POV-Ray is a pure test of CPU rendering power and it shows that the 1.8GHz Nano has significantly better performance than Atom. The VIA chip completed the test in 19 minutes; the Atom took 27 minutes.
POV-Ray Results
Time in Seconds
Shorter bars are better
The problem is that the Nano system draws more power than Atom – 80W against 60W – which rather blows a hole in VIA’s argument that it has a 47 per cent greater fuel efficiency than the Intel offering. That figure is achieved by averaging work loads and power draws, but we very much doubt that mobile systems with the same battery would yield a significantly longer runtime with the Nano.
Power Draw Results
Power Draw in Watts (W)
COMMENTS
PCMark05 favours GenuineIntel CPUID
Does no-one at El Reg read Slashdot or Ars Technica? Ars demonstrated that just changing the CPUID of the Nano to "GenuineIntel" improves the memory subsystem benchmark by 47.4%, pushing it significantly above the Atom for memory. I'm not making this up, check the Ars Technica "Low-end grudge match: Nano vs. Atom" by Joel Hruska (29 July 2008). Worth a mention, if only for the PCMark/Intel conspiracy...
80 watts?
What a pile of rubbish. Where does this (p)review show that Nano is twice as fast as Atom? What are the specs of the test system - memory, hard drive(s), power supply? What did you do to it to push it to 80W? I can do 80W with a 45W dual-core AMD (under $100 including mATX mobo, miniITX might be more expensive), 1GB DDR2 and a "green" Caviar, so either the Nano, or the review is full of crap.
Given: n=3a
Prove: n=3a
"As VIA SN hardware sells for £150 ... that suggests Nano might be three times the price of Atom. Ouch.
If so, it'll be roughly three times the price of a comparable Atom."
