Handtops, UMPC - Via C7M - Slower per clock than Crusoe?!

04/24/06 + Tomn

Found a comparison between a Via C7M 1.5GHz notebook benchmark performance. TERRIBLE results. Clock per clock, %FPU is 25 percent the performance of Intel, INTEGER/ALU is 50 percent the performance of Intel.%

I would rather take Transmeta Crusoe anytime, anyday. At least the OQO is around 60-70 percent the performance of Intel CPU at the same clock speed.

Here is the link, in Chinese though: link

Scroll down to the middle section of webpage page to see the benchmark results in English.

At least the mobilemark battery life looks good.. The ONLY BENCHMARK that looks good.

04/24/06 + fil

This is what's annoying about new chips...mixed benchmarks.

I wasn't sure about the C7-M in the beginning and then saw various good benchmarks.

Carrypad summed it up here: link

I guess we won't find out until someone's got one of these in a UMPC.

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edited: Apr 24 2006 + Tomn

Fil, the link and all associated links indicate ONLY battery life tests. That, I agree is very good. Perhaps better than the Crusoe. However, nothing there indicated actual speed of the CPU when running benchmarks/applications/games. I am posting an ACTUAL 1.5GHz C7M notebook/CPU benchmark, not hype. Solid numbers.

I have personally owned one of those Via notebooks, a slighly earlier generation, the VIA C3. At 1GHz, the CPU performs like a Pentium II 266MHz on all benchmarks, and feels just as slow. I got rid of it in a heartbeat.

I sincerely hope the C7M is faster than a Pentium II, as I really want to see some credible alternatives to Pentium-M. Lets hope VIA or perhaps AMD can come out with something really good....

04/24/06 + Tomn

Found a link within the sublinks that indicate performance of C7M here link However, it only indicated OFFICE BENCHMARK and GRAPHICS benchmark! We all know that Office benchmarks rely on a great deal on overall system speed including hard disk and video speed, and graphics benchmark rely mostly on your graphics card. Can anyone offer a clearer picture on C7M CPU performance?

04/24/06 + fil

I'll see if I can find them.

I was asking a few months ago for C7-M performance benchmarks and I remember seeing some great charts.

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04/25/06 + evilking

link

This review will settle the doubts and capabilities of the new C7-M processor. It's a review of a mini-itx board that is pretty much exactly the same specs wise. Equivalent to a Pentium 3 at 800mhz. Not impressed.

edited: Apr 26 2006 + Tomn

Evilking,

Thanks for the link. The benchmark data on that site concurs with the Chinese website benchmark. This pretty much confirms the C7M is around 45 percent the speed of an equivalent clocked Celeron-M on regular operations and only 20-25 percent on floating point! This makes it just slightly faster than the 1GHz Crusoe on the OQO.

Tom

edited: Apr 26 2006 + fil

Oh no...

I hope OQO doesn't bend to the Transmeta Efficeon CPU.

In the VIAARENA review, the "responsiveness" performance was good for the C7-M. I thought that this was a decent test for how snappy a system is?

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04/27/06 + Tomn

Many factors contribute to the responsiveness of a system. The C7-M will be quicker initially than a transmeta CPU since it doesnt have to translate any instructions to the VLIW instruction native of a transmeta CPU. However, once the translation is done and optimized, the transmeta CPU can probably execute instructions much quicker than a C7-M on a clock-per-clock basis. What kills transmeta and gives people a very bad impression is this initial translation overhead. It is actually amazing how fast a transmeta CPU performs given that it has to do translation and optimization of intel CPU instructions on the fly AND execute them at a reasonable speed. The Via Arena review is probably comparing the older C3/C5 Via CPU vs. the C7. The C7 definitely has an edge over the older CPU.

I am no fan of the Transmeta CPU either. I own a Sony U1 which is probably the slowest notebook I have in my posession (I own over 10 notebooks currently, from the Sony U1, the U50 all the way to the 16" Sony GRX which I am typing on right now.) However, the Via C3 notebook I used to own is much slower then the U1! That is what sparks me to try to find out if the C7-M is any faster than the crusoe.

05/02/06 + Demianra

Ok it's fine all that, but remember that VIA made that processor for ultra low voltage and power drain, performance is't the main proposal, it's good for a platform like Origami o similars if you need a portable device and do some tasks, obviously VIA has'n the money and the market share to design high performance processors jet, maybe in a few years can.

Always VIA processors was slow but low power drain too, look at security features and some others that doesn't has Intel o AMD, and needs only 12W at maximun workload and <1W IDLE your laptop can work for several hours compared with centrinos and turions that need as twice as that, if you need power your best choice is Intel or AMD but if you need battery life maybe VIA is better choice if you don't need high power processing.

05/06/06 + Tomn

I agree VIA has very low power drain. Put it this way, Intel could have come out with an extremely low power CPU running at 700MHz or so that will easily beat the 1.5GHz C7M or the top speed Crusoe in most applications, if not all. The reason why they dont do it is because people wants performance. The 700MHz CPU would have a very very small market share even though it consumes very very little power. People wants the performance of at least 1GHz Pentium-M performance with very low power.

If you dont care about performance, Why not just get one of them Toshiba Libretto C110 or FF1100 series subnotebook for under $200? Same 7" screen size with 800x480 resolutions, with a full keyboard thrown in as well? With extended battery, they will run at least 4 hour! But we dont see them making a comeback, because it is powered by a 233-266MHz CPU. It is sad to see Via UMCP machines performing not very much faster and asking for $$$$!