Nano crushes Atom

[initialised]

It's clear from our limited testing of the VIA Nano that the company has a strong product at the ready. Virtually across the board, the Nano showed good performance versus its primary competition, and it has a number of other things going for it as well, like pin-compatibility with the established C7 core, an open platform, and hardware acceleration for certain types of encryption. Based on what we've seen here today, we hope many of the OEMs currently selling products based on the C7 adopt the Nano and offer products with increased performance.

Source: HotHardware

[Glow9]

Seems like the more power the nano uses it gives it the minimal gains. This looks more like Intel bashing considering for the products these guys are ment for low power usage seems to be the better choice. It's not like either of these are going to be used to play Crysis.

[YukonTrooper]

I hope it's true. The competition would be fantastic, and Intel seems to shine brightest when it's being nipped at the heels.

[alucasa]

To me, the most important part is this. I could care less about all other aspects. I own the first generation EeePC and all I care about is its battery life since all I am doing with it is either using its wifi or using words or similar office tools. Even celeron 600-something mhz was enough for that.

[Shintai]

Easy to win when your CPU uses 10x more power. Kinda defeats the purpose. Try against a 10W C2D instead.

[perkam]

Easy to win when your CPU uses 10x more power. Kinda defeats the purpose. Try against a 10W C2D instead.

We're looking at Atom vs Nano on the chart above you m8, not Atom vs 4600+

Perkam

[Karolis]

To me, the most important part is this. I could care less about all other aspects. I own the first generation EeePC and all I care about is its battery life since all I am doing with it is either using its wifi or using words or similar office tools. Even celeron 600-something mhz was enough for that.

Be calm, we won't see L2100 (25W TDP) in netbooks (only in bigger notebooks and desktops). The U2x00 (5-8W TDP) series will be for netbooks.

[Shintai]

We're looking at Via vs Nano on the chart above you m8, not Atom vs 4600+

Perkam

What? Via vs Nano? I see Atom and Nano...

[RaZz!]

We're looking at Via vs Nano on the chart above you m8, not Atom vs 4600+

Perkam

this just shows that he doesn't even read the thread and just starts his usual intel defense... just like in every other thread around here.

so what was your point shintai? i don't get it

[informal]

Easy to win when your CPU uses 10x more power. Kinda defeats the purpose. Try against a 10W C2D instead.

Actually @idle they are practically the same,while @load Atom draws 34% less power(while being slower more than that in CPU intensive tasks).
The 1.6Ghz ulv Nano part will probably draw less power than this ES part in pre-production board that died after a couple of days...

[Solus Corvus]

Nano has a 12.5% faster clock but uses 34.5% more power under load. But in all other aspects it trounces the Atom. If they could bring it down to 45nm they would have a winner.

[Tonucci]

I dont think so...seems to me that he just made an mistake. He obviously meant Atom vs nano, no need to nitpick on it...its silly.

[perkam]

Fixed. The Nano barely has 20% more power consumption than the Atom, which, coming from VIA with greater performance than the Nano is a big step in the competitive direction.

Perkam

[Lestat]

this just shows that he doesn't even read the thread and just starts his usual intel defense... just like in every other thread around here.

so what was your point shintai? i don't get it

i believe it was nothing more than a type-o RaZz chill out and be quiet with the perk bashing

[Zaskar]

right in the article they talk about how their not really even meant to be compared though since their intended for different purposes.

But if you happen to want to make a desktop or normal laptop to run one for some crazy insane reason, then the nano would be the one to go with.

[alucasa]

But if you happen to want to make a desktop or normal laptop to run one for some crazy insane reason, then the nano would be the one to go with.

I would pick Atom for netpc.

But nano would certainly work better for those slim desktop which ASUS is releasing. (Sorry, I forgot the name.)

[perkam]

i believe it was nothing more than a type-o RaZz chill out and be quiet with the perk bashing

He's bashing Shintai, not me

Perkam

[Hornet331]

Actually @idle they are practically the same,while @load Atom draws 34% less power(while being slower more than that in CPU intensive tasks).
The 1.6Ghz ulv Nano part will probably draw less power than this ES part in pre-production board that died after a couple of days...

intel needs to dump the, 945G that friggin northbridge consumes more then the cpu, well just look at the board, the active cooled part is not the processor.

Good thing that moorestown comes in 2009/10, soc ftw.

[RaZz!]

He's bashing Shintai, not me

Perkam

lol

how could i dare to bash perkam. no wai *cough cough*

no pun intented lestat

[XS Janus]

One thing to notice is (iirc) the Atom chipset used in that test is a power hog.
Intel is dumping their old chipset stock, before they need to compete in power efficiency in general public.

[grimREEFER]

i like battery life alot as well, but i would much rather have some low frequency core 2 duo and a 9 cell or 12 cell battery.
i feel that you cant really do alot with a pc with an atom or nano.

[cozwin]

i like battery life alot as well, but i would much rather have some low frequency core 2 duo and a 9 cell or 12 cell battery.
i feel that you cant really do alot with a pc with an atom or nano.

for a stupidly quiet media pc im sure a nano bit of ram and onboard gpu would make a nice media pc well i wouldnt say no to one anyway.

[ToTTenTranz]

Easy to win when your CPU uses 10x more power. Kinda defeats the purpose. Try against a 10W C2D instead.

10X?
You really don't know what's being discussed here, do you?

Nano:
Load - 74
Idle - 49

Atom:
Load - 55
Idle - 47

Try to keep up.




The Nano is clocked at 1.8Ghz. I think that if the Nano was clocked at about 1.5Ghz it would consume almost the same as the Atom in load, and the performance would be on par. Maybe a bit faster in multithreaded applications because of the 3 threads.

Also, this benchmark is using Via's old CN896 + VT8251 chipset. The Nano platform for netbooks comes with the new single bridge VX800 which consumes a lot less.


However, this iteration of the Atom platform also has its power consumption "haunted" by the 945G+ICH7 wich is a 3 year old chipset and consumes a lot more than the CPU itself. As soon as Intel makes the Poulsbo available for mainstream netbooks the power consumption will go down a lot.

Gaming and multimedia-wise (for those who are interested), the Atom+Poulsbo should be a bit more powerfull than the Nano+VX800. The Poulsbo sports a PowerVR SGX 535 (IGP DX10.1) and a PowerVR VXD370 (h.264 and VC-1 dedicated decoder) whereas the VX800 sports the oldie unichrome 9. I guess VIA believes the CPU can do the video decoding just fine and their probably not interested in gaming at all (although they even thought of making a portable gaming console with this platform).



Wrapping things up, we shouldn't count on this article to compare the power consumption of the Nano as a platform, since it's only using the new CPU paired with an old chipset that won't be present in the netbooks.

Nonetheless, it's great to see a very decent competition in the low-power x86 market.

[STaRGaZeR]

*snip*

That's the entire system power consumption. The Nano CPU alone consumes way more power than the Atom CPU alone. 10x could be perfectly possible.

If you want long battery life, go for Atom. If you want perfomance, forget about both...

[PetNorth]

another http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597&type=expert

And an interesting point about power consumption at the end of the page

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...e=expert&pid=8