Does Intel's Dual-Core Atom Improve Efficiency?

Efficiency: Performance Per Watt Shootout

SYSmark 2004 SE Efficiency

Here is the deal: the numbers you see reflect the actual power in watt-hours used to complete the SYSmark 2004 SE run. The Core 2 Duo clearly required the least power, followed by the Atom 230. The Atom 330 dual core finished last, utilizing the most power for this workload.

We then divided the SYSmark 2004 SE score by the number of watt-hours used. The result seems disappointing for the Atom 330, and attests the great efficiency of the Core 2 system—again.

PCMark05 Efficiency

We did the same efficiency testing by tracking power and benchmark results using PCMark05. In this case, the differences are less significant, but the Core 2 Duo E7200 system was still the solution that required the least power to complete this benchmark.

In this benchmark the Atom 330 dual-core looks much better, as it provides clearly more performance in PCMark05, which helped to complete the benchmark run earlier and conserve some power this way. The Atom 330 is chasing the Core 2 machine, but it still doesn’t stand a chance.