Review: Intel Atom N450 Benchmarks

The Intel Atom N450 processor for netbooks has replaced the older N270 and N280 CPUs.

The reviewed N450 integrates the CPU, the memory controller, and the graphics processor on a single piece of silicon, in order to reduce power consumption. These chips are separated in the previous N270/N280-based netbook platform.

The new Atom is clocked at 1.66GHz and has 512KB of L2 cache. Its maximal thermal design power (TDP) is 5.5W for the whole package including the CPU, GPU, and memory controller. The processor supports Hyper-Threading, SpeedStep, and Execute Disable Bit technologies, as well as 64-bit computing and SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 instructions.

For this test, I have used the Asus Eee PC 1005P. Besides the N450, the 10.1-inch netbook features 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Starter OS.

The specifications of the tested N450 Atom CPU are very similar to those in the N270/N280 chips. The same applies to its computing performance, as you can see from the benchmark results below:

PC Mark 05 CPU Test (higher is better)
N450 – N280 – N270
1515 – 1479 – 1444 PC Mark 05 CPU Points

SiSoft Sandra Processor Arithmetic & Multimedia (higher is better)
N450 – N280 – N270
4.14 – 4.06 – 3.89 (GIPS) Dhrystone ALU
3.50 – 3.46 – 3.33 (GFLOPS) Whetstone iSSE3
8 – 8.68 – 8.31 (MPixel/s) Int x8 iSSSE3
7 – 6.84 – 6.56 (MPixel/s) Float x4 iSSE2
1.3 – 1.27 – 1.22 (MPixel/s) Double x2 iSSE2

Hyper PI & wPrime (lower time is better)
N450 – N280 – N270
01m 30.7s – 01m 31s – 01m 35s for 1M digits of PI calculated in Hyper PI
117.203 – 117.171 – 122.344 seconds for 32M in wPrime

Regarding graphics performance, the netbook is not capable of playing modern 3D games with its 3D Mark 06 score of only 145 points. The same applies to high definition videos. A Coral Reef Adventure 720p HD trailer had a smooth video playback, but the sound lagged. The same trailer in 1080p, as same as playback of a Youtube 720p video in Chrome browser, looked like a slide show. The Youtube clip in 360p ran smoothly.

The Atom N450-based netbooks are HD video capable if they feature Broadcomm’s BCM 70015 dedicated HD video decoder. For example, the decoder is present in the HP Mini 210 HD, select Dell Mini models, or the upcoming ASUS Eee PC 1005PR. Also, the upcoming netbooks with the N450 and Nvidia ION graphics chip, such as the ASUS 1201PN and Acer Aspire One 532G, will support HD video, as well as some 3D gaming on lower detail settings.

The Eee PC 1005P with its 6-cell battery ran 7 hours and 5 minutes on a single charge, with Internet surfing, playing a couple Youtube videos, word processing, and MP3 playback. The netbook was in “Power Saving” mode with WiFi turned on and the screen brightness set to level 3 out of 5 (60%). With the same settings, the 1005P achieved 5 hours and 42 minutes of run time in Battery Eater default benchmark.

This review and benchmarks show that differences between the Intel Atom N450 and N270/N280 are minor in terms of performance. However, the new Atom platform enables users to do the most common computing tasks, while providing a great battery life.

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