ASUS Eee PC 1201N: Dual-Core Atom + ION FTW?
by Jarred Walton on December 24, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
General Performance: Dual-Core Beats Single-Core
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We've shown these results in our ASUS Eee PC 1005PE review, so there's nothing new to say here. Dual-core Atom 330 is significantly more powerful than Atom N280 and N450, but it's also a big step down from CULV. Look at the HP Mini 311 results to see just how much doubling the cores in Atom gets you. In tasks that are heavily threaded (i.e. video encoding and 3D rendering), the four threads on 330 can at times match a 1.3GHz CULV. The best result is in DivX encoding where the 330 is only 4% slower than the EC5409u. Other multithreaded tasks like x264 put the EC5409u 30~40% faster, and in CINEBENCH CULV is nearly three times as fast in the single-threaded mode and still almost twice as fast in multithreaded mode.
Looking at the 3DMark results gives us some idea of what's to come in the gaming section. The problem is that 3DMark stresses the GPU far more than it stresses the CPU, so these results are more an indication of what the 1201N can do in games that don't need much from the CPU. As we'll see on the next page, the gap between the 1201N and the Dell Studio 14z (basically the same GPU) is often quite large. In that sense, the 1201N is similar to the MSI X610: an underpowered CPU paired up with a reasonable GPU.
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bsoft16384 - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
Maybe someone can answer this for me - does the Eee PC 1201N support x86-64? The desktop Atom CPUs (Atom 330) do, but the mobile Atom CPUs have it disabled. Since this laptop apparently has a desktop Atom CPU, presumably it supports 64-bit as well?JarredWalton - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
Yes, it supports 64-bit, but the default OS is 32-bit. Since it apparently only supports up to 3GB RAM, however, it's probably not important to install a 64-bit OS. There are a few apps where 64-bit code can boost performance by ~5%, but the higher memory requirements would likely decrease performance in other apps.vavutsikarios - Saturday, December 26, 2009 - link
I would like to see how the 1291N compares to Acer Ferrari one.They are same size (the acer has the same 1366x768 on a 11.6 screen), exact same price, have comparable CPUs and graphics capabilities, same HDD and memory size, same OS.
They are, obviously, direct competitors.
vavutsikarios - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Correction: the Acer comes with the Win 7 Home Premium 64bit version, so it's not the exact same OS.Despite that, I still can't think of any other machine that feels so much similar, hardware-wise, with the 1291N.
I mean, the absence of intel graphics is by itself enough to differentiate those machines from the majority of netbooks out there. And then you add Win7, and they become even more different, and even more similar -with each other.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
I've already sent in a request; we'll see if Acer fulfills it.sprockkets - Thursday, December 24, 2009 - link
What is preventing someone from putting out a CULV + an nvidia 9300 chipset???MonkeyPaw - Friday, December 25, 2009 - link
I'm sure something like that may exist, but you couldn't really call it a netbook anymore, but an Ultra-portable. Once you go there, you typically end up paying 4-5 times more than you would for a netbook.JarredWalton - Friday, December 25, 2009 - link
The 9300 and 9400 are essentially the same, but regardless no one has created a CULV with NVIDIA IGP so far. There are discrete GPUs with some CULV laptops, but that's as close as we get. Anyway, 9300M is just 9400M with lower clocks.evident - Thursday, December 24, 2009 - link
This thing is almost pushing $500. If you look around you can find a nice intel pentium dual core 14" laptop for the same price. granted, the netbook is alot smaller and that itself is worth something, but i still feel that the compromise is still too great. IMO, the sweet spot for an ion netbook would be $200.Penti - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Just buy a Intel CULV (Core2 based) if you like a small notebook. Atom is great, (think embedded space), but with ION, large screen etc I don't really get it. But at least netbooks (with Ion or Broadcom Crystal HD) will be more useful when Flash 10.1 hits none beta release. GMA 4500MHD is still a pretty good fit for accelerated flash (video) though, and the faster cpu helps with a lot of things. I think it would be more interesting to shrink the atom devices to the MID size. Finishing up Moblin would also be nice. Maemo has showed you can create a pretty good consumer Linux MID already. But they become pretty pointless as stand alone internet devices though.