Benchmark battle: Sony Vaio UX180P vs. Samsung Q1P
Are you one of those people who can look at the names of two different processors and know immediately which one is more powerful? I’m not. That’s why when I got my Samsung Q1P in December, I expected it to run circles around my Sony Vaio UX180P. Call it naivete or just plain ignorance, but I really thought that a 1GHz Pentium M with 1GB of RAM was faster and "better" than a 1.2GHz Core Solo U1400 with 512MB of RAM. Evidently, it’s not. And just to make sure I wasn’t imagining the slower performance, I ran both handtops through four different benchmarking programs and conducted some informal stopwatch-based tests. Read on to view the results.
Given the extent of my CPU knowledge, it shouldn’t be unexpected that I’ve never considered benchmark results a factor when shopping for a new computer. This is largely due to my minimal computing needs (no Photoshop, no multimedia playback, no heavy video editing, and no 3D gaming), which I assume puts me in opposition with most other handtop enthusiasts and computer folk in general. Normally I don’t mind being the cheese, but with the new crop of devices generating renewed interest in the UMPC market, I thought it was a good time to post some hard numbers.
There will likely be a few exceptions, but generally speaking these figures can be viewed as sitting at the lower end of the UMPC spectrum. Sony has already replaced the 1.2GHz Core Solo U1400 (used in the UX180P and UX280P) with a 1.33GHz Core Solo U1500 (UX380N and UX390N), so if you’re interested in a model in the UX series, you already know that its scores will be better than those below.
Benchmarks
Being unfamiliar with specific benchmarking software up until about a week ago, I wasn’t sure which programs were most highly regarded. So I just did some googling and downloaded four titles that came up most often: CPUMark, PassMark PerformanceTest, Fresh Diagnose, and Futuremark PCMark05.
CPUMark (version 2.1)
CPUMark tests registery operations (Test 1), floating-point operations (Test 2), and integer operations (Test 3).
PassMark PerformanceTest (version 6.1)
The free download of PerformanceTest isn’t a complete version, but it’s still pretty comprehensive. I didn’t include the units-per-second information in the chart because they’re a mess (e.g., million matrices, thousand shapes, thousand strings, etc.). Besides, if the numbers are meaningful to you, you already know the units anyway.
| Sony Vaio UX180P | Samsung Q1P | |
| CPU Tests | ||
| Integer Math: | 43.6 | 34.5 |
| Floating-Point Math: | 139.8 | 116.9 |
| Find Prime Numbers: | 206.6 | 136.2 |
| SSE/3DNow!: | 1183.9 | 921.3 |
| Compression: | 1173.3 | 959.3 |
| Encryption: | 7.6 | 6.3 |
| Image Rotation: | 191.2 | 158.3 |
| String Sorting: | 829.9 | 713.4 |
| Overall Mark: | 331.6 | 260.8 |
| 2D Graphics Tests | ||
| Lines: | 59.5 | 0.27 |
| Rectangles: | 29.6 | 1.53 |
| Shapes: | 17.8 | 0.35 |
| Fonts and Text: | 70.1 | 12.4 |
| GUI: | 108.4 | 15.3 |
| Overall Mark: | 193.7 | 15.2 |
| 3D Graphics Tests | ||
| Simple: | 178.4 | 25.2 |
| Medium: | 24.4 | 10.3 |
| Complex: | 5.4 | 4.63 |
| Overall Mark: | 66.6 | 12.8 |
| Memory Tests | ||
| Allocate Small Block: | 731.8 | 591.2 |
| Read Cached: | 808.2 | 673.6 |
| Read Uncached: | 819.3 | 673.2 |
| Write: | 537.4 | 430.0 |
| Large RAM: | 52.4 | 86.7 |
| Overall Mark: | 218.0 | 182.2 |
| Disk Tests | ||
| Sequential Read: | 14.8 | 18.3 |
| Sequential Write: | 12.1 | 18.3 |
| Random Seek + RW: | 1.59 | 1.71 |
| Overall Mark: | 103.1 | 138.8 |
Here are the official PassMark ratings.
Fresh Diagnose
Fresh Diagnose is the only program of the four I used that doesn’t include any kind of overall scoring/rating system. It also seems to yield questionable results (look at the CPU speed of the Q1P).
| Sony Vaio UX180P | Samsung Q1P | |
| CPU Tests | ||
| DhryStone ALU: | 4427 MDIPS | 3631 MDIPS |
| WhetStone FPU: | 1877 MWIPS | 1228 MWIPS |
| Speed: | 1197 MHz | 207 MHz |
| Multimedia Tests | ||
| Benchmark Index: | 2332 | 1336 |
| Technology: | SSE2 | SSE |
| Built-in Coprocessor: | Yes | Yes |
| MMX Extensions: | Yes | Yes |
| Enhanced MMX: | No | No |
| 3DNow! Extensions: | No | No |
| Enhanced 3DNow! | No | No |
| Memory Tests | ||
| Integer Assignment: | 60,721 | 50,436 |
| Real Assignment: | 67,805 | 48,233 |
| Integer Split: | 67,655 | 48,791 |
| Real Split: | 84,187 | 48,776 |
| Display Adapter Tests | ||
| Random Pixels: | 366 | 233 |
| Lines: | 82,333 | 87,000 |
| Circles: | 11,853 | 9851 |
| Rectangles: | 44,389 | 38,697 |
| Texts: | 539,966 | 624,485 |
| FloodFills: | 1,024,160 | 1,077,760 |
| Draw: | 54,681 | 46,761 |
| Disk Tests | ||
| Write Speed: | 6.44 MB/s | 8.32 MB/s |
| Read Speed: | 10.69 MB/s | 498.93 MB/s |
Futuremark PCMark05
PCMark05 seems to be pretty well respected in the PC community. I tried several times, but it just refused to give the Q1P an overall score in the system and graphics test suites.
I included the units-per-second here because it was really consistent.
| Sony Vaio UX180P | Samsung Q1P | |
| System Tests | ||
| HDD – XP Startup: | 4.13 MB/s | 4.48 MB/s |
| HDD – General Usage: | 2.43 MB/s | 2.59 MB/s |
| Physics and 3D: | 46.6 FPS | Test failed |
| 3D Pixel Shader: | 7.09 FPS | Test failed |
| File Decryption: | 29.17 MB/s | 24.27 MB/s |
| Transparent Windows: | 67.42 Win/s | 42.13 Win/s |
| Web Page Rendering: | 1.65 Pages/s | 1.16 Pages/s |
| Graphics Memory – 64 Lines: | 227.7 FPS | 19.89 FPS |
| Multithreaded Test 1 Audio Compression: Video Encoding: |
684.38 KB/s 83.46 KB/s |
510.35 KB/s 71.03 KB/s |
| Multithreaded Test 2 Text Edit: Image Decompression: |
36.52 Pages/s 6.67 MP/s |
28.51 Pages/s 5.71 MP/s |
| Multithreaded Test 3 File Compression: File Encryption: HDD – Virus Scan: Mem Latency – Random 16 MB: |
1.31 MB/s 7.32 MB/s 4.33 MB/s 6.12 MAcc/s |
1.12 MB/s 6.03 MB/s 5.34 MB/s 5.7 MAcc/s |
| CPU Tests | ||
| File Compression: | 5.0 MB/s | 4.3 MB/s |
| File Decompression: | 69.35 MB/s | 57.45 MB/s |
| File Encryption: | 29.52 MB/s | 24.56 MB/s |
| File Decryption: | 29.25 MB/s | 24.3 MB/s |
| Image Decompression: | 14.2 MP/s | 11.69 MP/s |
| Audio Compression: | 1388.1 KB/s | 1040.27 KB/s |
| Multithreaded Test 1 File Compression: File Encryption: |
2.59 MB/s 15.02 MB/s |
2.16 MB/s 12.41 MB/s |
| Multithreaded Test 2 File Decompression: File Decryption: Audio Decompression: Image Decompression: |
17.86 MB/s 7.34 MB/s 319.29 KB/s 3.57 MP/s |
14.61 MB/s 5.96 MB/s 204.19 KB/s 3.03 MP/s |
| Memory Tests | ||
| Memory Read – 16 MB: | 2271.44 MB/s | 2270.87 MB/s |
| Memory Read – 8 MB: | 2328.28 MB/s | 2287.75 MB/s |
| Memory Read – 192 KB: | 4809.45 MB/s | 4035.42 MB/s |
| Memory Read – 4 KB: | 8833.13 MB/s | 7325.23 MB/s |
| Memory Write – 16 MB: | 2218.34 MB/s | 1973.42 MB/s |
| Memory Write – 8 MB: | 2216.25 MB/s | 1981.32 MB/s |
| Memory Write – 192 KB: | 5084.66 MB/s | 3001.40 MB/s |
| Memory Write – 4 KB: | 8238.19 MB/s | 6829.94 MB/s |
| Memory Copy – 16 MB: | 2083.45 MB/s | 1818.93 MB/s |
| Memory Copy – 8 MB: | 2089.95 MB/s | 1803.62 MB/s |
| Memory Copy – 192 KB: | 4193.65 MB/s | 2982.10 MB/s |
| Memory Copy – 4 KB: | 7339.5 MB/s | 6122.77 MB/s |
| Mem Latency – Random 16 MB: | 6.35 MAcc/s | 5.70 MAcc/s |
| Mem Latency – Random 8 MB: | 6.94 MAcc/s | 6.17 MAcc/s |
| Mem Latency – Random 192 KB: | 84.0 MAcc/s | 97.72 MAcc/s |
| Mem Latency – Random 4 KB: | 398.36 MAcc/s | 332.0 MAcc/s |
| Graphics Tests | ||
| Transparent Windows: | 68.15 Win/s | 42.64 Win/s |
| Graphics Memory – 64 Lines: | 228.1 FPS | 19.91 FPS |
| Graphics Memory – 128 Lines: | 184.19 FPS | 19.57 FPS |
| WMV Video Playback: | 24.02 FPS | 7.07 FPS |
| 3D – Fill Rate Multi Texturing: | 502.82 MTex/s | N/A |
| 3D – Polygon Throughput: | 2.74 MTri/s | Test failed |
| 3D – Pixel Shader: | 7.1 FPS | Test failed |
| 3D – Vertex Shader: | 1.64 MVer/s | Test failed |
| Disk Tests | ||
| HDD – XP Startup: | 3.83 MB/s | 4.46 MB/s |
| HDD – Application Loading: | 3.08 MB/s | 3.41 MB/s |
| HDD – General Usage: | 2.41 MB/s | 2.6 MB/s |
| HDD – Virus Scan: | 22.06 MB/s | 25.91 MB/s |
| HDD – File Write: | 13.35 MB/s | 19.1 MB/s |
Timed Tests
More valuable to me than benchmarks is time. I’d rather know that it takes 36 seconds for the Q1P to shutdown than that it can decrypt files at 24.3 MB per second.
I recorded various boot times on the UX180P back in August, so I’m including them here (where applicable) to illustrate how my UX’s performance has changed over the past eight months of regular use with no housecleaning other than the occasional defrag.
| Sony UX180P August 2006 |
Sony UX180P April 2007 |
Samsung Q1P | |
| Cold Boot: | 1 min, 47 sec | 3 min, 44 sec | 2 min, 56 sec |
| From Hibernate: | 15 seconds | 35 seconds | 42 seconds |
| From Standby: | 6 seconds | 12 seconds | 12 seconds |
| Shutdown: | 26 seconds | 47 seconds | 36 seconds |
| To Hibernate: | 19 seconds | 21 seconds | 17 seconds |
| To Standby: | 12 seconds | 10 seconds | 5 seconds |
| Firefox (After Install): |
N/A | 12 seconds | 13 seconds |
| Launch Firefox: | N/A | 3 seconds | 3 seconds |
| Rip DVD to DivX*: | N/A | 47 min, 18 sec | 57 min, 17 sec |
*I used CloneDVD Mobile to transcode a 1:41 movie (320 x 240, 503kbps, 465MB).
Both units automatically launch McAfee virus software and NHC, as well as search for and connect to my wireless network, so the completion of all of that is factored into boot times. Oh, and I chose Firefox because it’s the only program I use every day without exception.
This is pretty obvious from the cold-boot times, but I still want to mention that neither of my systems have been optimized. I haven’t tinkered with msconfig or any other settings, mostly because I hibernate everything and usually walk away and do something else when I have to restart. If you want to speed up your system, though, I highly recommend these excellent tips from my pal Supp0rtLinux (more tips here).
