For the Hardware Geeks
So, laureth is considering a netbook. Being the household geek, I began looking into them last night. For various reasons, my benchmark for advice will be based on comparing various a netbook's expected performance against how her current tower performs. In trying to get a handle on that, I found a CPU benchmark site that suggests the lower-cost Intel Atom in most netbooks currently in stores (N270 at 1.6 GHz) is about 18% faster than her 2 GHz Pentium 4.
Now, I know about more efficient microcode being in each newly released CPU design. And I know that there's six years of microcode development between what she has, and what we're looking at for her. But I'm still a bit surprised to see enough efficiency gains to more than wipe out a 25% deficiency in clock speed.
Does this seem to be a reasonable reflection of real-world performance? Or is it more likely an artifact of benchmark design?
Now, I know about more efficient microcode being in each newly released CPU design. And I know that there's six years of microcode development between what she has, and what we're looking at for her. But I'm still a bit surprised to see enough efficiency gains to more than wipe out a 25% deficiency in clock speed.
Does this seem to be a reasonable reflection of real-world performance? Or is it more likely an artifact of benchmark design?