ASUS Eee PC 1005PE: Pineview Arrives
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Has Graphics Performance Improved?
The initial results in PCMark look like the GMA 3150 is really no better than the GMA 950, and the tests in 3DMark pretty much confirm that. See for yourselves:
SM3.0 doesn't work on the 3150, so 3DMark06 only generates a partial result, but that's better than what we managed previously with GMA 950. 3DMark03 has the 1005PE tied with the M1022 and trailing the 1005HA slightly, but they're all so slow it doesn't really matter. 3DMark05 does show a 20% improvement for 3150 vs. 950 (1005PE vs. 1005HA), but 20% faster than dirt-slow is still dirt-slow. Meanwhile, the ION LE in the HP Mini 311 is over five times as fast in 3DMark03, nearly eight times as fast in 3DMark05, and pretty much an order of magnitude faster in 3DMark06 (which it manages to run properly, unlike the 3150).
The 1201N ups the ante and improves on the HP Mini 311 by 17% in 3DMark05/06, as well as being able to run Vantage (DX10 is enabled in the ION but not the ION LE, unless you hack the drivers).
Our experience with actual games echoes what we see here, but we can provide a few more details. First, forget 3D gaming on the GMA 950/3150 unless you want to run titles that are from 5+ years back. Second, the GMA 4500MHD is better, but it still has a ways to go. Interestingly enough, we could run more games with the latest Intel drivers, but performance is still less than half what the 9400M (ION) can provide. That's the bad news (for Intel).
As far as ION goes, we have some good news (for NVIDIA). Single-core Atom is still insufficient for most games, but the Atom 330 in the 1201N adds just enough to make gaming borderline possible on some titles. Batman averaged 24FPS on the 1201N at 800x600 and minimum details, but there were areas where Batman would run in slow-mo (around 10FPS) and other areas where performance was closer to 30FPS. You could play the game, but it leaves a lot to be desired. WoW on the other hand isn't as demanding in terms of the CPU, so you should be able to get your MMO fix that way (though large raids are likely to cause problems).
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JOEyGADGET - Friday, January 29, 2010 - link
I bought a 100PE thinking I could use eeectl to boost the screen brightness to the ultrabright setting the way I boosted the brightness on previous ASUS netbooks. However eeectl ultrabright setting has no effect. Anyone know how to force the 1005PE to turn on or activate ultrabright setting? At its brightest setting the 1005PE is simply too dim for my eyes. Suggestions welcome and appreciated. Thanks, JOEyGADGETProDigit - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
I totally stopped reading after page 4, where the results became opposite of tomshardware results, and opposite of logic.The memory controller is on chip, and yet it's slower than a separate?
Don't make me laugh!
Really, for benchmarks you don't need to be with anandtech, for they just paste some stupid numbers there that won't make any sense whatsoever!
Then again, tomshardware is only interested in running 3D mark and Crysis tests!
whatthehey - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
You, sir, are a moron if you are going to compare the THG article with this one. Unless I'm mistaken, the only Pine Trail article is this one:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-d510...
See the problem? One, they're testing D510, not a netbook. Two, they don't have results for old Atom N280 and new Atom N450. Three, you're trusting THG, a site known to have sold out on too many occasions to even begin to count, just like HardOCP.
Which results in this article are wrong? PCMark is all over the map, which as they point out is pretty much par for the course. Don't trust PCMark05, and there aren't any meaningful points of comparison for Vantage. They would need to show other netbooks with Windows 7 Starter, and they don't have that here.
In short, to be "opposite" of some other site, they actually have to compare the same sort of hardware. AnandTech has a separate D510 article, but D510 isn't a netbook. Looks to me like the N450 has no reason to be faster. Same cache instead of the desktop, where the D510 has twice the cache size compared to 330.
Please take the THG trolling and go elsewhere. THG ceased to be relevant right around the time that Thomas Pabst stopped being the head honcho.
foolsgambit11 - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
It looks like in the next couple years, we'll see Atom-derivatives relegated to MIDs and CULV-derivatives taking it's place for netbooks/nettops. I think this was Intel's stated objective for Atom from the beginning, right?geok1ng - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
The very simple reason that Pineview sucks soo much is that Intel want to push the crappy GMA 3150 and the sluggish 4500HD down our troats. Another point for the Asus UL80vt, Dell 14z, Ions. The consumer cant have both products:a good GPU and a good enough CPU.Fanfoot - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
I'm surprised that Intel had the GMA 500 core available to them, yet the GPU they've paired with the N450 is still so anemic. The battery life is certainly nice, but the inability to play HD Flash is seriously questionable.piroroadkill - Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - link
GMA500 is a decent product with godawful driver supportShadowmaster625 - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
Sempron M100 is lurking about out there. And I cant find much of any info on it. Can you guys try to find and review a Sempron M100 notebook with HD4200 graphics and a decent size battery? If you do can you play around with underclocking/undervolting it?JarredWalton - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
I've been trying to get *any* of the 45nm AMD laptops. I'll continue working on it, as I'm quite interested in seeing what they can do for power reqs. Turion II Ultra + HD 4200 seems like it should at least be competitive with dual-core ION (i.e. ASUS 1201N), but I'm not sure AMD is going to get power requirements down low enough.MamiyaOtaru - Monday, December 21, 2009 - link
"When Intel released the Atom CPUs, netbooks received a dramatic boost in performance and battery life"Battery life, yes. Performance, not so much. In single threaded apps, the Celeron was faster than the Atom. Overall, having that second thread was nice, but raw performance wasn't helped so much