The Battle of The Netbooks: Intel vs AMD

When it comes to processing power does Intel’s Atom deliver the goods or does AMD’s Zacate Fusion do it better? Well since we like to make relevant articles that apply to the real world lets analyse just that by looking at the main processors that Intel and AMD offer in the netbook department at this moment in time.

First up, in true alphabetical fashion, is AMD. AMD offers ‘Fusion’ processors for its low wattage netbook processor range under the codename ‘Zacate’. Currently you can buy AMD equipped netbooks with an E450, E350 or E300 and that is pretty much it. They all pack 2 cores, 1MB of cache, Radeon class graphics, DDR3 1066 or 1333 support and an 18W TDP. AMD does make other CPUs for netbooks under the ‘Ontario’ codename, the C-50 and C-60 are the most popular, but stock for these is quite low. However, these are still reasonably good CPUs with similar specs to the ‘Zacate’ E series except with 9W TDPs and slightly less powerful graphics.

Intel offers more models than AMD but they are essentially the same CPU with bits turned on or off (such as hyper threading) and slight clock speed adjustments. The more common Intel Atoms are the N455, N570 and the N550 but they are many other models on offer including the new N2800 and D2700 Cedar trail atoms. Intel Atoms, including the new Cedar Trail ones, tend to offer between 1 and 2 cores, 2 or 4 threads, 1MB of cache and TDPs between 6.5 and 13W. Older Atoms exist but do not have integrated graphics and we would recommend avoiding these like the plague.

If we take a look at a direct CPU comparison and put all questions of graphics aside you tend to see Intel with the lead. Their absolute best model, the D2700, has about a 10% lead over AMD’s best model the E450 in terms of CPU performance. Intel then further edges ahead with a TDP win of about 10W compared to AMD’s 18W. Although when it comes to the fight for the mid-range market AMD’s E350 and E450 tend to trounce anything except Intel’s latest Cedar Trail Atom’s.

If we were to rank AMD’s most common Fusion netbook processors in rank of their performance it would look something like this:

• E450
• E350
• E300
• C60
• C30

And doing the same with Intel’s Atoms we would get this:

• D2700
• N2800
• N570
• N550
• N455

Obviously separate lists aren’t that useful so if we assign these in a ‘Netbook Top 10’ using a general CPU benchmark to rank the processors in order of performance we get this:

• Intel D2700 dual core, 836 points
• AMD E450 dual core, 763 points
• Intel N2800 dual core, 755 points
• AMD E350 dual core, 727 points
• Intel N570 dual core, 640 points
• AMD E300 dual core, 601 points
• AMD C60 dual core, 569 points
• Intel N550 dual core, 568 points
• AMD C50 dual core, 452 points
• Intel N455 single core, 321 points

Now you can see that things are relatively competitive between both manufacturers in terms of performance as all the top 9 processors are dual core processors and they all compete at similar levels in terms of performance but you can clearly see there is no room in the market for single core netbook CPUs anymore so we can almost ignore the N455. Intel takes the crown if we were to give power usage precedence but if we were to take into consideration price, then unsurprisingly AMD walks off with it.

But the CPU isn’t everything. Who shines through when we take the graphics into consideration?