Cinebench, File Compression, And PDF Creation
Cinebench R10
Maxon’s Cinebench could be described as a semi-synthetic benchmark, making it a good transition from the synthetics to the real-world portion of our suite. Not a productive application itself, Cinebench is at least based on the rendering suite Cinema 4D. Although R11.5 is the current release, R10 is better suited to lightweight systems like these.
Knowing the tech specs of the chips powering these systems, our results could have probably been predicted. The Sandy Bridge-based CPUs dominate the field, including the OpenGL test. This graphics-oriented subtest seems to benefit from the additional CPU horsepower in no small measure, too.
With only one CPU core working, AMD's APUs slot into third and fourth place, followed by VIA’s Nano X2. The aging design is able to outpace both Atom CPUs by a wide margin.
Exploiting all available compute resources, though, threaded version of the test presents us a different ranking. Once more, the Core i3-2330M leads the pack, pulling ahead of its Celeron sibling. Third place goes to the most recent Atom CPU, which helps offset its IPC deficiency with four logical cores. The two AMD APUs end up within striking distance of each other. Meanwhile, four threads aren't enough to help the Atom D525 against the Brazos-based chips. VIA’s Nano X2 brings up the rear.
Once more, a look at the OpenGL test shows what 100 MHz of GPU speed can do for performance, as the E-450 takes a clear win over the E-350. The rest of the field finishes where we'd expect, as the newer Atom beats the older one, while VIA's Chrome9 engine pushes the Nano X2 to the bottom of the chart.
File Compression: 7-Zip, WinRAR, and WinZip
Even on low-end systems like these, file compression is a pretty standard workload. How do IPC, frequency, and threading factor into our results? This is the first of our timed benchmarks, so shorter bars denote better performance.
You’d think that, in a well-threaded benchmark like 7-Zip, the results would be easy to predict. And you’d be right, mostly. Still, there are some surprises. That the two more desktop-oriented Intel chips lead the pack is not one of them. Neither is the dominance of the Atom processors compared to the other nettop-specific chips.
That VIA outpaces both AMD APUs is definitely unexpected, however.
WinRAR tells a slightly different story, with Intel taking first, second, fourth, and last place. AMD’s E-450 grabs the bronze medal just a hair’s breadth ahead of the Atom D2700. We see another close race for fifth place, with AMD pulling ahead of VIA by a similarly slim margin. Finally, Intel’s old Atom D525 does not seem to do especially well in WinRAR, for some reason.
WinZip 14 is a decidedly single-threaded application. Interestingly, though, the rankings don't really change much, aside from AMD’s E-350 and VIA’s Nano X2 trading places.
PDF Creation
Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional employs only one thread to print our 100+ page PowerPoint presentation to PDF format. The two Sandy Bridge-based models lead the pack once more, with the APUs trailing a ways behind. Next up are the newer Atom D2700 and VIA Nano X2. The Atom D525 finds itself in last place yet again.
