[Leaplist] Different netbooks ... CPU and GPU limitations (or not) ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Okay, I've now had the chance to mess with various types of netbooks:  
- Intel single/dual-core 45nm Atoms with the 65nm 965GSC
- Intel single/dual-core, ultra-low voltage 45nm Pentium with same
- AMD, single-core, low voltage 65nm Athlon 64 with 55nm M690E
- AMD, single/dual-core, low voltage 65nm Neo [x2] with 55nm M780G

Let's get one thing straight, the 2-issue, in-line, non-speculative Atom sucks.
You could quad core it and then you'll get what an aged AMD Neo does.
Anything with an Atom is going to be CPU limited.  Ironically, the 965GSC
makes a great partner for the Atom here.  The nice thing is that you do get
6 hours out of the sucker, and that should improve with Intel outsourcing
to TSMC and their 40nm process for the GPUs.  I understand the reasons
for Atom, but as they have existed so far, they make poor processor for
a general purpose OS.

nVidia has introduced it's Ion chipset for Atom.  But adding a GPU to a
processor that struggles with basic operations is not going to help much.
As I said, the old 965GSC design is a perfect match.  ;)

Now, ironically, I've had the chance to mess with some of the nexgen, 45nm,
ultra-low voltage Pentium processors, including dual-core.  Those actually
have a bit of kick to them.  GHz for GHz, they will slump against AMD, but
Intel has the power-GHz superior fab technology, so they come out ahead
in both performance and battery life.  Almost makes you want to forget Atom,
as they can give you 4 hours.  The pricing is the only problem at this point.

I haven't checked if nVidia has a solution for these ULV Pentium designs.
If they use the same interconnect, they should.  I need to investigate further,
but there are few netbooks in this area so far.

AMD has a problem.  They are still selling 2+ year-old technology, and
we're still waiting for 45nm products to hit the market.  You have a choice
of the low-voltage 65nm Athlon 64 or the optimized, but still aged 65nm
Neo [x2] single/dual-core.

The Neo x2 is capable of keeping up with feeding the newer Radeon
2100-3200 GPU cores (M690x and M740x/780x), definitely bests the
ULV Pentium dual-cores GHz for GHz, but at an extreme power penalty.
So the power and cost savings with Neo [x2] over Turion [x2] is minimal,
and yesteryear's refurbished models are the only affordable under $500.
Same problem as the ULV Pentium on the pricing front (worse battery than
it though).

Which brings us to the low-voltage Athlon 64.  Here you have a 1.2GHz
Athlon 64, underclocked and power drops below 25W.  But then it can't
feed even the old 2100 GPU core (shrunk to 55nm in the M690E).  I know,
I just bought one.  It's great for normal usage, kicks the living crap out of a
dual-core Atom (ignore the artificial benchmarks, I've used both myself on
Linux and Windows), and then you have the GPU for off-load of things the
965GSC just can't do.  And that's the funny part.  You can jack up filtering,
textures, etc... on that Radeon 2100 GPU without hitting the CPU at all
(unlike the feature-set in the 965GSC) -- "totally free."  But the GPU still
can't drive/off-load the actual CPU operations, so if the CPU is hit hard
(doing absolutely nothing to do with any 3D/rendering/playback), it doesn't
matter.

AMD does this to get the CPU power consumption down, and battery life
to 4-5 hours.  The chipset is already 10-15W at 55nm, and the new revs
will go to sub-10W at TSMC's 40nm (although Intel's new use of TSMC as a
foundry might get interesting on speed-to-market).

Now it's clear AMD took a major chunk of the market with the low-voltage
Athlon+M690E combo.  Because _all_ of the Acer-Gateway and whitebox
models I've seen lately are sporting a ULV Pentium Single/Dual-Core with
an Intel chipset like the X3000/4000 series.  It's funny because that now
reverses the problem (and even kills the battery a little bit more than AMD's
aged solution).  The only AMD combos I can find are old models**.

AMD has a great GPU, but is either CPU-limited or power-limited (by CPU).

Intel has a great CPU (ULV Pentium), but is always ships a GPU clunker
(in _real_ features, not those artificial "dumb framebuffer" benchmarks), let
alone in Linux (where the Intel driver totally lacks IP features of their Windows
counterparts -- ATI and nVidia offer a closed source driver for such).

So, in a nutshell, there's no happy medium right now.  Maybe Intel will stop
fighting with nVidia and work with them for a combo to the ULV Pentium.
Then again, pricing is still an issue -- and I hope AMD's new 45nm finally
delivers what it should.  2GHz 45nm single-core performance of 4-5 hours
with a 40nm M780G/T (Radeon 3100) or successor.  But right now it seems
there's still a lot of old stock out there.

-- Bryan

**P.S.  With that said, I still just bought the older LV Athlon + M690E refurb combo
for $270 from Woot.  The 1.2GHz Athlon 64 is capable of meeting requirements
for a 2GHz Penitum 4, and -- again, it's funny -- to jack up _all_ of the DirectX 9
/ OpenGL 2.x features for shading and textures with the Radeon X1270 (2100)
integrated GPU and it makes _no_difference_ in performance (because the GPU
can handle them).  It's that CPU doing background stuff in a title that seems to
hit any performance, not any rendering (the GPU is more than capable).  At least
memory and disk are beyond the artificial XP netbook $5 pricing, although it
ships Vista, I'm running Linux on it anyway.  ;)

-- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
---------------------------------------------------------- 
Red Hat:  That 'other' American software company built on
open customer selection of options and value, instead of
controlled distribution channels of forced bundle and lock


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