Atom N330 vs Athlon 1.2Ghz

[Cris70]

Hello,
my wife's using an old box with an Athlon (K7 SLOT A) 1.2Ghz and 512Mb RAM, running Windows 2000. I am thinking about buying her a new ASUS eeeBox EB1501 (Atom N330 Dual core, 2Gb RAM). What would be the performance of the Atom vs her old processor?

TIA
Cris

 

[jonnyboyC]

honestly not that much better, even with two cores and higher clock speeds, the atoms performance per clock is pretty weak, but if you would want a new os the 2GB would help, and if it's just for web browsing word processing, the eeebox will be fine

 

[Cris70]

Thank you jonnyboyC. She mostly does web browsing, email, word processing.
Would it be better, performance-wise, to keep the preinstalled Win7 or to downgrade to XP?

 

[jonnyboyC]

I'm sure you may get a little better performance from xp, but it's honestly wouldn't be that much, even though 7 uses more memory, cpu wise i think it's pretty close, i would only downgrade if you have slow downs in the OS. personally, the interface is alot more user friendly and appealing to me so i would at least test it would before downgrading

 

[jaguarskx]

I would say that the Asus eeeBox's performance will be better than the good ol' Athon 1.2GHz. Without a doubt. The Athlon 1.2GHz itself is considered to be anemic nowadays.

It's not something I would buy for myself, but it has a nice sleek design that your wife will probably appreciate. It takes up very little desk space and everything is easily accessible. The only real problem I have with it are the open ports / slots which can allow dust to collect up over the years. Solvable by simply wiping it every now and then, but some people tend to end up being lazy and eventually stop doing so.... (like me).

You should note that the keyboard is not full size, there is no numeric pad. But if your wife is only doing word processing and web surfing, then it's not be big issue.

Just in case, it is not meant for gaming. I remember reading about someone trying to install the Sims 2 and he/she got some type of video error message when trying to run the game.

 

[jaguarskx]

Here's a comparison of the dual core Atom N330 vs. a single core AMD Sempron LE-1150 2.0GHz. The Sempron is a newer generation CPU which is most likely a little more efficient at executing instructions than the older Athlon 1.2GHz CPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/91?vs=44

 

[Cris70]

Best answer selected by Cris70.

 

[Cris70]

Thanks to all who replied! You replies have been very helpful and helped me decide.

Bye
Cris