Credit: YugaTech

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a built-in tool for rating your computer’s hardware. The Windows Experience Index looks at your CPU, RAM, hard drive, and graphics performance and gives a score for each area that’s designed to give you a halfway decent guesstimate on how well the operating system will run on your hardware. A lower score doesn’t necessarily mean that the OS won’t run, just that it may not perform quite as well as on hardware with higher scores.

The folks at YugaTech took a look at the Windows Experience scores for 14 different processors commonly found in netbooks and thin and light notebooks. The results aren’t all that surprising if you’ve been following the ultraportable space for the past year or two. But if you’re trying to decide between a system with an Atom N280, Atom N450, AMD Neo MV-40, or Intel Pentium Dual Core SU4100 CPU, this chart might come in handy.

It’s worth pointing out that the Windows Experience Index doesn’t take all factors into account. For instance, these scores won’t tell you that the AMD chips generally use far more energy than the Intel chips, which takes a toll on battery life. And the scores don’t actually calculate raw processing power. Instead it looks at how well the processor can handle specific Windows applications such as Windows Media Center, Aero desktop effects, and so forth.

OK, keeping that in mind, I found it interesting that the Intel Atom N270, N280, and N450 all got the same sub-score of 2.3. The Atom Z540 and Z550, on the other hand, received higher scores of 2.6 and 2.9 respectively, while the AMD and Intel CULV processors found in 11.6 inch and larger thin and lights generally outperformed most of the Atom processors.

You can find more details at YugaTech.

via Netbook Reports

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9 replies on “How Windows sees netbook CPUs”

  1. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

    I wanted to know how a CULV chip like the Core 2 Duo SU7300 would compare against a N270 chip. Now I see it has nearly twice as “windows experience score”. I’d been trying to figure out how much more powerful the SU7300 would be and i just couldn’t figure that out. …so again THANK YOU!

    1. Athlon Neo / Neo X2 + HD3200 / 4200, the perfect combination.

      Atom is just worthless at least when you’re not an intel drone.

  2. I’d be interested in the N470 🙂 Is there more of a difference between the N450 and N470 then the N270 and N280 🙂

  3. Still loving my MSI Wind, especially because of the easy overclocking abilities. With the press of a button, i can get a 2.8 score, easily beating the 10″ competition.

  4. The Atoms likely got the same score because the graphics suck about equally much. An N270 with ION graphics would probably get at least as many points as the Z540 and Z550.

    1. This chart *just* applies to the CPU score. The Windows Experience Index has
      a different section for the graphics scores, and indeed, systems with ION
      graphics score better in that department.

  5. I really like the atom, It’s been the only cpu that has impressed me the last few years. I dont need a quad core to run most apps that I run.
    BUT I have new favorite. The AMD x2 3250e. I does use more power at 2 2watts or 11 wattts per cpu but is also 64 bit. It is way more snappy at 1.5 than the the atom. I guess it is some where between the atom and a full power desktop cpu but sees so much faster. The Zino I bought for htpc with the aTI HD4300 run graphics just fine.
    Since this is not a laptop I don’t no what battery life would be but I might be a good consideration for some one who needs a little horse power.The atom runs windows 7 just fine with a little lag but ATI jusr seems way faster with no lag.My older desktop runs at 124 watts idle with no monitor (intel E6400 and ati hd2600xt 4gbs ram)The zino (also 4gb ram)runs at 40 watts playing a dvd movie. Thats about 80 watts savings for doing abbout the same thing. Nice!
    but the way windows 7 gives the cpu a 4.1 and 5.9 on 3d graphics.

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