[LAU] Box under £400

[Leigh Dyer]

On 31/05/12 2:58 AM, Robin Gareus wrote:
> As rule of thumb: Atom CPUs processing power is comparable to that of an
> i3 of the same clock-freq. But most Atom chipsets lack some CPU features
> - e.g virtualization support. Yet Atom != Atom and i3 != i3 ; it really
> depends on the model. I suppose the only way to tell is to try..

I don't have any benchmarks handy to back myself up, but everything I've 
read about Atom CPUs tells me that they're substantially slower than any 
of the Core series CPUs. Atom uses a very simple, in-order design that 
sacrifices performance for power-efficiency -- I definitely wouldn't 
recommend one for any application where you suspect CPU power might be a 
concern.

FWIW, I've found that the dual-core 1.7Ghz Core i5 in my laptop beats 
the older dual-core 3Ghz Core 2 Duo in my desktop by about 15-25%, 
particularly in multi-threaded applications (compiling Ardour 3, in this 
case). I'd bet that even that old Core 2 Duo is easily twice as fast per 
Ghz as an Atom. These modern Core chips are *fast*!

Thanks
Leigh