Results: SiSoft Sandra and 3D Mark 2006
SiSoft Sandra 2011I downloaded the latest version of this benchmark to see how the theoretical performance of these processors line up. When looking through these results, remember that the Athlon II X2 is a much larger chip in terms of transistor count. The VIA Nano DC should be around 70 mm squared on TSMC’s 40 nm processo, while the Regor parts from AMD are around 117 mm squared in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 45 nm SOI process. Overall the Nano is less than ¾ the transistor count of the AMD part.
These results are actually quite interesting all by themselves. Of course the fully clocked Athlon II X2 is the fastest of the group, but once clocked down the 1.8 GHz the Nano DC is quite competitive. While AMD holds the edge in integer and integer SIMD performance, the Nano DC is very competitive when it comes to floating point power. It is even slightly faster in the Multi-Media Float X8 than the similarly clocked Athlon II X2.
Where the AMD parts have a distinct advantage is that of memory bandwidth. Even the lower clocked Athlon II is around three times faster in overall bandwidth than the VIA VN1000 controller. When browsing around for Atom test results, this is very much in line with previous and current versions of that architecture. Memory controllers are typically power hungry entities within a processor and chipset, so it is no surprise that the VN1000 has likely sacrificed performance in this area to achieve better TDPs for the chipset.
3D Mark 2006
The older version of this benchmark is perhaps more appropriate considering the performance of these integrated graphics parts. While both support DX 10.1, neither of them are reasonably fast enough to run most applications at those settings. I used the default settings for the benchmark and let it fly.
In the graphics tests the VN1000 actually outperformed the 880G very consistently. The CPU performance was not nearly as strong though, and perhaps we can attribute that to the weakness the Nano DC has in integer performance as compared to the larger Athlon II chip.
