Intel 847 with NM70 review - Performance tests

DhryStone CPU test

We make use of a multi-threaded Dhrystone test from SiSoftware Sandra, which is basically a suite of arithmetic and string manipulating programs. Since the whole program should be really small, it fits into the processor cache. It can be used to measure two aspects, both the processor's speed as well as the optimizing capabilities of the compiler. The resulting number is the number of executions of the program suite per second.

Our Dhrystone test can run completely within the CPU + cache memory itself. A perfect test to see the general efficiency per core. Though one of the oldest, Dhrystone remains a simple yet accurate and effective way to show you RAW CPU processing performance making it a very good indicator. The rest of the processors are in the charts just for scaling.

We see a nice speed bump over AMD E350. The A6 and A8 APU processors are included everywhere for scaling reasons as well as an AMD Phenom II X4 810 processor, that way you can grasp a little on what kind of performance we are talking about here.

Queen CPU Test

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic "Queens problem" on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed, theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores.

For example -- with Hyper-Threading disabled -- the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. However, with HyperThreading enabled the picture is controversial, because due to architectural bottlenecks the Northwood core runs out of internal resources and slows down. Similarly, at the same clock speed AMD K8 class processors will be faster than AMD K7 ones due to the improved branch prediction capabilities of the K8 architecture.

CPU Queen test uses only the basic x86 instructions, it consumes less than 1 MB system memory and it is Hyper-Threading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core aware and is thus a multi-threading CPU Benchmark with MMX, SSE2 and SSE3 optimizations.

Here Atom 330 takes the lead over the E-350 and 847 - NM70, the dual-core Atom has high clock speeds.

3DMark 06 CPU test

3DMark06 is very CPU limited, making it a good application to check CPU performance. The scores that you see are the CPU test itself, not overall 3DMark06 scores. A nice win.

Game Performance

What about game performance you might ask? Well, with 6 Shader units at your disposal inside that GPU as I am concerned a no-go unless you really forfeit hard in image quality and select a very low monitor resolutions.

Mind you that this is the integrated GPU at work ...  A 3Dmark vantage P score of 500 points .. hmmm.

Yeah .. gaming won't be an option. You could pop in a dedicated graphics card into the x16 slot but there you'd still face the fact that your CPU is grossly underpowered.