Intel Atom Shootout
9/29/2008
Author: Michael Evilsizer
Intel has said for a while now they would be releasing a dual core Atom. Well I got mine ordered last week and spent most of the small amount of time I have running benchmarks on it. In this review I am going to compare the Atom 230 to the Atom 330. Both M-ITX setups cost under just $100, the Atom 230 is going to be roughly $70USD, while Atom 330 is roughly $80USD. Lets take a look at the motherboards now.
Atom 330 Above
Atom 230 Above
For starters both Atom 230 and Atom 330 CPU's are on the same motherboard. Based around the the 945 one of the cheapest chipsets Intel has to offer. Both boards are a M-ITX form factor, lets start off with the I/O backplate.
Atom 330 Above
Above 230 Above
As
you can see there isnt much in the way of upgradability here on the
motherboard. Now on to the hardware used for testing.
System specs:
Atom 230 (D945GCLF)
Atom 330 (D945GCFL2)
G.Skill DDR2-667 Cas 4-4-4-12 (F2-5300CL4S-2GBPQ)
PowerColor 24PRO256M (ATI 2400Pro PCI 256MB, with 8.7cats)
Seagate 80GB 7200.2 (ST980813AS)
Pioneer DVD-RW PATA (DVR-115DBK)
Windows XP-Pro SP2
** Both boards have the first release bios's**
Programs used:
Wprime 1.55 | Sandra 2009 Lite | PC Wizard 2008 | PcMark05
3DMark2001SE | 3DMark03 | 3DMark05 | 3DMark06 | CINEBENCH R10
Auto Gordian Knot (For Xvid and Divx encoding) | Lame 3.98
** notes about encoding runs**
Auto
Gordian Knot was set to 80% quality, the xvid encoding was set to
defaults, dvix offered no setting control. The clip I used was the
first 10mins of the movie “Transporter” which was put on
the hard drive for encoding. During
the Lame runs I did both 128bit and 320bit, with the -h flag used. I
also setup a batch file to run more then one instance of Lame for the
dual/quad runs. For encoding I grabbed my oldie by still favorite
Prodigy/Fat of the Land cd, I used track 7 (Narayan) which came in at
9min 6sec long.
Now off to the benchmarks:
Wprime 32m (time in Secs)
-
Atom 230
Atom 330
140.09
70.03
No suprise here that the time is cut in half..
Wprime 1024m (time in Secs)
-
Atom 230
Atom 330
4475.33
2229.49
Again, here we see the time cut in half by twice as much.
Sandra 2009 Lite
Sandra 2009 Lite
|
|
Atom 230 |
Atom 330 |
|
Cpu Arithmetic ALU | FPU |
3804MIPS | 3340FLOPS |
76226MIPS | 6691FLOPS |
|
Crytography AES256 | SHA256 |
25MB/s | 43MB/s |
51MB/s | 87MB/s |
|
Memory Bandwidth unBuff'd iSSE2 |
Int 1.49GB/s | Float 1.45GB/s |
Int 1.48GB/s | Float 1.45GB/s |
|
Memory Bandwidth Buff'd iSSE2 |
Int 2.71GB/s | Float 2.33GB/s |
Int 2.79GB/s | Float 2.43GB/s |
|
Memory Latency Random |
184ns |
174ns |
|
Memroy Latency Linear |
23ns |
21ns |
Nice little increase we see here in the memroy department. Not sure what was going on with the unBuff'd results on Atom 330, the numbers kept coming out the same.
Pcwizard 2008
|
|
Atom 230 |
Atom 330 |
|
Cpu Global |
675.224 |
1819.76 |
|
Cache Global |
4018 |
4452 |
|
Memory Global |
2297 |
2319 |
|
Whetstone x87 |
2136 |
2368 |
|
Whestone iSSE3 |
4019 |
4460 |
|
Dhrystone iSSE3 |
5275 |
8413 |
|
Computaion of “Manderlbrot” iSSE3 |
71.594Sec |
35.938Sec |
Not sure how to read these result vs Sandra, it does seem to follow Sandra's increases.
Futuremark Results
|
|
Atom 230 |
Atom 330 |
|
PcMark05 |
1667 |
2008 |
|
3DMark01SE |
5698 |
5821 |
|
3DMark03 Total Score |
2234 |
2286 |
|
3DMark03 Cpu Score |
131 |
134 |
|
3DMark05 Total Score |
1376 |
1402 |
|
3DMark05 Cpu Score |
666 |
652 |
|
3DMark06 Total Score |
821 |
883 |
|
3DMark06 Cpu Score |
495 |
896 |
The 3Dmark05 cpu score seems like a fluke, its the only one that showed a descrease with Atom 330.
Now we hit up numbers that many would like to see the most.
CineBench R10
|
|
Atom 230 |
Atom 330 |
|
OpenGL |
496 |
497 |
|
Single Cpu |
547 |
550 |
|
Multi Cpu |
834 |
1545 |
I am willing to bet if the cpu speed were faster the OpenGL numbers would be higher. It is interesting to note that the Multi cpu on Atom 330 is near double in score.
Encoding Results
(Time in secs)
|
|
Atom 230 |
Atom 330 |
|
Xvid |
986 |
954 |
|
Divx |
650 |
607 |
|
MP3 128bit Single Run |
159 |
159 |
|
MP3 128bit Dual Run |
194 | 195 |
172 | 173 |
|
MP3 128bit Quad Run |
NA |
195 | 196 | 195 | 196 |
|
MP3 320bit Single Run |
142 |
141 |
|
MP3 320bit Dual Run |
174 | 175 |
152 | 152 |
|
MP3 320bit Quad Run |
NA |
175 | 175 | 175 | 175 |
Here the Quad runs of Atom 330 equal the Dual runs of Atom 230. Now the dual runs with Atom 330 were with HT on. Take note of the times of he dual atom 330 runs and the Xvid/Divx runs.
HT vs No HT Encoding Results
(Time in secs)
|
|
Atom 230 (w/HT) |
Atom 330 (wo/HT) |
|
MP3 Dual 128bit |
194 | 195 |
159 | 160 |
|
MP3 Dual 320bit |
174 | 175 |
142 | 143 |
|
Xvid |
986 |
892 |
|
Divx |
650 |
554 |
Now if you compare Atom 330's other results how can this be on the Video encoding. My best guess is that AutoGK can't use more then 2 cores as noted by the times. It is really interesting to note how big of a difference there is with AutoGK on Atom 330 with HT vs without(comparing times from above). The MP3 Encoding results seem inline with the single runs for 128bit and 320bit. Note that Atom 230 took a hit with encoding both at once since its not a true dual core but using HT.
Pro's:
-
High work per watt
-
Able to handle 4 threads at once
-
Passive heatsink for the cpu
Con's:
-
Chipset needs a fan, would have prefered a bigger chipset sink without a fan.
-
No digital output either DVI/HDMI or toshlink/coax optical.
-
Only 1 dimm slot
-
No PCIE slot
-
No heatsink on the rather hot Southbridge
-
Only 2 Sata connections
Despite the high number of con's, the setup with the right upgrades will be a killer HTPC. The Atom 230 setup has more than enough power for basic computing needs. Atom 330 adds more muscle and will more then likely find it self in certain “low requirement” servers. Atom 330 would also be a good choice for someone that is into clustering with Linux. In the area that you could fit alot of Atom setups in a small area. The only thing really on my mind now, is when will we see native dual or quad core Atom cpu from Intel. While it is still early for the Atom lineup, one day you may find that DVR or PVR box powered by an Atom CPU.