Does single core performance matter?

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I'm considering buying a secondary computer and I found out about the new Asus X206 featuring an Atom CPU. It's very affordable at €240 (4GB of RAM version) but I'm not sure if it will fit my needs (web browsing, lot of content writing, note taking, light programming, light video editing and light gaming).

I'm comparing it to the MacBook Air featuring a core M. I know it's far from being a fair comparison, but I wanted to know what I'd get by paying about 20% of the price of the MacBook Air, just performance wise. I found these benchmarks : http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_m_5y10c-456-vs-intel_atom_x5_z8350-607

As you can see, the Atom CPU delivers around 70% of the performance of the core M in the multiple core benchmarks, which is not bad, but then it gets crushed in single core benchmarks.

Now I'd like to know how this can impact the tasks I listed above, and which tasks or programs require higher single core performance over higher multiple core performance.

 

Thanks

[IAmAndre]

5 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Video editing, gaming, don't even think about it. Atoms are ridiculously low powered processors, with terrible single and multi-core performance. Sorry

Hmm I'm sure it can play many of the games I have in mind since many of them were released in the early 2000's. They can't be that slow, can they?

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Hmm I'm sure it can play many of the games I have in mind since many of them were released in the early 2000's. They can't be that slow, can they?

yes they can. my laptop with an Atom 550(2c/4th) has problems with webbrowosing and watching videos. they are garbage

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Hmm I'm sure it can play many of the games I have in mind since many of them were released in the early 2000's. They can't be that slow, can they?

They aren't, if you want to play battlefield 1942 you'll be fine. The performance difference with the core M is actually not huge, although it will be noticeable particularly in games. Web browsing, (light) programming and office work should not be a problem. 4Gb of ram may be a little low for a windows machine though, if you notice high ram usage and slow downs you may want to consider switching to linux on that machine.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

yes they can. my laptop with an Atom 550(2c/4th) has problems with webbrowosing and watching videos. they are garbage

Yes, let's compare it to a cpu with half as many cores that came out 6 years ago. Come on. Intel has made ludicrous progress in the atom lineup, they aren't even comparable.

[Curious Pineapple]

I did some programming on an Atom D510 machine, infact I've just got that machine to power on again after it randomly failed. It's not too bad but it's running like crap with Windows 10 at the moment.

[Bananasplit_00]

Just now, Sauron said:

Yes, let's compare it to a cpu with half as many cores that came out 6 years ago. Come on. Intel has made ludicrous progress in the atom lineup, they aren't even comparable.

well true, but they are still weak

[Sauron]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

well true, but they are still weak

But fast enough for basic needs, and now they play fhd video no problem.

[Bananasplit_00]

Just now, Sauron said:

But fast enough for basic needs, and now they play fhd video no problem.

well theres not going to be much in the way of gaming done on one anyway and videoedeting will also be horrible probably

[Mira Yurizaki]

I used a tablet with an Atom Z3740 and it wasn't really that bad. I used Firefox on it and it got through most of the sites I frequent, including YouTube and my assortment of HD videos. I wouldn't count against all gaming, I was able to run Shadowrun on it. However, playing Half-Life 2 is possible, but the settings had to be lowered to medium and it was chugging at about 30 FPS still. Doing anything more than that though is more or less out of the question.

 

So while Atoms are a lot better than they were back in the netbook days, they're only suitable for content consumption and basic gaming.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

Was that on Windows or Android? Android is a lot lighter.

Windows. Windows 8/10. Full version. The fun part was how low I got the fresh boot idle memory usage down to: 350MB.

 

And people say Windows is a memory hog...

[Mira Yurizaki]

8 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Holy... teach me your ways, senpai.

Well, you have 2GB of RAM and 32-bit Windows to start...

 

Somehow in the sea of backing things up and shifting files around, I lost the screen shot.

 

EDIT: WAAAAIT.

 

It was on my tiny thumb drive I rarely use

 

However note that 1.4GB is available and only 0.6GB is committed. Meaning it's not "Windows decided to use 350 in RAM and a load of memory in the page file", it means it was using that much period.

[Guest]

I use atom equipped laptops to supply to my technicians out on the road. 

They can barely handle the most basic operations of web browsing, etc. 

[IAmAndre]

58 minutes ago, Sauron said:

They aren't, if you want to play battlefield 1942 you'll be fine. The performance difference with the core M is actually not huge, although it will be noticeable particularly in games. Web browsing, (light) programming and office work should not be a problem. 4Gb of ram may be a little low for a windows machine though, if you notice high ram usage and slow downs you may want to consider switching to linux on that machine.

Actually I'm a Linux geek and I use Windows on my main PC just for gaming, so having Windows on this laptop would be awesome. However, from what I saw in forums there are many issues from missing features in the track pad to no sound and shorter battery life. With that in mind, I'll probably stick to Windows but I definitely won't be doing heavy tasks, again, this is going to be a secondary computer and I need something light and cheap.

[IAmAndre]

25 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well, you have 2GB of RAM and 32-bit Windows to start...

 

Somehow in the sea of backing things up and shifting files around, I lost the screen shot.

 

EDIT: WAAAAIT.

 

It was on my tiny thumb drive I rarely use

 

However note that 1.4GB is available and only 0.6GB is committed. Meaning it's not "Windows decided to use 350 in RAM and a load of memory in the page file", it means it was using that much period.

You might want to write a blog article about that I'd definitely repost on my blog, I'm currently working on it.

[IAmAndre]

14 minutes ago, Alexokan said:

I use atom equipped laptops to supply to my technicians out on the road. 

They can barely handle the most basic operations of web browsing, etc. 

How much RAM do they have and what Atom is it?

[IAmAndre]

My question still hasn't been answered though : in which cases do single core benchmarks really matter, instead of multi core ones?

[Mira Yurizaki]

24 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

You might want to write a blog article about that I'd definitely repost on my blog, I'm currently working on it.

I have a post in the Guides forum, I forgot to link it on my profile. If you can, look for "How OSes manage memory"

21 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

My question still hasn't been answered though : in which cases do single core benchmarks really matter, instead of multi core ones?

Single core benchmarks matter in applications that are I/O bound. Internet browsers are a major example of this as web page rendering is done serially and I think all JavaScript engines are single threaded.

 

Games are hit and miss, but DX11 and before do better with single threaded performance.

[incarnate]

3 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Hmm I'm sure it can play many of the games I have in mind since many of them were released in the early 2000's. They can't be that slow, can they?

Depends on the generation. Before baytrail they were horrible. But my Asus transformer book was able to play civ v (though performance tanked late game), and a variety of indie games. However they are that slow and ram limited.

 

I never intended to game on my transformer book. I was shocked by how well it did. However outside of 2d indie games and emulators, I wouldn't expect much out of an atom.

[IAmAndre]

15 minutes ago, incarnate said:

Depends on the generation. Before baytrail they were horrible. But my Asus transformer book was able to play civ v (though performance tanked late game), and a variety of indie games. However they are that slow and ram limited.

 

I never intended to game on my transformer book. I was shocked by how well it did. However outside of 2d indie games and emulators, I wouldn't expect much out of an atom.

 

1 hour ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I have a post in the Guides forum, I forgot to link it on my profile. If you can, look for "How OSes manage memory"

Single core benchmarks matter in applications that are I/O bound. Internet browsers are a major example of this as web page rendering is done serially and I think all JavaScript engines are single threaded.

 

Games are hit and miss, but DX11 and before do better with single threaded performance.

Alright I think I'll give this laptop a try. I do have a Transformer T100 too but running on Android. I'm not amazed by the overall performance or the build quality, but I think the performance hiccups are more related Asus poor optimization. The games I want to play are Age of Empires iii (over 200 hours of gameplay so far), Trine, old Tomb Raider games, old Hitman games and other PS 2 titles like Bully or Devil may cry 4. Do you think they will run okay?

[ColeTheTechDude]

Here's my answer. If your application uses only a single thread, then single core performance will absolutely matter, especially with how resource intensive many things like browsers are these days. Gaming on a single core? Forget about it. Most games require at least a dual core or higher processor. I wouldn't even bother doing anything 3D related on an atom processor because they seem to struggle with even the most basic tasks.

[incarnate]

4 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

 

Alright I think I'll give this laptop a try. I do have a Transformer T100 too but running on Android. I'm not amazed by the overall performance or the build quality, but I think the performance hiccups are more related Asus poor optimization. The games I want to play are Age of Empires iii (over 200 hours of gameplay so far), Trine, old Tomb Raider games, old Hitman games and other PS 2 titles like Bully or Devil may cry 4. Do you think they will run okay?

I'm not going to tell you yes or no. Honestly I wouldn't expect any gaming performance out of an atom. They weren't intended to game. Best of luck if you go for it, but you should look for something that isn't meant for web browsing.

 

Also older games only ran on 1-2 threads, so single core performance is going to matter more

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, ColeTheTechDude said:

Here's my answer. If your application uses only a single thread, then single core performance will absolutely matter, especially with how resource intensive many things like browsers are these days. Gaming on a single core? Forget about it. Most games require at least a dual core or higher processor. I wouldn't even bother doing anything 3D related on an atom processor because they seem to struggle with even the most basic tasks.

Atoms before they became SoC's (they started on Z2000 and went up from there) were pretty underpowered for sure. But Intel stepped up its game in the mobile market and the newer ones will perform basic functions just fine. When I had my tablet, I ran with Firefox without much problem and played around with 3D stuff, but I wasn't expecting it to run Crysis 3 on maximum at a playable framerate, that's for sure.

 

Also games don't really require two cores. At least most of them. I got Doom to run on a single core and it still managed to pull 50+ FPS. The only game I know that will flat out refuse to run unless you have two cores is ARMA3.

[ColeTheTechDude]

11 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Atoms before they became SoC's (they started on Z2000 and went up from there) were pretty underpowered for sure. But Intel stepped up its game in the mobile market and the newer ones will perform basic functions just fine. When I had my tablet, I ran with Firefox without much problem and played around with 3D stuff, but I wasn't expecting it to run Crysis 3 on maximum at a playable framerate, that's for sure.

 

Also games don't really require two cores. At least most of them. I got Doom to run on a single core and it still managed to pull 50+ FPS. The only game I know that will flat out refuse to run unless you have two cores is ARMA3.

Doom is a more GPU intensive game, to which I must ask, what gpu/cpu are you using that made you get 50 fps on a single core?!? I have heard of nothing (Not even a core i7 skylake) that can perform that high on a single core.