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Shuttle XS29F: Is VIA's Nano Processor Powerful Enough?

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Benchmark Results: Synthetic

The desktop Celeron leads widely in PCMark’s Memories photographic suite, while the Atom’s dual cores take the win in Productivity. With both a low clock speed and a single core, the Nano U1700 is outclassed.

Sandra Arithmetic has scaled almost perfectly to the number of cores available in previous reviews, so the closeness of Celeron 430 single-core and Atom 330 dual-core results indicates the extra power of the Celeron’s underlying technology.

Though the Celeron falls behind in interger and floating point calcutions, its double-precision floating point calculations are much better than that of the dual-core Atom. This is also a place where, clock-for-clock, the single-core Nano performs well.

All three platforms provide similar drive controller performance.

Celeron 430 beats both low-energy platforms in memory performance with all three systems configured to single-channel mode.

77 Comments Comment from the forums
  • 02 September 2009 13:20
    Wouldn't this just be a linux-only machine then? I can't possibly see any other use for it other than maybe a childs pc or a general "Internet & Email only" PC.
    Reply
  • pakardbell486dx2 02 September 2009 13:27
    This may be a dumb question, but why was Xp not used for this test? Clearly "just barely" wont work for people who spend their hard earn money on something like this. Maybe the celeron is ok for vista basic but the atom and nano platforms are just not good enough for Vista. If I can make an analogy comparing Vista and Atom/Nano it's like an old 73' Corolla trying to haul ten tons uphill.
    Reply
  • werr20 02 September 2009 13:33
    wonderful ! i'm waiting for faster cpu-s from via
    Reply
  • ethaniel 02 September 2009 13:42
    No CPU usage tests on Blu-ray playback? I was expecting that...
    Reply
  • tacoslave 02 September 2009 13:54
    amd huron platform thats all i have to say i want to see it benched see how it stakes up.
    Reply
  • Blueridge 02 September 2009 14:11
    I agree that the major drawback of this review is the use of Microsoft Vista. I think that Windows XP Home edition for ULPC or a netbook spin of a linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) would have been a much better choice for this review, especialy since is very well known that Vista is just not the right choice for netbooks (or nettops). Some time ago I read several reviews of the nano processor, based on Win XP and they performed more than OK, they were even suitable for a small HTPC at that time (the toughest challenge was DVD playback back then) and with a better chipset would have performed even netter. But this happens when a resource hungry OS like vista is used... just my 2 cents.
    Reply
  • HalfHuman 02 September 2009 14:14
    i guess a windoze xp or 7 would be a lot better to use with this kind of hardware. in fact i cannot think at a more inapropriate os to run on a nentop than vista. :)
    maybe the performance delta would be the same but the usability would be more than "acceptable".
    regarding the "benchmarking" stuff... i do not think that anybody sane would buy a nettop to use it for hardcore photo editiing or transcoding.
    if i'd buy a nettop i'd be interested in several factors:
    - to be powerfull enough for office work and maybe hd playback
    - to use as little power as possible (which nano does nicely) as this kind of device would be rarely powered down
    - to be silent (which nano is)
    i think that performance per watt is irrelevant here as a system like this is not meant to be "performant". i think that the one that uses less watts, has more features is queter wins here.
    my take on this is that via has a very nice platform and nano wins even if it's not the fastest.
    Reply
  • Blueridge 02 September 2009 14:21
    I just took a look at Via's website and it seems that Nano is available in flavors up to 1.8GHz. I wish a machine based on such a processor was used for this review, though I think the main issue here is availability.
    Reply
  • HalfHuman 02 September 2009 14:22
    i would be nice to see some noise evaluations, some hd playback tests... some appropriate os. :)
    Reply
  • eddieroolz 02 September 2009 14:23
    The Nano would be the perfect computer to just leave it powered on, seeding torrents and such.
    Reply