AMD Ontario C-50 vs Intel Atom N550 Power Consumption Testing

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4 Feb, 2011 7:30 pm

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The Power envelop on the AMD Ontario C-50 1. GHz processor has been in question since it was first announced. We got our hands on the Toshiba NB550D 10 inch netbook featuring the new processor and put it through the paces at idle, standard surfing, standard definition YouTube, High Definition YouTube and video editing of a 1080p AVCHD clip in Movie Maker. I used Performance Monitor and OS Iris Development Battery Bar to monitor the power consumption.

C50 vs N550 at Idle

So lets get right into it, at Idle the AMD C-50 averaged about 4.5W and the N550 averaged 4.9W.

The Intel Atom N550 averaged slightly higher at 4.9W.

Web Browsing Test
I surfed Google, Email and Facebook for approximately 5 minutes the average discharge rates are:
AMD C-50 – 6W
N550 – 6.5W

Here is the graphic of the AMD C-50

Power Consumption Graph of the Atom N550 during standard web surfing.

Next Page: SD YouTube, HD YouTube, Video Editing, Gaming & Overall Battery Performance

Pages: 1 2 3


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  • http://www.netbooknews.it Riccardo P

    nice, great test :)

  • http://www.umpcportal.com chippy

    I guess we have to be careful to talk about the devices rather than the cpus in them when we test overall system power, especially when the results are so close but it does look like the Atom cpu is more powerful and more efficient than the AMD cpu and that the acer has a more efficient build all round. Thanks for going these tests Nicole.
    btw, its my understanding that you’ll never get any GPU advantage from video editing programs unless all you are doing is converting the format without any per frame changes (fades, titles, enhancements)

  • ninetynine

    What screen brightness were these test run at?

  • Raliqey

    Even if the atom CPU is slightly more efficient, the Fusion platform overall is FAR more efficient. Signifigantly more performance at almost identical power consumption.

    Your Intel sponsorship is showing Chippy.

  • ntsan

    50~60fps for 10w vs 7fps for 9w, that how “power” efficient the atom have

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  • Anonymous

    looking over the graphs i find myself wondering about power management settings and such. While the varying time scales of the graphs makes it hard to tell for sure, it would seem that the N550 has a more aggressive power management. The N550 keeps showing step ladders while the C50 shows more straight lines. This could mean that the C50 waits longer before clocking down rather then clocking down and then have to clock right back up (or let the user experience a response lag).

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  • koga

    You guys are so biased toward prefering intel you forget that C-50 is a Cpu Gpu combined and its power usage should be compared to power usage of cpu and gpu combined in a comparable intel platform like ION platform. In this case c-50 will be on par with ion platform graphicwise but it crushes the ion platform both in power consumption and price. It is not that you dont get this point its just being purely biased toward intel i guess!

  • barc0001

    Koga, what do you mean biased toward Intel? If anything, what I take away from this review is that the Atom unit is completely unusable for playing 1080p media and gaming on the road compared to the AMD unit. Considering that’s the majority of what I do with my portable on the train, I’m thinking based on this review my next netbook is going to be an AMD C-50 based device.