Intel Core 2 CULV Roundup: Who Needs Atom?
by Jarred Walton on February 4, 2010 4:00 AM ESTBlending Battery Life with Performance
We just showed how CULV skunks Atom when it comes to performance. Dual-core Atom 330 is still quite a bit slower, and it's not even close when we look at the mobile Atom CPUs. This is all from a relatively "weak" 1.3GHz Core 2 processor. But Atom CPUs have a TDP of just 2.5W for N280 and 5.5W for N450 (the latter also includes the chipset, so it actually uses less power than N280 + 945GSE); meanwhile, CULV is listed as having a TDP of 10W. Advantage: Atom, right? Well, not so fast. The newer Pine Trail platform definitely helps, with a much lower power draw from the chipset and graphics. Max TDP doesn't necessarily correlate well to idle or low use TDP, though, which is where most users tend to operate their PCs. Here's how battery life stacks up.
We gained performance but we do give up a bit in battery life - at least when we look at Pine Trail. The smaller CULV laptops like the Acer AS1810T are able to come very close to Atom N280 battery life in the Idle and Internet tests, while the video playback results still favor N280 (provided you're not trying to do 1080p H.264). Atom N450 on the other hand manages to boost battery life by anywhere from 10% (DivX) to 40% (Idle), putting it out of reach of CULV when both are using similar capacity batteries.
The AS1810T delivers an impressive result in our Heavy Internet Browsing test, coming in just shy of eight hours at 463 minutes. That's a virtual tie with the older Atom N280 based ASUS 1005HA (467 minutes), indicating CULV is able to render the web pages and get to a deep sleep state faster than N280. The newer ASUS 1005PE Pine Trail netbook still bests the AS1810T by just over two hours (590 minutes), so if you want maximum battery life Atom continues to beat the other Intel processors. The other CULV options both trail the AS1810T, which is expected. The EC5409u is larger and so the LCD will draw more power, while the Dell 11z has a slightly lower capacity battery.
In terms of relative battery life (and of course, we should note that we're going off the advertised battery capacities, which may be slightly off), the CULV and most N280 offerings are clustered tightly together. While the EC5409u does use more power, the DDR3 memory appears to mitigate that somewhat, with overall battery life still very close to the smaller laptops. Pine Trail is at its best in Idle battery life, but the Internet test is another strong point: it gets 25% more battery life compared to CULV for the same battery capacity.
Looking at power requirements helps clear up any lingering questions. Mobile Atom CPUs are designed to sip power, with their highest load sucking down around 4W for N450 and 7W for N280 (including chipset power draw). We estimate that at idle, Atom N280 uses 1W, the chipset probably uses 2W, LCD gets 3W, and the remainder is divvied up among the other bits and pieces. Atom N450 can cut another 1W from Idle power requirements, which is at least a 15% reduction (and possibly more, given our tools are only accurate to at best .5W). In contrast, a CULV CPU can idle very well, but under load the power draw jumps significantly. The AS1810T looks like it uses every bit of its 10W max TDP. Add on graphics and the gap widens even more, though here we need to mention that GMA 950/3150 are a very big step down from GMA 4500MHD (which is another big step back from something like GeForce 9400M).
Overall, it appears that CULV processors are very similar in terms of idle power requirements when compared to Atom N280, especially once we factor in chipsets. As we mentioned above, in many situations an application will need to do a set amount of work as quickly as possible (e.g. rendering a web page), after which the CPU can go into a deep sleep state. The faster the work gets done, the sooner the CPU can sleep, and the net result is that even in moderate loads CULV can compete quite well against N280. The catch is that there are other loads (like video decoding) where CULV ends up using quite a bit more power than Atom, but in common usage scenarios the battery life is still very good.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
Still waiting for a review unit. I am also curious to see if Alienware allows overclocking, similar to the ASUS UL series. If they do, and with the GT335M, the m11x is going to be a very speedy machine in many respects. Of course, it's going to cost close to $1000 I imagine, but the features will probably make it worthwhile.synaesthetic - Friday, February 5, 2010 - link
There is a BIOS option to overclock the FSB on the M11x. According to the review, the SU7300 was overclocked to 1.6GHz with a respectable boost in performance and a negligible increase in heat (only a degree or two hotter).yyrkoon - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
I could not get past the brand name personally. Many people out there do their best to avoid the "greatness" that is Acer. I am just one of those people.clarkn0va - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
Maybe my information is just out of date, but my knowledge of the Acer Timelines differs somewhat from the information presented in this article.For starters, Jarred is stating that they have plastic covers. I own a 3810T and the cover is brushed aluminum (or a really good fake), thank goodness.
Secondly, it was my understanding that (at least some of) the TZ models had switchable graphics, enabling the user to switch from Intel to AMD graphics on the fly. Perhaps this isn't offered any more.
Lastly, and this is not Jarred's mistake, just an unfortunate reality, mine came with an 80GB Intel G1 SSD. This not only improves performance markedly, but should help to extend battery life. I think it's a shame that more desktops and laptops don't include this option.
AmbroseAthan - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
I was going to comment on this too. There are A LOT of differences within each Timeline series. I know there are 1810T's with aluminum rather then the plastic, and the new Olympic editions are very nice.Personally I own the 1810T (black plastic with SU7300) and couldn't be happier with it. It does have some of the problems Jarred listed, but you quickly adjust to the size of the trackpad; I haven't had any issues dragging things around the screen.
My brother owns the 3810T (Brushed aluminum w/ SU7300), and it is much more polished then the 1810T (blakc plastic). The little extra size really helped Acer make it a much nicer laptop. Even his keyboard is of a different material/style then mine. The touchpad is also different. He got his only a couple weeks after me, and I gladly would have taken the slight extra weight for the updates it had to everything else had I known.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
If I'm not mistaken (and I admit, I might be -- curse Acer and their plethora of SKUs that are all very similar!), the aluminum Timeline models are more expensive than the plastic models. At a price of around $750 to $800, I'd go with the ASUS UL80Vt and get switchable graphics. The Olympic Edition of the 1810 does look very nice, but can anyone confirm that it's truly aluminum? Look at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">these pictures and it appears to be glossy plastic to me. Still, it's got the right parts and price ($550), if you're okay with the keyboard action.jabber - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
I'm a convert! Since I got my Inspiron 13Z with its 7300 it's been great. Similar grunt to an old P4 2.8Ghz dual core with a Nvidia 105 GPU and 4GB of ram.For a small laptop its perfect. Plays games just fine and if I set it to balanced power it can run for 8 hours+ easily.
tno - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
I hope not to start a flame war or cause any hard feelings or upset on Jarred's part, but I feel it's worth pointing out that this piece could have really used a polish. One of the great things about AT is that the coverage and the writing have always been equally high in quality. Certainly, the occasional typo or awkward sentence would sneak out, but on the whole it could be trusted that the articles read as if they had been reviewed by an editor.This article, however, did not feature the typical AT polish; a fact which was evident in the very first sentence:
"A couple years back, ASUS released the first netbook on an unsuspecting world."
While a conversational tone is certainly appreciated, the absent 'of' between the second and third word mar this sentence. The opening paragraph continues with several sentences which reach or border on being run-ons; and could easily stand the presence of a few semi-colons. Typos and word misuse ("differentiator" is a specialization mechanism in cell biology, and not a general term for the variable that separates members of a population) litter the first page, and would no doubt have been caught by a copy editor.
Again, I am absolutely a fan of this site and the wonderful articles produced here. Letting mistakes like these slip past, however, diminish the articles to the level of blog posts and not quality technical journalism. As the number of writers and staffers grow, it becomes harder to enforce high writing standards. If it hasn't been done, perhaps it's time to consider hiring some proof readers?
tno
QuietOC - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
Haha, Jarred lifted some of that wording from a sample review I submitted to them: "A few months later ASUS released the original Eee PC on the unsuspecting world market." There's nothing particularly unique about the language. I wouldn't be surprised if I unconsciously borrowed it myself.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
The use or omission of the word "of" in the first sentence is entirely a stylistic preference. "A couple years ago..." or "A couple of years ago..." mean the same thing, with an extra syllable in the latter. As for differentiator:http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Differentiator">differentiator - a person who (or that which) differentiates.
I am using it as the latter, and it is correct in that sense. Sorry if I view the English language as more fluid than others, but I have no qualms about playing with words as I see fit. I would hope most people are more interested in the technical content than whether or not I follow the MLA guidelines.
If you really want to complain about my writing style, you'd be far better off saying that I have a bad case of word diarrhea, IMO. I write far more text than I often feel is necessary, but then if I omit certain aspects of a review I always get someone complaining that I "didn't talk about feature xxx". Another potentially valid complaint would be my use of parenthetical comments and phrases set off by dashes--and I'm sure I use dashes incorrectly at times! ;)