Our testing methods
Today, we'll be looking at the Timeline's performance against a collection of netbooks and budget ultraportables. Normally we test notebooks twice, once plugged into a wall socket and again running on battery. However, the Timeline doesn't slow down at all when running off the battery, even when put into Vista's aggressive Power Saver mode. Acer also has its own Power Saver mode for the Timeline that's automatically invoked when the system is unplugged. It's possible to disable this mode with the touch of a button, but we didn't find that it degraded performance, either.
Since there's no real performance penalty associated with running the Timeline on battery power, the system's application performance was tested with wall power. I did run our battery life tests with a couple of different power management configurations, though.
The AS3810-6415 model we're looking today is the most expensive Timeline, so I've also simulated a more affordable AS3810-8503 model that uses a single-core Core 2 Solo SU3500. The SU33500 has the same clock speed, cache size, and FSB as the Core 2 Duo SU9400, so we can estimate its performance by disabling on of our test unit's processor cores. This simulated SU3500 system appears in our application and video performance results as the Aspire 3810 Timeline (SU3500).
With the exception of battery life, all tests were run three times, and their results were averaged.
| System | Acer Aspire One 751h | Acer Aspire AS3810-6415 Timeline | Gateway LT3103u | MSI X-Slim X340 | HP Pavilion dv2 | Asus Eee PC 1000H | Samsung NC20 |
| Processor | Intel Atom Z520 1.24GHz | Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4GHz | AMD Athlon 64 L110 1.2GHz | Intel Core 2 Solo U3500 1.4GHz | AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6GHz | Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz | Via Nano ULV 2250 1.3GHz+ |
| System bus |
496 MT/s (124MHz) |
800 MT/s (400MHz) |
HT 1.6 GT/s (800MHz) |
800 MT/s (400MHz) |
HT 1.6 GT/s (800MHz) |
533 MT/s (133MHz) |
800 MT/s (200MHz) |
| North bridge | Intel US15W SCH | Intel GS45 | AMD RS690M | Intel GS45 | AMD RS690E | Intel 945GSE | Via VX800 |
| South bridge | Intel ICH9M | AMD SB600 | Intel ICH9M | AMD SB600 | Intel ICH7M | Via ID8353 | |
| Memory size | 2GB (1 DIMM) | 4GB (2 DIMMs) | 2GB (1 DIMM) | 2GB (1 DIMM) | 2GB (1 DIMM) | 1GB (1 DIMM) | 1GB (1 DIMM) |
| Memory type | DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz | DDR3 SDRAM at 800MHz | DDR2 SDRAM at 480MHz | DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz | DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz | DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz | DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz |
| CAS latency (CL) | 4 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | - |
| RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) | 4 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | - |
| RAS precharge (tRP) | 4 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | - |
| Cycle time (tRAS) | - | 15 | 15 | 18 | 15 | 12 | - |
| Audio codec | Realtek codec with 6.0.1.5817 drivers | Realtek codec with 6.0.1.5807 drivers | Realtek codec with 6.0.1.5854 drivers | Realtek ALC888S codec with 6.0.1.5804 drivers | IDC codec with 6.10.6138.62 drivers | Realtek ALC6628 with 5.10.0.5683 drivers |
Realtek codec
with 5.10.0.5740 drivers |
| Graphics | Intel GMA 500 with 7.14.10.1005 drivers | Intel GMA 4500MHD with 7.15.10.1666 drivers | ATI Radeon X1270 with 8.561.0.0 drivers | Intel GMA 4500MHD with 7.15.10.1599 drivers | ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 with 8.563.3.1000 drivers | Intel GMA950 with 6.14.10.4926 drivers | Via Chrome9 IGP with 6.14.10.182 drivers |
| Hard drive | Seagate Momentus 5400.6 250GB 5,400 RPM | Toshiba HDD2HD21 500GB 5,400 RPM | Seagate Momentus 5400.6 250GB 5,400 RPM | Fujitsu MJA2320BH 320GB 5,400 RPM | Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB 5,400 RPM | Seagate Momentus 5400.4 160GB 5,400 RPM | Samsung Spinpoint M HM160HI 5,400RPM |
| Operating system |
Windows 7 RC x86 |
Microsoft Vista Home Premium x64 with Service Pack 2 | Windows 7 RC x86 | Microsoft Vista Home Premium x86 with Service Pack 1 | Microsoft Vista Home Premium x64 with Service Pack 1 | Microsoft Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 | Microsoft Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3 |
We used the following versions of our test applications:
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
