HP Mini 210-2100 Netbook Review

HP Mini 210-2100 review index:

• 1 – Overview
• 2 – Window 7 Starter and Rescue Disk
• 3 – hardware specifications and gallery
• 4 – Insyde H20 BIOS
• 5 – CPU-Z data
• 6 – Intel GMA 3150 and OpenGL (GPU Caps Viewer, GPU-Z)
• 7 – N550 Performance
• 8 – Installation of Linux Ubuntu 11.04
• 9 – Conclusion

7 – HP Mini 210-2100: N550 Performance

To quikly test the performance of the N550 CPU, I used an old multi-core CPU benchmark I coded several years ago: AOGenMark. AOGenMark is a simple command line CPU benchmark. You can use it to benchmark a multi-core CPU. You can specify the number of threads to use.

I will post AOGenMark shortly so you’ll be able to compare your scores with the N550.
You can download AOGenMark 1.3.0 from this page or get the latest version on the homepage.

Perfect for my needs! With the hyperthreading enabled, the N550 CPU shows 4 logical cores. Okay, let’s start an AOGenMark test with 4 threads. By default, thread affinity is enabled: thread one is stuck to core 1, thread 2 to core 2, thread 3 to core 1 and thread 4 to core 2.

The score is 541.403 seconds. But take a look at the CPU usage:

Only two cores are used. Problem of core limitation of Win7 Starter? After some searches, I discovered the concept of Core parking under Windows 7:

Core Parking is basically a new advanced feature which is been embedded that dynamically chooses a number or set of processors well which actually should be idle or not to function or execute any thread that is been based on current power policy and their utilization.

More details HERE.

But I was not really convinced. Then I decided to disable thread affinity in AOGenMark:

Now the 4 cores are used and the score is: 270.676 sec. I don’t know if there’s a relation between core parking and thread affinity but I won’t be surprised if such a relation exists.

Now the question: 270 sec to finish AOGenMark is it fast? Let’s do a test with an Intel Quad Core X9650 @ 3GHz:

Score: 50.364 sec. The N550 is five time slower than a X9650.

Under Ubuntu 11.04 (see next page), I browsed a folder full of 4000×3000 pixels pictures. the N550 shows some signs of … sluggishness. The time between two pictures was rather long…

HP Mini 210-2100 review index:

• 1 – Overview
• 2 – Window 7 Starter and Rescue Disk
• 3 – hardware specifications and gallery
• 4 – Insyde H20 BIOS
• 5 – CPU-Z data
• 6 – Intel GMA 3150 and OpenGL (GPU Caps Viewer, GPU-Z)
• 7 – N550 Performance
• 8 – Installation of Linux Ubuntu 11.04
• 9 – Conclusion