ASUS Eee PC 1005PE: Pineview Arrives
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
General Performance Hits a Speed Bump
PCMark starts us off with some interesting results: the 1005PE is actually slower than the 1005HA. Wait, is that correct? Well, as we've mentioned in the past, PCMark05 scores are a bit questionable as certain tests favor different OSes; normally Vista and Win7 have a clear advantage, but this is the first time we've tested a computer with Win7 Starter. Let's look at the detailed results before trying to draw any conclusions. We'll limit the detailed comparison to inexpensive long-battery-life laptops.
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PCMark05 shows much of what we're interested in seeing. HDD speeds are pretty much all over the place, with some tests favoring one HDD and other tests favoring a different drive - basically, firmware optimizations on the drive come into play. In CPU intensive tests, the SU4100 in the EC5409u is the clear winner among the long battery life options. Conversely, the 1201N ION walks away with the GPU tests. The problem is that other tests show the N450 as slower than the N280; given the difference in OS, it's difficult to know what exactly is going on. The IMC of the N450 ought to make it faster than the N280 in all cases, so we're going to chalk this one up to Windows 7 Starter vs. XP.
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We don't have any results for the older netbooks in Vantage since Vista/Win7 is required, so there's not as much to examine. What we do see is that there's some real wonkiness going on. The Memory score for example is about three times faster on the 1201N compared to the 1005PE, even though both laptops use DDR2-667 RAM. So yeah, PCMark Vantage doesn't really explain things any better.
In general use, we can say that the 1005PE feels about the same as other Atom netbooks we've tested, but we do prefer the Win7 interface - even if it is limited to Starter. Basically, you get the dumbed-down UI elements without all the fancy "Aero Glass" extras, but it's no worse than Windows XP in terms of the look.
Let's move on to some of our own tests to see if we can get any better idea of performance from the new Atom N450 relative to the N280.
The results in these tests are a lot more sensible: 1005PE is slightly faster than the 1005HA. The difference in most of the tests is hardly worth discussing (1-2%), but in the DivX encoding test we see a whopping 63% increase. This might be another Windows 7 vs. XP difference, as the 1201N performance relative to the 1005HA is a 120% increase, which obviously shouldn't happen if you just double the core count.
So which system would be best? In terms of general performance, CULV is hands-down the winner. Applications load faster and you can multitask better. Though the EC5409u comes with 4GB RAM, the Acer 1410 is still going to be within 20% of the performance offered and it's available for $420, making it a great option in place of Atom netbooks.
As far as Atom goes, ION is again the clear victor, since it can handle video decoding. 720p x264 decoding is possible using just a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, but you could do that with N270 as well; the issue is with other codecs and Internet content. Flash 10.1 (now in Beta 2 with updated beta NVIDIA drivers) works great on the NVIDIA GPUs; on GMA 950 and 3150, there aren't any DXVA hooks and thus Flash falls back to CPU rendering, which struggles at best. In fact, if you're a big Flash video user, particularly for HD content, ION will even beat the experience of CULV laptops. GMA 4500MHD is a big step up from GMA 950/3150, but it still falls short of NVIDIA.
Let's investigate the GPU situation a bit more.
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JOEyGADGET - Friday, January 29, 2010 - link
I bought a 100PE thinking I could use eeectl to boost the screen brightness to the ultrabright setting the way I boosted the brightness on previous ASUS netbooks. However eeectl ultrabright setting has no effect. Anyone know how to force the 1005PE to turn on or activate ultrabright setting? At its brightest setting the 1005PE is simply too dim for my eyes. Suggestions welcome and appreciated. Thanks, JOEyGADGETProDigit - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
I totally stopped reading after page 4, where the results became opposite of tomshardware results, and opposite of logic.The memory controller is on chip, and yet it's slower than a separate?
Don't make me laugh!
Really, for benchmarks you don't need to be with anandtech, for they just paste some stupid numbers there that won't make any sense whatsoever!
Then again, tomshardware is only interested in running 3D mark and Crysis tests!
whatthehey - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
You, sir, are a moron if you are going to compare the THG article with this one. Unless I'm mistaken, the only Pine Trail article is this one:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...
See the problem? One, they're testing D510, not a netbook. Two, they don't have results for old Atom N280 and new Atom N450. Three, you're trusting THG, a site known to have sold out on too many occasions to even begin to count, just like HardOCP.
Which results in this article are wrong? PCMark is all over the map, which as they point out is pretty much par for the course. Don't trust PCMark05, and there aren't any meaningful points of comparison for Vantage. They would need to show other netbooks with Windows 7 Starter, and they don't have that here.
In short, to be "opposite" of some other site, they actually have to compare the same sort of hardware. AnandTech has a separate D510 article, but D510 isn't a netbook. Looks to me like the N450 has no reason to be faster. Same cache instead of the desktop, where the D510 has twice the cache size compared to 330.
Please take the THG trolling and go elsewhere. THG ceased to be relevant right around the time that Thomas Pabst stopped being the head honcho.
foolsgambit11 - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
It looks like in the next couple years, we'll see Atom-derivatives relegated to MIDs and CULV-derivatives taking it's place for netbooks/nettops. I think this was Intel's stated objective for Atom from the beginning, right?geok1ng - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
The very simple reason that Pineview sucks soo much is that Intel want to push the crappy GMA 3150 and the sluggish 4500HD down our troats. Another point for the Asus UL80vt, Dell 14z, Ions. The consumer cant have both products:a good GPU and a good enough CPU.Fanfoot - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
I'm surprised that Intel had the GMA 500 core available to them, yet the GPU they've paired with the N450 is still so anemic. The battery life is certainly nice, but the inability to play HD Flash is seriously questionable.piroroadkill - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
GMA500 is a decent product with godawful driver supportShadowmaster625 - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
Sempron M100 is lurking about out there. And I cant find much of any info on it. Can you guys try to find and review a Sempron M100 notebook with HD4200 graphics and a decent size battery? If you do can you play around with underclocking/undervolting it?JarredWalton - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
I've been trying to get *any* of the 45nm AMD laptops. I'll continue working on it, as I'm quite interested in seeing what they can do for power reqs. Turion II Ultra + HD 4200 seems like it should at least be competitive with dual-core ION (i.e. ASUS 1201N), but I'm not sure AMD is going to get power requirements down low enough.MamiyaOtaru - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
"When Intel released the Atom CPUs, netbooks received a dramatic boost in performance and battery life"Battery life, yes. Performance, not so much. In single threaded apps, the Celeron was faster than the Atom. Overall, having that second thread was nice, but raw performance wasn't helped so much