CPU benchmarks
| Laptop - HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places | ||
|---|---|---|
| MSI U100 Plus (Intel Atom) | MSI U230 (AMD Congo) | Acer Timeline 3810T (Intel CULV) |
| 194.89 | 79.32 | 59.9 |
| Laptop - 7zip benchmark | ||
|---|---|---|
| MSI U100 Plus (Intel Atom) | MSI U230 (AMD Congo) | Acer Timeline 3810T (Intel CULV) |
| 1352 | 2489 | 2650 |
| Laptop - CINEBENCH R10 multi-CPU render | ||
|---|---|---|
| MSI U100 Plus (Intel Atom) | MSI U230 (AMD Congo) | Acer Timeline 3810T (Intel CULV) |
| 894 | 2456 | 2906 |
The Wind 12 U230's CPU performance, as expected, towers above a single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom N280 processor. Yet, Congo's dual-core Athlon Neo X2 doesn't quite have the legs to catch up with Intel's CULV - the Core 2 Duo-derived part clearly has the edge in all three benchmarks. Though, it's worth noting that dual-core CULV-based notebooks are rarely seen in notebooks at the £399 price point.
Considering the price, the AMD Congo-based Wind 12 U230 offers very decent performance. In use, the system feels snappy and responsive, which may come as a surprise to those accustomed to sluggish performance on low-cost notebooks of this size. The addition of a solid-state drive, we reckon, would be another major boost - albeit at the disregard of pricing.
Even with a 5,400RPM hard-disk drive, the system is able to boot into Windows 7 in under 55 seconds. Shutting down, meanwhile, takes roughly 14s.