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Review: Intel Atom CPU: notebook pansy or powerful performer: we put it to the test

by Tarinder Sandhu on 29 August 2008, 17:49

Tags: Wind U100, MSI

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qao42

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Atom: the wonder CPU?

 HEXUS took a look at MSI's Wind PC seven weeks ago and surmised that the 1kg netbook, whilst fit for its intended purpose of general web-browsing, was priced a little too high at ~£330.

Our review focused on the usability of the netbook rather than balls-out performance, simply because Intel's Atom CPU wasn't designed to keep with the Joneses - in this case the latest iteration of Mobile Core 2 Duo processors.

However, the question we later posed ourselves was just how potent Atom's performance was? Intel hinted that it was akin to the also-mobile Pentium M (Banias) CPU, which was decent in 2003, so we put the Atom to the sword with four intensive benchmarks that we usually reserve for 'full-fat' laptops.

Read on to see if the tiny Atom has enough power to do more than just web-browsing and emailing.