Processors Toolkit

Story: Netbook platforms: VIA Nano v. Intel Atom

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The article is clear about what it's testing, processor-wise

..and it certainly reflects real-world considerations. If you decide that it doesn't reflect things that you personally find important, then it's not for you. Stuff like multithreading benchmarks, which would favour Atom more, only reflect multithreading usage patterns and I'm still not convinced that they're particularly mainstream. Interesting? Certainly. Important? That's debatable. Important for Intel, because that's a key differentiator for them, but there's no rule that what Intel does is as important as they'd like.

If we could, I'd like to run benchmarks over a much wider range of operating conditions - virtualised systems, ones biassed towards graphics, ones biassed towards video editing, ones at extremes of power, memory, processor or networking configurations. The really interesting things come out when you push the limits. But there's so much else to do aside from benchmarking, that it's just not possible.

We're lucky enough as it is to have Kai and ZDNet Germany with their emphasis on real-world testing, together with Charles and Toby in the UK who really understand the nuts and bolts.

Stuff like this is both straightfoward and useful. It's not comprehensive, nor can it be.

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