AMD and Intel Mobile Rematch: Gateway NV5933u vs. Acer 5542
by Jarred Walton on June 18, 2010 1:14 AM ESTBattery Life Compared
The last time we looked at battery life, Intel's Core 2 platform had a clear lead over AMD. Both platforms have gotten faster, but what about battery life? As we showed last year with the Gateway NV52 and NV58, the choice of OS makes a difference. Again, we are using the Windows 7 results from the NV52/NV58 to keep things equal, which means battery life improved quite a bit over the Vista results.
And here's where things get interesting. Performance improved on both platforms, but our initial battery life testing shows that battery life actually got worse on both AMD and Intel. The closest result is for AMD on the Internet test, where the old and new platforms essentially tie. x264 battery life dropped 8% on both platforms as well. The big drops come in idle battery life and Internet on Intel. Both drop 18-19% in idle battery life, while the NV59 takes a relatively drastic hit of 25% in our Internet test. Not shown in the charts is Blu-ray battery life on the NV59, which we clocked at just 98 minutes. The extra power required to spin the optical drive plus the decoding of a 37Mbit AVC movie takes its toll on every laptop we've tested so far. We need much more than a 48Wh battery to get through most Blu-ray discs.
That said, we need to take these results with a grain of salt. The old Core 2 platform was very mature at the time of our previous testing, and we've seen other laptops offering impressive battery life using i-Series processors. The ASUS U30Jc is a smaller 13.3" LCD, but even taking that into account it was able to deliver 5.67 minutes per Wh of battery capacity, which is 50% higher than the 3.75 result of the NV59. Both the M300 and M600 laptops we tested continue to have a poor showing in battery life overall, with the higher clocked M600 generally trailing the M300. Both are rated as 35W TDP, but all 35W processors are not created equal.
The real question is how optimized the notebooks are in terms of power saving features. We saw a BIOS/VBIOS update on MSI's GX640 improve battery life by up to 50%. It's doubtful that we'd get that much of an improvement on IGP-based laptop designs, but ASUS' Power4Gear utility has proven useful in boosting battery life in our testing by allowing you to disable the optical drive and webcam when you're on battery power. We'd like to see more manufacturers include such utilities, as well as simply putting more effort into creating a power efficient platform. Whether it's lack of power optimizations, immature platforms, old battery technology, or some other factor, the fact remains that both of the newcomers offer disappointing battery life.
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mojtabaalemi - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I meaned 1005p with 11hrs (6cells, 48W/h) battery nor 3cell .could you please say what player you use with coreavc ? WMP ?
I read that wmp12 in win 7 can play 720p x264 on atom 1.66GHz beacuse of its multithread codeks . is it right?
mojtaba alemi from iran
JarredWalton - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I used Media Player Classic Home Cinema in my more recent testing. I think I tried WMP11 in the past and it worked as well (maybe?), but I don't think I've ever tested with WMP12 and x264. I don't have any Atom laptops right now either, so I can't retest. :-|IntelUser2000 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
No, that's because 3DMark Vantage uses the retarded scheme where it includes the CPU scores as part of the final score. 3DMark06 was barely acceptable as a gaming benchmark because it started that, Vantage makes it worse.
JarredWalton - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Yes, it includes CPU performance as well, but you'll notice that nowhere in our CPU specific tests do we get 86%. In heavily threaded testing, we can achieve a 76% performance increase, but that's purely CPU based. Vantage includes CPU performance, but it's not as big of a factor as the GPU. 3DMark06 also includes CPU but shows only a 5% lead, which is more realistic.IntelUser2000 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
You should test this out if you have the chance/time.The 3 reasons that it has such a vast lead from greatest to smallest
1. 3DMark Vantage scores=GPU score(which is affected by the CPU like in real games) + CPU score
2. Some some CPU offloading(Never seen the game do that on the HD Graphics though)*
3. DX10 behavior on Intel is kinda like Nvidia. There's less loss from DX9 to DX10 code than on AMD.
*You can test this out by using the graphics control panel and going from Application(hardware mode) and Software Processing(software mode)
OldPueblo - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
I just picked up a similar tigris laptop, except it had better specs and was only $380. At that price, I don't care if the Intel one wins because I doubt it'll ever compete at that price point. :) I didn't even bother with a warranty, it's disposable basic gaming on the go.M320 (2x2.1Ghz)
3GB RAM
250GB 7200RPM
Radeon 4200
802.11 B/G/N
8x DVD burner w/ lightscribe
5-in-1 card reader
etc.
OldPueblo - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
Damnit! >:(http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/ads/2010/06/18...
JarredWalton - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
What size battery is in that? Probably a 48Wh, but I'm curious. Looking directly at Frys, I can't find the laptop listed above. What's the exact Lenovo model? I'm guessing it's the G555, but with some downgrades relative to the Lenovo store model. But yeah, $330 it can break in a year and you still won't care much.Roland00 - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
It is a G555, I can't tell you which exact submodel it is, but the chasis/generation model is G555Roland00 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
I know you are at the mercy of what OEM sent you (since you don't want to spend $1000 to $2000 buying hardware for a simple article), but please try to get some of these AMD processors for these are going to be the more competitive AMDs (and more relevant).Note all these processors have hardware virtualization unlike the atoms and some of the intel culvs/core 2 offerings. Also note that none of the current AMD mobile processors offer l3 cache
Nile platform (2010) 9W, 12W, 15W with DDR3 support. All these processors are Champlain processors
9W, AMD V105, Single Core*1.2 Ghz, 512 kb L2 cache total
12W, AMD K125, Single Core*1.7 Ghz, 1 mb L2 cache total
12W, AMD K325, Dual Core*1.3 Ghz, 1 mb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
15W, AMD K625, Dual Core*1.5 Ghz, 1 mb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
15W, AMD K665, Dual Core*1.7 Ghz, 1 mb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
Danube platform (2010) 25W, 35W, 45W with DDR3 support. All these processors are Champlain processors
25W, AMD P820, Tri Core*1.8 Ghz, 512kb L2 cache per core, 1.5 mb total
25W, AMD P920, Quad Core*1.6 Ghz, 512kb L2 cache per core, 2 mb total
35W, AMD N620, Dual Core*2.8 Ghz, 1mb L2 cache per core, 2 mb total
35W, AMD N830, Tri Core*2.1 Ghz, 512 kb L2 cache per core, 1.5mb total
35W, AMD N930, Quad Core*2.0 Ghz, 512 kb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
45W, AMD X620BE, Dual Core*3.1 Ghz, 1mb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
45W, AMD X920BE, Quad Core*2.3 Ghz, 512 kb L2 cache per core, 2mb total
While the instructions per clock per core is not going to change much with the
Champlain processors (Mid 2010 with DDR3 uses K,P, or N monikers) vs
Caspain processors (Late 2009 with DDR2 uses M moniker, the dual cores come only in 35w tdps).
The Champlain processors achieve lower tdps, have ddr3 support or have more cores for the same tdp with ddr3 support when compared to the Caspain processors. I did not list the other new Champlain processors (the "value" models) for performance wise they should be similar to the one you demoed today (P520, N530, P320, N330). We won't get processors with more instructions per clock per core until the upcoming Llano (fusion, phenom II based with 1mb l2 cache per core, 10watts and above) and Ontario (fusion, bobcat based, 1-10watts aimed for netbooks, tablets, and other low power devices) . AMD finally has a competitive line of notebook processors on paper, for low tdps they may have something as good or almost as good as intel culv, at higher tdps they may not have as many instructions per clock as intel but then they are fighting that with more cores, or against the i7 720qm an extremly lower tdp.
(finally I just want to say that I am not an AMD fanboy, the last 4 processors I have bought have been intel. I7 920, Q6600, SU2300 Notebook, T7700 Notebook)