Intel’s Atom N470 Processor Tested: Modest Bump in Performance (at Best)

Revealed today at the same time as the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t, the first netbook which uses it, the Intel Atom N470 processor offers some modest improvements over its Pine Trail predecessor, the N450. For one, the N470′s clock speed–1.83GHz–is slightly faster than the N450′s 1.66GHz. Also, the N470 has a TDP (Thermal Dynamic Profile) of 6.5W, versus 5.5W for the N450.

What does that mean in real-world terms? On PCMark05, the S10-3t scored 1,364, which is nearly identical to the HP Mini 210, but about 100 points below the netbook average, and about 20 points less than the Toshiba mini NB305-N410. (Both the Mini 210 and the NB305 use the Intel Atom N450).

In Geekbench, the S10-3t’s score of 961 is about 110 points above average, nearly 60 points above the HP Mini 210, and 35 points higher than the NB305. When using Oxelon Media Encoder to transcode a 114MB MPEG-4 to AVI, it took the S10-3t 5 minutes and 51 seconds, which is about 20 seconds longer than average, but faster than the Toshiba mini NB305 (6:03) and ASUS Eee PC 1001P (6:02).

Sadly, we can’t verify whether these improvements will result in increased battery life, as the S10-3t lasted for just 3 hours and 12 minutes. We’re hesitant to make an apples-to-apples comparison to other N450 systems, as the S10-3t’s 4-cell battery is quite a bit different from most other netbooks. Plus, having a capacitive touchscreen chews up power. Stay tuned for more tests, but in the meantime, take a look at our full review of the S10-3t touchscreen netbook.