AMD's Atom Netbook Alternative. AMD C60 vs Intel Atom N450 Acer Aspire One

[@adwaitagnome]

our schools had the lower end AMD C-50 powered Aspire 722 laptops. It's basically the same in most ways but without any capability to boost. We also had N450 netbooks serving alongside them. They were eventually replaced with newer Chromebooks.

[@jims_junk]

Unfortunately I had to do the same at one our schools that was a client. There was no money left in the budget for real laptops so we had to buy them netbooks. I mean they worked, just slow.

[@chazbotic]

i've used an AMD netbook for so many years as an ultraportable console to troubleshoot PLC devices, storage systems (EVA/P6000, 3PAR, et c) and various industrial computers, the battery life when you're on a call with an engineer or you have to leave it running to capture data over a couple hours is amazing.

[@jims_junk]

I agree. I once installed windows on this amd netbook, and then ran most of the updates........a few hours worth of time at 100% cpu. I then realized that the cord was unplugged but somehow still had over 50% battery. They really do have crazy good battery life.

[@fallingwater]

Those old Atoms give PTSD to anyone who had to work on them. I liked netbooks as a concept, but god did they need more oomph. I'd have welcomed a global switch to AMD APUs but few even knew they existed - Intel pulled their usual marketing moves and everybody only spoke Atom despite the objective shittiness of the processors.

[@jims_junk]

I agree completely

[@SterkeYerke5555]

It's not just the Atoms, but these GMA graphics are barely worthy of being called a GPU. People called them the Graphics Media Decelerator for a reason back in the day. They seem to offload pretty much everything to the cpu, causing abnormally high cpu load even on a Core 2 Duo in games that normally run fine on a C2D. In fact, even though the GMA supports hardware vertex shading, switching to software vertex shading via a registry tweak sometimes improved performance, because the hardware support was just that bad. Obviously this increased cpu load even more. The fact that it's paired to an Atom in a netbook only makes things worse, 'cause they never had much cpu power to begin with. The nVidia Ion solved all of these issues (well, besides the cpu grunt), but to my knowledge they never sold that well.

[@pinkipromise]

c60 replacement which is temash a6-1450 was a quad core, was more than twice as fast, and sips power. it was great for uni due to long battery life, half the price of normal laptops while being able to play games

[@CapTVchilenaShootingStarMax]

AMD netbooks were awesome when compared to the limited crappy Atom platform. I had an older Packard Bell netbook with an Athlon Neo, and even if it had just one core, it blew all Atoms out of the water. Additionally, it had a 1366 × 768 screen (instead of the 1024 × 600 so prevalent in netbooks), competent integrated graphics, and even HDMI out (while most Atom-based netbooks only had VGA).

[@thefanmanSixtyFour]

I still use an old amd e-350 (next gen to the c series) acer aspire. Still functional at can do basic tasks. Its about 11% better than the C60 and craps on the old atom. The HD 6310 is definitely a healthy boost over the hd 6290.

[@DonquixoteShalria-rw6li]

wow , thank you for that , i was about to buy n450 netbooks, I'm gonna choose amd c60 they're now affordable these days

[@jims_junk]

*I misspoke many times in the video. There is no D before 722.

[@mindaugasbarkauskas9894]

I wanted an AMD netbook back in the day, but there was just very little availability, so I got an intel one instead with an atom N570 (2C4T, 1.66GHz). Had 10+ hours battery life and can still do stuff like youtube today, but anything with 3D games is just horrible. It's pretty much the same as the N450 in this video, which makes me believe that the integrated graphics are holding things back severely. I finally got an AMD one with a C-50 and it blows it away in gaming. Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 are actually playable.

[@jims_junk]

I do want to test one of those atoms as well. A second real core with hyperthreading has to make a difference I'd imagine.

[@SudosFTW]

The HP Mini 311 would be an interesting contender to the list. the nvidia ION graphics are pretty much the same nForce chipset (and GeForce 9400M) used in the 2009 Mac Minis among other Macs of the time. and although it's an N270, it was so far as I know the first netbook to support DDR3, but only 3GB maximum. The chipsets in these are all the same though, and it's the hardware string in the BIOS that also turns on and off DirectX 10 support if it came with XP or not. I have one fitted with a 2TB SSD running 32-bit 7, with a modded BIOS and copper shim mod, overclocked to 2.31GHz, however I did use this to set the N270 world record overclock on HWBOT of 2.49GHz. if you do acquire one, make sure it's not an N280 model, they don't clock as high due to the difference in multipliers between the 270/280. and, once you get a modded BIOS dropped on, you do get full DX10 support on the models that were without it, and you can also remove the horrid Broadcom WiFi chipset from the MiniPCIe slot and drop something a bit better in if desired, just stay away from Intel cards, they do not work at all. Even with the overclock, the thing barely runs warm, even under load, but the thermal sensors do go out of calibration with the overclock applied so one needs to do some crafty math to set the appropriate offset in whatever monitoring application you're using.

[@jims_junk]

I'll have to look into seeing about overclocking the n450 as well as the modded bios. Somehow I never even thought of that. Maybe I'll do a hotrodding video or wait until I find an n550 or n570 and do that one.

[@LolJolk]

I had a laptop with AMD C-50 and used it until 2016 or so, I have no idea how I lived with it for so long. No idea how I stumbled upon this video lol

[@hateWinVista]

Back then Intel recommended "third party HD video decoder" such as Broadcom Crystal HD for hardware acceleration as the GPU only has MPEG-2 decode capability. Unfortunately Crystal HD hardware was abandoned and no longer work after Flash has been discontinued for good. (Maybe can still be used by hacking around 3rd party video players.)

[@emdotrod]

The C60 was a massive improvement over AMD's previous attempt at creating low powered CPU for netbooks that was Athlon Neo

[@adwaitagnome]

interestingly, some Athlon Neo netbooks came equipped with entry-level dedicated GPUs. My French teacher in middle school had one. I don't remember the exact model, I think it was either the ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4330 or 4350.

[@catsspat]

I still use my Lenovo X120e, which uses E-350 chip closely related to C60. Great keyboard.

[@jsncrso]

I have the same C60 powered Acer netboook that I upgraded the RAM to 4GB, and a SATA SSD a few years ago. Even with a recent fresh install of Windows 10, it's basically unusable unless you can tolerate waiting and waiting. It would probably be much better on another OS, but even a Raspberry Pi is much faster nowadays. It was an awesome machine for it's time, but those days are longggg gone

[@404hopenotfound]

it have a old n3060 laptop it has 2gb of ddr3l ram it runs windows 10 badly but somehow it can run minecraft not well but it can

[@Erebus-PCFX]

I have an Acer Aspire netbook with the Intel N550. It dual-boots Windows 10 64-bit & Xubuntu 20.04 from a SSD. It's a sluggish on Windows but OK on Xubuntu. It is actually remarkable how well it runs Windows 10 fully updated with 2GB of RAM. Doubling the core/thread count definitely helps!

[@Aduke95]

At a time where AMD CPUs were far than good compare to best Intel CPU back in time. I'm litterally impressed. I Almost want one now. (I'm not a harcore AMD at all even if I use Ryzen today)

[@Razoredge]

I'm PRETTY confident to say that the whole Atom family of CPUs is the worst that was ever released. I've never seen a good Atom CPU. Ever.

[@Pentium3ddem]

nice Amd netbook

[@fennecRBX]

Would be a great lil arch linux machine lol, good video!

[@jims_junk]

Thanks! Actually it currently is a Debian linux machine now. I've never had the time to really check out Arch, but this might be the perfect machine like you said to use as a learning experience for someone. Also these things are great to use as network testers and troubleshooters. Don't need a lot of horsepower to ping or telnet into something, but do need good battery life

[@satsumagt5284]

I once had a N455. It was the opposite of enjoyable, and I made the terrible mistake of installing W10 on it… Reverted to 7 Starter as soon as I could, and sold the thing. Do not miss it one bit.

[@Max15691]

It's awful 😂 I did play some really old games in there and had some fun though. And the battery life was really good, that's it.

[@jerm1027]

I miss my Aspire One C-60 powered netbook. Great for taking notes in class, general browsing and tinkering with Linux, and I even managed to run some Fallout New Vegas. I'd probably still be using it if it wasn't stolen from my car.

[@jims_junk]

I originally sold my atom netbook on ebay and regretted it. Years later I bought the C60 netbook on ebay for $16, slapped 8gb of ram and an ssd in it. I just re-purchased the n450 netbook for this video for $15 and compared to the c60 its a POS. But their dirt cheap right now on Ebay. Sorry to hear about yours getting stolen but you're right, these are great for small jobs.

[@Max15691]

The atom revives a little with windows xp (in bios it's needed to change the SATA controllers to IDE to install the OS). There's a modded driver for the gma 3150, plus the lower resources needed to run the OS. The GTA games become playable... somewhat, c&c generals, warcraft 3 and a few others that need T&L (wich the gpu lacks) run much better. I have a little 2000s retro xp PC in that little netbook 😊

[@chazbotic]

sounds like a killer portable 16-bit emulator to me that's borderline disposable if damaged or lost.

[@Javadamutt]

The C50 Jan 2011 came out almost a year after the N450 vs Jan 2010. I would kinda expect a year newer processor to smoke the older one. By August 2010 the N550 was out and about March 2011 Intel had the N570. From memory the Atom was based on pentium 3 and didn’t support Out Of Order instructions (can’t remember when they started including OOO). It also cut a handful of instruction sets and extensions after all it was designed for low power netbooks, not for gaming or other heavy tasks. That killed it in benchmarks but for the task they were far better everyday machines that the AMD bobcat processors from memory constantly hitched and had terrible battery life

[@Drev222]

I actually have a Toshiba C655D with the AMD C50(I am guessing same series as the C60). They NEVER should have put it in a computer with a 15.6" display. Definitely better than my old netbook with the Atom CPU, but still a slug, even running lightweight Linux OS

[@infinity2z3r07]

my dell mini 10 is still around. windows 7 starter was never enjoyable to use. put xp on it years later for the lolz. it is passive cooled but gets stupid hot, like the vga out will burn your thumb if you do something heavy (anything) on it for more than a few minutes. a 10 yr old chromebook is like a macbook pro compared to this thing haha

[@jims_junk]

LOL I bet. What cpu did it use.

[@infinity2z3r07]

n270...it might have been the last 32-bit intel cpu@@jims_junk

[@jims_junk]

wow yeah I never had the chance to use an n270 but if its slower than the n450 I can imagine.

[@gabrielecarbone8235]

amd also had software undervolt support, c50 and c60 were so much better

[@homelessEh]

i had a gateway lt331 with the a little athlon l110 1.2ghz signe core. socket s1. at its height i could play "killing floor 1" on the amd netbook where could not on the atom. if it didnt die from board death.. id have upgraded it to the athlon x2 @ 1.2ghz but ah well..

[@GetJesse]

👍

[@MrEdioss]

Running Doom 3 on these is a nightmare

[@amalegardevoir]

I had that exact model of Intel Acer back in the day, it was bad, but strangely enough, probably due to the times apparently Intel was actively hindering AMD market wise, the only other netbook style I could find were not these but rather AMD Geode based, and those things could barely run XP.

[@interrobangings]

we also had the VIA C-7s! but they sucked

[@SamsungGalaxy-ls8ys]

I made the mistake of updating to windows 10 and now it takes like a minute literally to react when clicking on things. Mines the AMD-C60 processor one.

[@jims_junk]

I feel ya, did that myself once. Now its either Win 7 or Linux...win 10 is off the table

[@jims_junk]

OHOH just so you know, if you find a way(not gonna say here) how to disable the live windows 10 Antimalware service/scanner. Windows 10 runs MUCH better on one of these.

[@johnathanjamesjohnsonjr7408]

...👏👍🖖

[@joshuascholar3220]

No, back in the day you could NOT watch youtube on the atom netbooks. I had one, and the only way I could watch youtube was to use a plugin to download the video, then use an obscure, paid codec to play the video.

[@jims_junk]

I did all the time, it had to be at a low resolution, but with such a tiny screen, it didn't matter.

[@sennpowerhv6922]

I saw you we’re running windows 7 in the first part of the video but then later i saw a windows 10 screen. Windows 7 is better on ANY computer than 10 because of the lack of automatic updates but requires a patch on 2024s netbooks which all ship with windows 11. A netbook my company sells that id recommend is the Quadryllion qSpire 11z 1130 netbook with a Ryzen 5 2600 and 16 GiB ram 2TB HDD GTX 1060 and optical drive and floppy

[@jims_junk]

Where was windows 10? Both had only windows 7.

[@sennpowerhv6922]

@@jims_junk I guess it was just the background screen behind the benchmarking data

[@FlyingPigeon-00001]

Ah yes, two potato systems going head to head.

[@Those_Weirdos]

"Only uses a little more power" is herein defined as 80% more power, I guess. But that is still a good result.

[@gabrielecarbone8235]

Different brand numbers are not comparable, tdps are always approximate and the AMD cpu will run stuff faster or not need to run full load given the same task .

[@itstheweirdguy]

I've taken apart and serviced, etc many Atom netbooks...they're all crap. Even when they were brand new they were too slow to be useful! For maybe 2 years you could surf the web before there was too much going on in websites for this thing!

[@necktwister666]

back when I was in school I played Team Fortress 2 on a similar aspire one with the c60