Efficiency Analysis: Core i3 Trumps Atom On The Desktop

Features
By Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos
published

Atom was designed to be a low-cost, low-power solution, but its value in the desktop space is debatable if you consider performance. We pit the cheapest Core i3 against Intel's Atom on a performance-per-dollar and a per-watt basis to see which is better.

Benchmark Results: Efficiency In Threaded Applications

The multi-threaded applications in the second part of our efficiency testing were 3ds Max, 7-Zip, Adobe Photoshop CS4, HandBrake, Lame, MainConcept, and WinRAR.

The runtime for these multi-threaded applications is much closer now—at least if we compare Core i3 to the Atom D510. The older Atom 230 remains way behind.

Since these workloads tax two processing cores, the Core i3 requires more power on average. The Atom D510 also jumps over the 30W mark.

If we look at the total power required to complete the multi-threaded workload test, i3 handily wins. It only required a quarter of the power that an Atom 230 needed to finish the job.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos