Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
bthylafh wrote:Atom -> Celeron -> Pentium -> Core i3, etc.
Waco wrote:The Atom is technically 64 bit capable (and DX10 as well) but Intel doesn't give a **** about supporting them.
JustAnEngineer wrote:This is the conventional wisdom, but I am the sort of person who wonders about conventional wisdom a lot. I have a single-core Atom N270 netbook, with 2GB and a 945, and yeah, it's pretty slow. "Slow as molasses", though? It's still faster than my Android phone. It's still quite a bit faster than the aged old P-D desktop my mother uses, and that's a dual-core machine with over a gigahertz in clock rate advantage. Admittedly, my netbook has an SSD and her desktop has Vista, so that probably has something to do with it.They're all slow as molasses on a desktop.
auxy wrote:Atom is a tablet/phone processor that has no place in a desktop PC, even one that wants to be energy-efficient. Ivy Bridge is where it's at.Why all the hate for Atom? If you run an appropriate OS on it, it's capable enough. I'm running Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs and it's relatively zippy, as long as you avoid Flash-heavy websites.
auxy wrote:Waco wrote:The Atom is technically 64 bit capable (and DX10 as well) but Intel doesn't give a **** about supporting them.
How does this make any sense? Atom is a CPU only; it doesn't include GPU hardware. What does DX10 have to do with anything? And what's the remark about Intel support supposed to mean or imply?JustAnEngineer wrote:This is the conventional wisdom, but I am the sort of person who wonders about conventional wisdom a lot. I have a single-core Atom N270 netbook, with 2GB and a 945, and yeah, it's pretty slow. "Slow as molasses", though? It's still faster than my Android phone. It's still quite a bit faster than the aged old P-D desktop my mother uses, and that's a dual-core machine with over a gigahertz in clock rate advantage. Admittedly, my netbook has an SSD and her desktop has Vista, so that probably has something to do with it.They're all slow as molasses on a desktop.
So my question for some time before this thread has been: why all the hate for Atom? If you run an appropriate OS on it, it's capable enough. I'm running Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs and it's relatively zippy, as long as you avoid Flash-heavy websites.
It's definitely true as absurdity said that Atom is a different class of processor than the Sandy/Ivy Bridge-based Celeron and Pentium chips (not even to mention the Core i-series), but it isn't as if Atom is pathetically slow; I'd rather use an Atom machine than an ARM, any day.
JustAnEngineer wrote:That's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it? I mean, I know what you're trying to say, but you've made an error.auxy wrote:Atom is a tablet/phone processor that has no place in a desktop PC, even one that wants to be energy-efficient. Ivy Bridge is where it's at.Why all the hate for Atom? If you run an appropriate OS on it, it's capable enough. I'm running Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs and it's relatively zippy, as long as you avoid Flash-heavy websites.
Putting new low-end crap into the x86 market that lacks modern features (e.g.: 64-bit) forces developers to dumb-down their software to the lowest common denominator instead of taking advantage of the power of modern hardware to provide new and amazing functionality.
auxy wrote:JustAnEngineer wrote:That's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it? I mean, I know what you're trying to say, but you've made an error.auxy wrote:Atom is a tablet/phone processor that has no place in a desktop PC, even one that wants to be energy-efficient. Ivy Bridge is where it's at.Why all the hate for Atom? If you run an appropriate OS on it, it's capable enough. I'm running Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs and it's relatively zippy, as long as you avoid Flash-heavy websites.
Putting new low-end crap into the x86 market that lacks modern features (e.g.: 64-bit) forces developers to dumb-down their software to the lowest common denominator instead of taking advantage of the power of modern hardware to provide new and amazing functionality.
Ivy Bridge is more energy-efficient in terms of performance/watt; sure, nobody argues that. "Race to idle" is a clear win for Ivy Bridge. However, most consumers' CPUs spend most of their time idling, and Atom *does* use less power at idle -- and doesn't take so much longer to complete daily tasks that it will be beat in power consumption by any but perhaps the "Y" chips; the very lowest-power Ivy Bridge chips -- and it's cheaper than any of those, and produces less heat, allowing for smaller enclosures. (There are smartphones based on Atom technology now, you know.)
64-bit support was in every single Atom but the low-end of the very first run (it was in the 230 and 330 CPUs at the first launch in 2008) which don't even support enough RAM to justify 64-bit addressing. I know 64-bit has other advantages, but none of them matter on a CPU that slow OR at that time anyway. All of the current Atoms support 64-bit, so I'm not really sure your tirade about "low-end crap that lacks modern features" is really valid.
The only relevant criticism of Atom is that it's slow, but I sure don't hear people complaining about the crummy ARM chips in most smartphones and tablets.
uni-mitation wrote:My money's on Intel. Nobody else has the process technology or the R&D budget that they do. Sure, there are a lot of companies challenging them, but I am not impressed by the newest ARM designs; Cortex-A15 is hot, and while pretty fast, still barely struggles to beat the aging current Atoms -- I suspect the new Atoms will wipe the floor with A15*.I guess time will only tell how well these ARM chips scale. The sleeping giant that is Intel has been awoken, and it is a classic battle of David vs Goliath, only in this case there are many Davids( ARM licensees). Let's wait for Broadwell and see how things pan out. Other than that, we can expeculate all we want.
Taking wagers now...........
Chrispy_ wrote:i7 = full product quad-core with hyperthreading
i5 = i7 with hyperthreading disabled
i3 = full product dual-core with hyperthreading
Pentium = i3 with hyperthreading disabled and quicksync also removed from the HD2500/HD2000 IGP.
Celeron = Pentium but with some defective L3 Cache, so only has 2MB instead of 3MB.
Intel intentionally crippled the chip to make a new segment
uni-mitation wrote:I'm not quite sure what is the aim of Intel's with atom though.
Flying Fox wrote:An amusing side-note to this: the original Atom CPUs had extraordinarily low TDPs (for an x86 CPU at that time, natch) around 4W, but then they made the silly move of pairing it with a PCH that itself had a TDP over 20W. "lol".They did not come close with the first try of course, but Intel is not one to give up so easily.
Flying Fox wrote:A minor correction: the most popular netbooks tended to have 10.1" screens, e.g. the HP/Compaq Mini 110.small form factor (7" screen)
Flying Fox wrote:The Atom didn't even come out until 2008, when all of those things were commonplace.The first Atoms with Linux or a stripped down XP was ok enough for emails, light Office work, and web browsing circa early 2000s. With the advent of Flash, Javascript, and youtube
Flying Fox wrote:Most of what you said is true and the overarching point of your post is correct, but it's this very stigma to which I actually object.Things started to run "slow as molasses". And the stigma remains today.
Flying Fox wrote:Eeeexactly. It's not like game developers are going to stop developing top-end games because Intel puts money into the Atom, and it's not like Intel expects enthusiasts to buy Atom machines as their primary desktops. It's a special-purpose chip, end of story, built and marketed to a specific market segment, and it's very good at what it does.However, the Atom has come a long way and does have its niche.
Waco wrote:The Atom is technically 64 bit capable (and DX10 as well) but Intel doesn't give a **** about supporting them.
These cores could technically support 64-bit operation, but Intel specifies them as supporting the 32-bit x86 ISA. Windows 8 with Connected Standby (S0ix baby) support only currently exists in a 32-bit version, and Clover Trail is only designed to support Windows 8 at this point which is why these are effectively 32-bit cores.
Flying Fox wrote:Celerons, Pentiums, and i3's, I do have a question for the owners of those: which is the minimum I should get to play 1080p videos (any codecs) without GPU acceleration?
Flying Fox wrote:Are the i5, Pentium with the hyper-threading disabled because that part doesn't work (defective i7/i3) or Intel intentionally crippled the chip to make a new segment?
Flying Fox wrote:Is the Core i3-3225 a budget-buster? If so, would you consider a socket-FM2 Trinity solution?Only the i3-3225 has that ClearVideo stuff, but... I would like to know how low I can go.
JustAnEngineer wrote:Flying Fox wrote:Is the Core i3-3225 a budget-buster? If so, would you consider a socket-FM2 Trinity solution?Only the i3-3225 has that ClearVideo stuff, but... I would like to know how low I can go.