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).

Comments

[Benz145]

I'm not surprised to see the UX surpass that of the Q1, I think it has a faster FSB and faster RAM which is why is scores better in many categories over the Q1. It would score even better if compared after a fresh install of XP. I'm glad to know that the UX still performs better then never devices such as the OQO 02 vs. UX91S, even though the OQO has a 1.5GHz CPU vs. the UX91S's 1.33GHz.