Intel Core 2 CULV Roundup: Who Needs Atom?

Windows OS Performance

Some people like to know how fast their system will boot/reboot, or resume from hibernation. RAM size and HDD performance come into play, along with POST speeds. Windows 7 also improves on Windows Vista in most of these tests. We'll dispense with the commentary and simply show the numbers at this point.

Boot times clearly favor the Acer and Gateway laptops over the Dell 11z (probably because of some driver stalling the Dell system, though we couldn't determine the exact cause). POST times also have the 11z at the back of the CULV pack, with the EC5409u in the lead. ASUS really appears to have spent a good deal of time optimizing their laptops for quick POST times, which is nice to see. One other surprise is that the EC5409u resumes from hibernation so much faster than the other two laptops. It has 4GB RAM compared to 2GB on the Dell, and it does save 1.5 second on the POST time, but we would have expected the 11z to perform better - just as the 11z wins the hibernate test because it only has half as much RAM it needs to save to the HDD.