times more performance if you need it. The result is a performance-per-watt ratio that is substantially better for the Core 2 Duo.
Atom or Core 2?
Let’s get back to the key issue: does Atom make any sense for desktop-like PCs? It does, but only if you have to be very conservative on cost, and only if your requirements are clearly defined. Atom-based nettops or budget PC solutions are very affordable, but they don’t perform really well and you hardly have any upgrade possibilities. If you can afford spending $100 more for the motherboard and a decent processor, you’ll get a solution that offers similar idle power, but much better performance and efficiency, along with upgrade options.
- intel ,
- atom ,
- efficiency
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What you have to understand is that the Atom is a low-end processor targetting notebooks or netbooks. You can consider it as a low-spec celeron processor and should not be compared to a C2D processor in a performance/efficiency shootout.
i disagree.
i believe that it is good to show off the power efficiency of both CPU,
although the Atom is very out classed by the C2D, it does reflect on the very efficient C2D ability.
consider the C2D as being almost 2x faster per core with two cores to handle, the fact that the C2D can have a 30% increase of power usage with almost 400% Power ability over the atom, u start to wonder why bother with the atom at all.
This article seems like one they posted earlier. Have they run out of things to tell us.
Atom is let down here by the 945 chipset, which is using most of the power... paired with the 'Poulsbo' chipset it would use a LOT less power, however may well be more expensive. AFAIK there will be Mini-ITX boards using Poulsbo so this should be revisited then...
Atom based systems like the EEE unit (even crippled by the 945) are a lot smaller than even mATX based PCs, which is often hand-in-hand with low power system design, and the cost of a Mini-ITX Core 2 motherboard is much higher, skewing the performance per $ metric.
The systems compared here aren't really like for like, and are in different segments.
Agree with the above, didn't make it past page two when I saw they were testing with a 945... what's that made on? 90nm? not really a fair test.
What happened to the much less power hungry SiS chipset that Intel mentioned when they released Atom?
No implementations of it?
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