Thread: Atom 330 or P4 3Ghz with HT?

Thinking about getting a netbox for the main room. Just going to be used for surfing the web and playing MP3's. Which one will be the better system to go with? A 3.06 P4 with Hyper threading with 1GB of Memory or an Atom 330 setup that is a dual core with 4 HT's and 4 gigs of ram?

I have to believe the ATOM will do you better. Newer processors have more instructions per clock (2 on the ATOM vs. 1.5 on the P4). It is also Dual Core so a 1.5 GHz Atom should (in theory) run about the same as a 3.75GHz P4.

More importantly in this case is the RAM. 1GB vs. 4GB? You will notice more of a slowdown from having only 1GB than you will with any processor.

You should be fine with either though. I have an old P3 from work with 512KB RAM and after a fresh install of XP it runs just fine.

Edit: Oh yea, the ATOM will use much less power and produce less heat saving you some money on energy costs; if you care.

I'd go with the atom over the P4. The P4 will use much more power than the atom. Or honestly the low wattage AMD's perform better than the Atom's does. I'd highly suggest looking at these. Are you looking at getting a small case as well?

The P4 will almost definitely be faster, but the Atom should be more than sufficient. Also, much of the speed deficit will be made up for by the much larger amount of memory that the Atom system would have. Besides, the power usage and heat will be quite a bit less with the Atom, so there's really no reason not to go for the Atom.

What about a 4 GHz P4 with HT and 4GB ram?

I would go with the Atom without a doubt, it uses less power and produces less heat=less noise from fans, although I still run a second system with p4 3.0ghz @ 3.7ghz and it flies to be fair for what it is, but runs so damn hot and loud (Zalman Flower Cooler) that i would never use it as a netbox.

Besides, you could use a sempron or Celeron for the netbox as browsing the net and listening to music is not taxing on any pc since the pIII days.

As someone who has both, I'd definitely get the Atom: the P4 is faster but uses much more power, makes much more noise, and you really don't need the extra performance for what you plan on doing. If you get the Intel Atom board you probably will want to replace the standard chipset fan with a silent one though (a five minute job with a screwdriver and about $5 for the fan).