Intel Core 2 CULV Roundup: Who Needs Atom?
by Jarred Walton on February 4, 2010 4:00 AM ESTCULV: Great for Mobility
If we just limit ourselves to a discussion of long(er) battery life laptops and netbooks, the rundown simplifies a lot. Your choices are between Atom and CULV, with better battery life and lower performance on the Atom side. NVIDIA's ION platform offers better graphics and video support, but you're still saddled with a slow Atom CPU. Pricing is closer to $500 on most ION netbooks, and opinions on the size are split between those who feel 10.1" is fine and those that feel it's too small - I'm in the latter camp. Battery life, incidentally, is slightly worse with ION than CULV laptops. As an alternative, the ASUS 1201N goes for dual-core Atom 330 and ION, further reducing battery life but improving the form factor if you're not a fan of 10.1" keyboards. CULV is still faster in non-gaming tasks, but gaming and video playback work quite well on the 1201N. CULV is a great way to balance performance, battery life, and cost while keeping a small size. Given the choice, we'd either go with one of the CULV models or we'd move up to CULV with switchable graphics; Atom remains more of a secondary (or tertiary) computer. Sure they cost more, but we feel the cost is justified.
Which is the "best" of the above options we just listed? Honestly, that's a question you need to answer for yourself, and hopefully we've given you enough data to determine where you stand. Right now, I'm going to recommend CULV for most users looking at a decent laptop, simply because it fits my mobile lifestyle. If I were in need of a new laptop and only had $300, I'd skip Atom and save my pennies until I could afford a CULV laptop instead. They may be almost twice the cost, but in my book they're more than twice as good. With CULV I feel I can do everything I need without serious compromises; Atom is just too slow to be my only PC. We're very curious to see if the new Arrandale CULV offerings can improve on current CULV or if they'll be a case of two steps forward, two steps back. We should know some time in the next month or two.
We looked at three CULV laptops today, and unfortunately we had some fundamental complaints with both of the 11.6" units. We didn't like the Acer AS1810T keyboard much, and the Dell 11z touchpad was, in a word, horrible. There's another option that we can recommend for those that want to stay close to netbook sizes: the ASUS UL20a. The chassis is essentially the same as the 1201N, which we liked quite a lot, with battery life listed at 7.5 hours. It includes an SU7300 CPU, but memory is cut to just 2GB compared to 4GB on competing offerings. Still, 12.1" is close enough to 11.6" that few would complain. The only remaining drawback is that you lose HDMI output, which the Dell 11z, Acer Timeline, and Gateway EC5409u all provide. Overall, we feel the best current CULV designs priced at $600 or less all come from Acer and Gateway.
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The Gateway EC5409u is an excellent choice if you like the larger keyboard and LCD, and subjectively it's my favorite of the bunch. The Acer Timeline 3810TZ and 4810TZ are close behind, with keyboards that are fine for typing (but unfortunately no aluminum cover unless you buy one of the more expensive models). We've tested the EC5409u, and we've looked at the Timeline 3810, 4810, and 5810 at local stores. Frankly, we're impressed with what Acer and Gateway have put together, and we're happy to award all four models our Bronze Editors' Choice award. The 11.6" Acer and Gateway models have quirks (specifically, the keyboard), but the 13.3", 14.0", and 15.6" offerings are all very good and worth a serious look. The only caveat is that we only recommend the versions with dual-core CPUs, so make sure you order the right model - the Pentium SU4100 or Core 2 Duo SU7300 are both much better than the Pentium SU2700 or Core 2 Solo SU3500.
Why only a bronze? Because there's still room for improvement; think of this as an "A-" award rather than an "A+" - and if you're keeping score, that means the ASUS UL80Vt is still our preferred solution. Give us a better LCD panel and more of the aluminum shell on the EC5409u and we're looking at a Gold award. Now we just need to wait and see what companies can do with Arrandale CULV. It took a couple years for Core 2 CULV to hit its stride, but hopefully the Arrandale laptops will build on the good (low price and great battery life) rather than returning to the CULV of old (underpowered and overpriced).
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diego10arg - Monday, March 15, 2010 - link
Hi all,I am trying to upgrade my Atom 270N netbook and my primary and only concern is FullHD Playback through HDMI. I will be using an external harddrive for backup and storage purposes, so HD does not matter.
After looking for a while I found several laptops with Celeron ULV 723, Athlon Neo MV-40, SU4100 and SU7300.
So far I got this prices (I live in Argentina, prices are in USD)
. MSI Wind 210-050AR, Athlon Neo MV-40, 2GB RAM, HD250Gb > 609 USD
. MSI X340-241AR, Celeron ULV 723 1.2Ghz, 2GB RAM, HD320Gb > 699 USD
. Dell Inspiron 11z, ULV SU4100, 2Gb RAM, HD160Gb > 709 USD
. ASUS AU UL30A-QX050D, ULV SU7300, 4Gb RAM, HD320GB > 915 USD
What differences are between CULV 723 and SU4100?
What would you buy? Why?
Thanks all!
Regards,
DiEGO
Daeros - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Any word on how something like the 1201n will perform with the new GPU-accelerated versions of Firefox and IE? I feel the current-gen Intel graphics are just unacceptable, so the Ion and AMD laptops are more attractive, but I don't want to feel like I'm trapped in molasses when I browse the interwebs.fwacct4 - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
I would like to see noise levels tested for laptops. The thing with desktops is that you can actually hide them some place where noise doesn't bother people, but laptops are always right in front of you, and some laptops have a very annoying high-pitch noise that is noticeable because they are so close to the user.I'm sure there are a lot of people interested in having quiet laptops, so I hope that noise level can be compared among laptops as well, and especially with CULV processors which are low voltage, there is an opportunity to present a particular model as being particularly quiet, which would really be a selling point for some.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
All of the CULV laptops tend to run very quiet, to the point where my SPL meter has trouble detecting the noise level over the background noise in the room (around 30dB). Even under a heavy stress test like CINEBENCH, the fans rarely reach a level that I would consider distracting (so typically under 35dB). When you're not running a stress test, the fans are often stopped. Out of the three, the Gateway EC5409u seems to be a bit quieter, likely because it's larger and has even more room inside to dissipate heat, but the others weren't loud by any stretch.viewwin - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I would like to see the next version of Ion mixed with a CULV CPU for a decently powerful HTPC.acron1 - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
A couple of weeks ago I was looking to replace my Toshiba NB205 with something small but with a bit more punch. I ended up with the Toshiba Satellite T115D-S1125 primarily because of the HD3200 graphics. I knew that in terms of battery life the Intel based solutions are better choices but I wanted the extra graphics power available from ATI. Battery life while browsing the web, some flash and email is just over 5 hours...Hrel - Saturday, February 6, 2010 - link
I'm still waiting for a CULV laptop with a screen of AT LEAST 1600x900 and a dedicated GPU that's about equivalent to the GT240 from Nvidia; I'd prefer it be from Nvidia but since I want DX11 AMD will do fine; the 5series really steps it up. Asus has what I agree is the best CULV laptop, I just want the CPU overclocked to 2GHz, a screen with a resolution of 1600x900 and a GPU about as powerful as a GT240 for 1000 bucks or less. That's totally reasonable. And I want it NOW! 15" chassis too, btw.Schugy - Friday, February 5, 2010 - link
I don't think that I care about the time I can wait in front of my Netbook but I need to know whether the battery can encode xxx thousand frames to complete the task.JarredWalton - Friday, February 5, 2010 - link
In that case, FPS is a more useful figure than the time taken, since you don't know how many frames are in the video we choose to test. (For reference, we use a 1080p MPEG2 video for the DivX test with 719 frames.) You would also need to know how long the battery lasts under a heavier CPU load, which I haven't shown here. If you look at the "100% CPU power draw" figure and divide the battery capacity by that amount, you can get an estimate... but the power settings will definitely come into play.Let's see if I can help: a 90 minute DVD as an example encoded into DivX would require the encoding of approximately 162000 frames. Now our test results show 5.14 FPS, but that's a far more complex 1080p encode. DVD quality should be a lot faster. A quick test of a 3978 frame chapter of a DVD yields an encode rate of 43.71 FPS (91.0 seconds) on the Gateway EC5409u. That means for a 90 minute 30 FPS DVD (like my test video), you'd need at least 61.77 minutes of battery life. I don't even need to run a test to say that it wouldn't be a problem for CULV on that sort of encode. Atom N450 would still take about 40~50% longer, but again that's not a problem.
Then again, the default settings result in a low quality encode. If you do a 2-pass DivX encode targeting better quality, total time required increases over two-fold. I just tried it out and the EC5409u managed to encode the same 3987 frame DVD chapter in 237s, or 16.83 FPS. That means roughly 2.7 hours for a 90 minute DVD, or over 3.5 hours for a two hour DVD encode. If that's what you're trying to do, it's unlikely you'll manage the entire encode while on battery.
buzznut - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
I have the 8200M chipset, I really wouldn't recommend it for gaming. As the article suggests, a discrete graphics option would be better. I think the chipsets that allow the discrete card to turn off when not needed to save battery life are the best options.My laptop has a 2.1 Ghz dual core and 4 gigs of ram, with 4 gigs ready boost. It can't game very well, its heavy and the battery life is atrocious. It gets quite hot while watching video, probably the cpu while using flash, and struggles with hidef.
Given today's options, I would not have gone with the notebook I currently have, as it is too big to carry with the addition of my enormous and heavy chem and bio books. Why drag it along when the battery will die after 2 hours? Most days it sits on a bed side table. I think I would go for a culv with the switchable chipset I mentioned. I am quite jealous of my wife's netbook and 8 hour battery life.
Nice article, it would be nice to visit again in 6 months to see how the mobile market changes.