Intel Pentium B940 vs AMD E-350

[elm007]

I am trying to decide between two similarly configured laptops both priced at $349, containing the following two processors.


1) Intel Pentium B940 Dual Core 2.0 GHz
The Passmark Benchmark database shows this processor to have a CPU Mark of 1978, and a Rank of 337.


2) AMD E-350 Dual Core 1.6 GHz
The Passmark site's Benchmark database shows this processor to have a CPU Mark of 732, and a Rank of 734.


The Mark and the Rank for the AMD E-350 does not sound right.


1) Is the AMD E-350 in the database, the same processor as the AMD E-350 Dual Core 1.6 GHz?

2) Are there other sources of data, or other ways to compare these two processors, so I can choose the more powerful processor for my new laptop purchase?

3) Does anyone have any comments or input on these two processors, as to which is better / faster?


Thank you for your help.

 

[Timop]

B940 should be massively faster, however the two isn't in the same market segment.
The pentium is an entry level laptop chip, while the E350 is a ULV.

 

[Wisecracker]

I suspect the E350 Brazos would slobber-knock the Pentium around in anything video related with better battery life to boot.

 

[simon12]

The B940 would be much better in pure processing power but much weaker in graphics and battery life (assuming the batteries are the same).

 

[elm007]

Ok, so I am coming to understand that the AMD E-350 has better graphics performance than the Intel B940.

I don't play computer games. I do heavy web browsing with a ton of open tabs. I use MS Publisher, MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint.

Based on what I will be doing, which processor would be better?

Will the AMD E-350 work as well as the Intel B940 in for web browsing with multiple tabs, MS Publisher, MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Powerpoint?

Will the Intel B940 still play full-screen movies, and Youtube videos, with no problems?

Thank you all, for your replies.

 

[popatim]

B940 all the way for you.

 

[elm007]

Thank you all for your replies.

 

[Wisecracker]

Ok, so I am coming to understand that the AMD E-350 has better graphics performance than the Intel B940.

I don't play computer games. I do heavy web browsing with a ton of open tabs. I use MS Publisher, MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint.

Based on what I will be doing, which processor would be better?

Will the AMD E-350 work as well as the Intel B940 in for web browsing with multiple tabs, MS Publisher, MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Powerpoint?

Will the Intel B940 still play full-screen movies, and Youtube videos, with no problems?

Thank you all, for your replies.

In 'single' cpu tasks the B940 will be faster than the E350. In multi-tasking senarios I would not count on it.

There are demos (google Brazos APU demo) that show multi-tasking senarios with 100% cpu utilization, where the e350 (using the UVD3 video decode engine) maintains stutter-free video playback while crunching the CPU at 100% in background tasks. Not so much with the other guys.

And most likely, the E350 will approach twice the battery life.

 

[elm007]

After all this, I decided to spend a little more ($450 instead of $350), and get a laptop with an Intel i3 2310m. I hope I made a good decision.

Thank you all.

 

[Wisecracker]

You're not really doing serious CPU intensive stuff -- just about anything with 3-4 GB should work well for you.

It's those craptastic mobile HDDs that are gonna kill yah. If there is any way you could snag an SSD for your OS, and move the mobile HDD into an external enclosure, you'd have something, there.

 

[geeksalive]

The new Intel B940 looks pretty good, but the new AMD A4-3300M ("A-Series") CPU looks even better. Best Buy the HP Model g4-1117dx (Best Buy SKU: 2715258) with a 14" screen for $380. It has a PassMark score about 26% better than the Intel B940, and 3.4 times the AMD E-350. (The similar B940-based g4-1107dx is $350.)

I just did some Passmark lookups on laptop CPUs. In declining order of performance they are:

Faster (and more expensive) than most people need:
Intel Core i7-2630QM: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+i7-2630QM 6298

Very fast:
AMD A8-3530MX (A8 "A-Series"): http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+A6-3530MX 4611
AMD A8-3500M (A8 "A-Series"): http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+A8-3500M 3903
AMD A6-3400M (A6 "A-Series"): http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+A6-3400M 3356
Intel Core i5-2410M: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+Core+i5-2410M 3326

Pretty fast:
AMD A4-3300M ("A-Series"): http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+A4-3300M 2508
Intel Core i3-370M: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+i3-370M 2220
AMD Phenom II quad-core P960: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+P960 2156
Intel B940: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+B940 1995

Not too shabby:
Intel Pentium P6200: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+P6200 1631
Intel Celeron P4600: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+P4600 1579
Intel T4500: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+P4600 1545

Rather slow:
AMD E-350 (1.6 GHz "E-Series"): http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+E-350 732
AMD V-140: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+V-140 667

Slow as mud:
AMD C-50: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+C-50 452
Intel Atom N455: http://www.google.com/search?q=passmark+Atom+N455 319

 

[Wisecracker]

Passmark CPU scores are a horrible metric.

What is depicted as a 40% difference in numeric score is essentially a matter of a few seconds on tests that take several minutes to complete.

It's why AMD no longer supports them (nor do nVidia or VIA who left before AMD).

 

[geeksalive]

Which benchmarks do you prefer to Passmark?

BTW, Passmark's web site now shows a few more samples for the A4-3300M and B940 CPUs than they did when I posted before. Both CPU scores have slipped slightly, but the AMD A4-3300M still looks a bit better than the Intel B940, and the AMD E-350 is clearly much slower than the other two:

AMD A4-3300M: Passmark 2412 (from 13 samples)

Intel B940: Passmark 1973 (from 22 samples)

AMD E-350: Passmark 729 (from 283 samples)

 

[stilz2]

Any Fusion AMD CPUs will be better for multimedia (mainly HD video decoding) than B940, due to B940 not having hardware decoding capability (called 'Clear Video HD'). For pure-CPU tasks though, B940 will be faster.