Putting the mini PC to the test
There really is little point in comparing the EDGE-HD PC to full-blown Core i5 or Phenom rigs. Rather, better comparisons are made with systems that ship similar components. This is why we've put the EDGE-HD PC in amongst netbooks and ultraportable notebooks, to gauge just how well it performs.
Handily, we've got a dual-core Atom and ION 2 rival in the form of the ASUS Eee PC 1215N netbook, while AMD is represented by a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 laptop equipped with a Neo K325 chip and MR 4225 GPU.
The quoted price for Sapphire's system excludes the cost of Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit, which we've installed for demonstration purposes. Got all that? Yup? So here are some more details on the systems.
| Comparison systems | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laptop/PC | Acer Aspire One D260 | Sapphire Edge HD mini PC | ASUS Eee PC 1215N | Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 | |
| Processor | Intel Atom N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, single-core) | Intel Atom D510 (1.66GHz, 1MB L2 cache, dual-core) | Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz, 1MB L2 cache, dual-core) | AMD Athlon II Neo K325 (1.30GHz, 2MB L2 cache, dual-core) | |
| Memory | 1GB DDR2 | 2GB DDR3 | 2GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 | |
| Graphics | Intel GMA 3150 | NVIDIA ION 2 (535MHz core, 1,580MHz memory) | Intel GMA 3150 + NVIDIA ION 2 | AMD Mobility Radeon HD 4225 | |
| Graphics driver | Intel 8.14.10.2117 | NVIDIA Verde 266.89 | Intel 8.14.10.2117 + NVIDIA Verde 260.89 | AMD Catalyst 10.11 | |
| Display | 10.1in - 1,024x600 | None | 12.1in - 1,366x768 | 11.6in - 1,366x768 | |
| Battery | 6 cell, 49Whr | None | 6 cell, 56Whr | 6 cell, 57Whr | |
| Weight | 1,202g (including battery) | 577g (excluding charger) | 1,523g (including battery) | 1,513g (including battery) | |
| Wireless | Atheros AR5B95 WiFi (802.11bgn) | AzureWave (802.11bgn) | Broadcom WiFi (802.11bgn) and Bluetooth | ThinkPad 1x1 WLAN Half-Mini Card (802.11bgn) and Bluetooth | |
| Disk drive | Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB HDD, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | 250GB HDD, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | Seagate Momentus 250GB HDD, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | Hitachi Travelstar 320GB HDD, 5,400RPM, 8MB cache | |
| Optical drive | None | None | None | None | |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Starter, 32-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 32-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit | |
| Approx. price as configured | £250 | £265 (ex. Windows) | £430 | £480 | |
| Benchmarks | |||||
| Geekbench 2.1.6 | A cross-platform benchmark used to measure memory and processor performance. Run using high-performance mode. | ||||
| Cinebench 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses as many cores as possible. Run using high-performance mode. | ||||
| 3DMark06 | A PC benchmark used to test the DirectX 9 performance of a system's graphics card. Run using high-performance mode. | ||||
| Power consumption | Using balanced power settings, we record mains power draw whilst playing back a 720p movie trailer. | ||||
