swaaye wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

So what I don't get, is why didn't they just create a multicore version of the Pentium M architecture, and maybe implement it on a smaller process? Surely that would have been a much better mobile architecture than the Atom.

Core Duo is just that (and it was on a smaller process with 65nm).

Atom is really intended for another class of low power, such as phone applications. The intial Atom chips were still too power consuming though. The 32nm Atom and the new 22nm one are going into phones though.

I almost forgot that. My grandmother has a laptop with one, and it's served her well for quite a few years. She does a lot of work with Photoshop, and it's only been recently that she's started wanting a better machine. My grandfather has an AMD C-350 on the other hand, and even he thinks it's dog slow (the AMD, I mean). 😜

Core Duo is awesome. My mother uses a laptop with that and Windows XP, and she never found herself wanting a newer one.

Intel Atom however, is to CPUs what the S3 Virge was to 3D acceleration. Sure, it has nicely named features like multithreading, except that means performance in single threaded (= almost everything that runs usably on something like Atom) applications is even worse. Oops.

By the way, I actually know someone who has seen Windows 7 on an Atom netbook. And I am afraid to ask how "quickly" it might have run.

snorg wrote:

Has anyone noticed that some new stuff just feels bugf*ck slow?
Take an atom-based netbook, for instance. Of course it is going to be slow with Vista on there, but even with XP on it feels slow as hell, when it really shouldn't. The atom is roughly equivalent to a P4 system, I don't ever remember properly kitted out P4 or even P3 systems feeling that slow. I'd be curious to see if putting a really old OS on there would make it feel any snappier, but then you run into driver concerns.

There is a world of a difference between XP, XP SP1 and XP SP3. It became a LOT more demanding with time...

RAM is another issue. Most netbooks only come with 1GB and the most you can upgrade them is 2GB. Add a slow 5400 rpm drive and ton of free software that bogs down the machine. Same goes for Linux. Ubuntu a few years ago was snappy, now it is a lot more demanding as new features get added on top.

With 2GB of Ram and fresh installation of XP, manually installing the drivers and keeping everything nice and clean (Chrome, VLC) it is not that bad.

I have W7 starter on my Acer dual core netbook (this one has 4 threads!) and with 2GB and a slim installation it's quite good. You need to tweak Windows heaps. Disable all the graphics effects. No AV or just MS Essentials. I used it for studies for a while and it worked well. You would be surprised how well it doesn. But with 1GB the machine doesn't even want to do anything. The HDD light is constantly on, nothing happens 😀

Unfortunately netbooks are dead now. Tablets took over and there are also chrome books. I miss netbooks. They revolutionised the market. Befeore netbooks Sony and Toshiba could charge 3k+ for their Libretto or TX mini notebooks. And they were just as slow.

So netbooks: Max out the RAM to 2GB and keep the installation clean. Netbooks are meant for content consumption, not content creation.

The biggest weakness is the lack of video acceleration. Flash videos or MKV just kill it. SD DivX/XVid is totally fine however.

If you travel then a netbook is just awesome. It's really the only thing small enough to just put in a backpack. Even 11" models are starting to become too heavy.

This was why when I was shopping for netbook I passed them over for a low end laptop. For $50 more than a netbook I got a faster CPU, bigger screen, bigger hard drive, more expansion ports, more RAM. It's still slow by laptop standards, but more usable than any netbook that was for sale at the time. I said it once before, but it bears repeating, netbooks aren't a good value anymore. Tablets and smart phones are rivaling them in terms of functionality while beating them in portability while cheap laptops rival them in portability but beat them in terms of functionality. It's getting harder to recommend netbooks when other options represent a better value proposition.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder, how does an Intel Atom ... compare to a Pentium M? ...

Dothan 1.73 :

My Mobile PIII-M 1.0 :

So in other words, the Pentium M beats the absolute living shit out of an Atom. Nice. 😁

Much like Mau says, I was very impressed when I went to a friend's house to help them with their computer. It was a netbook with some Atom (I could have sworn it was single core) CPU, 2GB RAM and Windows 7 Starter. It was actually quite snappy, of course it was running very few programs on startup, but that's a common practice for me on my main PC too.
My brother bought an Asus EeePC 1000H(?) back in 2008 (when netbooks started becoming a thing) and he still uses it regularly. It is very interesting to see how netbooks laid the groundwork for tablets. I prefer netbooks, but tablets have a lot of stuff going for them too.

We don't need Atom, because CULV dual core Celeron and Pentium chips are way faster and only consume slightly more power. The 10" screen size and tiny keyboards were horrible too. The 11.6" sub notebook form factor is much more usable in my opinion and is hardly bigger.

Did tablet's "beat" netbooks? Who knows. Personally I think tablets are pretty much a fad too. If you wan't touch screen it seems to make more sense to just get a large phone. A tablet is not a suitable replacement for a laptop in most cases due to lack of proper keyboard.

I have a 11" AMD APU based notebook. Compared to the 10" netbook it is massive. I know it sounds weird, but it makes quite a difference. It is more usable for doing proper work, but for having a tiny computer when you travel I have never had something as useful as my Acer Aspire One.

I got the very first model with single core and one of the last ones with the DC. Netbook RIP

I actually rather like netbooks. My super-slow netbook was quite fast with a fresh install of XP SP3 (must reinstall it ASAP). For me, a tablet is useless as I need a small, portable computer to write down notes in college lectures. That means it must have an actual keyboard (you cannot write down 5 pages of lecture notes on a touchscreen even if you are healthy, let alone typing with 1 finger and crippled hands like me). I'll probably reinstall the OS on my netbook now, and maybe replace it with a light ultrabook when I'll have the money and need.

This is why I Avoid anything that is weaker than a Core Duo when I buy scrap laptops, $20 sometimes can go a long ways. Landed a 16.4inch sony that had a i7-740 that turned out to be working. Was only missing two things and most of the screws but the screws are easily taken care of. Took out the foam and other junk out of it that dropped temps a good bit.

Intel Atom was never my favorite cpu but running the ram in single channel doesn't do any cpu good business. Liked the power consumption but disliked that it has such a small cache and hot running chipsets. Some of the 945 mobile chipsets were not bad but most that were used with the atom are to blame for a lot of thermal issues.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

So in other words, the Pentium M beats the absolute living shit out of an Atom. Nice. 😁

Even more so if, as I suspect, that 1.73 Dothan was always underclocked to 800MHz during that Lynx run.

TELVM wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

So in other words, the Pentium M beats the absolute living shit out of an Atom. Nice. 😁

Even more so if, as I suspect, that 1.73 Dothan was always underclocked to 800MHz during that Lynx run.

OH it does, it creams the first gen Atoms and competes with the later models. Got three PM rigs, two great big Dell Inspiron 9300s (one has a 6800 Ultra) and a desktop that can play skryim. Pentium M desktop boards are very rare but worth it for a collector and the 915GM chipset has win9x support.

I think I have an ASUS Pentium 4 board that can take a Pentium M with the right adapter. I'll have to compare the model numbers though.

While we're at it, Tually 1400S:

Someday... when Adobe Flash is finally wiped off the face of the earth, we will all be able to go back to Pentium III's.

Any modern single core CPU feels slow with multi-threaded software becoming more and more prevalent since the advent of multi-core CPU's. The fastest, single core AMD Sempron is much faster than the fastest single core Athlon64-FX, which totally kicked ass on the games of it's own time, but despite being fast as far as single cores go, the Sempron still can't cope with modern games well with all settings maxed even when backed up by a good motherboard with tons of RAM and a high end video card.

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley wrote:

Someday... when Adobe Flash is finally wiped off the face of the earth, we will all be able to go back to Pentium III's.

Let the prophecy hold true!

...actually, tablet and phone processors are similar to P3 performance. Flash was eliminated from those devices. Those slow CPUs brought about an application optimization arms race, particularly in web browsers.

I prefer old hardware that feels fast.
I just installed a coppermine p3 1000 on my Abit BH6.
Even slightly underclocked @930 mhz it makes Win 98 feel really fast.
Im thinking that perhaps its worth to get a modified tualeron 1400@1568
Why do I build old computers if I want speed? 😁

Flash is generally more of a memory than CPU hog in my opinion. When no RAM is free and it has to load videos from swap file things grind to a halt, which is understandable. The bizarre part is that even with free RAM there are always dropped frames even on modern CPUs, which makes me think that it is completely unoptimized garbage seeing as it is 2013 and people are starting to talk about 4K.