Intel Pentium 4 Vs. Atom: A Battle Of The Generations

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Most people know that Intel’s Atom is a slow, low-cost processor. But does it even offer enough performance to take it beyond desktop processors nearly a decade old? Today we're comparing a modern Atom CPU to two Northwood-class Pentium 4-based PCs.

Benchmark Results: Applications

3ds Max is heavily optimized to utilize multiple processing cores, and even though the single-core Atom loses, the dual-core comes out as winner.

7-Zip also runs best on the Atom D510 dual-core. Interestingly, the Atom 230 single-core does better than the Pentium 4 2.2 GHz in this benchmark, most likely because of SSE optimizations.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos