Samsung ATIV Smart PC: Revisiting Clover Trail Convertibles
by Vivek Gowri on March 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTSamsung ATIV Smart PC: Performance
Anand covered the CPU and GPU performance of the Atom Z2760 really thoroughly in his Clover Trail platform review with the Acer W510. At this point, Z2760 is pretty familiar to us—two Hyper-Threaded Saltwell cores at 1.8GHz, along with PowerVR’s SGX 545 GPU clocked at 533MHz. Saltwell is the 32nm shrink of Bonnell, which you probably better remember as the heart of the much beloved Atom N270 netbook processors. (I’m kidding about the much beloved part.) The new 22nm microarchitecture cannot come soon enough. Here's a rehash of Clover Trail performance, which is generally identical to the Acer W510.
For the first time, we’re seeing Intel lose its performance edge to Cortex-A15 based SoCs, but for now Clover Trail is still competitive from both compute and power efficiency standpoints. That’s more than can be said for SGX 545, even at such a high clock. Clover Trail+ changes that though, with the inclusion of two SGX 544 cores, and should offer graphics performance that is in the same range as Adreno 320, as well as being much more competitive with Apple’s recent SoCs. But CT+ hasn’t arrived yet, so for now we’re left with good old Clover Trail. I'm leaving Surface Pro's numbers in the following graphs, just so that you can see how much faster the ultra-low voltage IVB parts are when compared to Clover Trail. It's a pretty huge difference, even when looking at just the Core i5.
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RollingCamel - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Just want to say TEAM17 make a decent touch-based Worms 2D and it'll sell like hot cakes. No need for fancy graphics just the old school 2D of Armageddon and World Party...nerd1 - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Too bad it took so long for this not-quite-long review....Personally I really hate any >10" tablet without inking capability, so it is actually great now OEMs are making tablets with active digitizers. I'd like to see the reviews for Thinkpad tablet 2 and Dell latitude 10 too.
VivekGowri - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Yeah, that was my bad, it got caught behind some other stuff and has spent a long time sitting at the 90% completion state. Will be more timely in future.hughtwg - Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - link
I had a Thinkpad Tablet 2. In general Windows 8 or more specifically the Modern UI has very poor pen support. You can't use the pen to move around the UI like you would use your finger. You have to use the pen to activate the scroll bars. Unfortunately the TPT2 has very poor pen calibraition particularly along the edges of the screen. This makes using the scroll bars in the Modern UI a real pain in the butt. This also holds true for trying to hit the close or resize button on any maximized windows in the desktop. These issues and the lack of a good dock/keyboard are why I sold my TPT2 and replaced with an an Envy X2.nerd1 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
The main use for pen is inking - I cannot understand the LACK of active pen makes Envy X2 any better device.hughtwg - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
For me the main use of a pen is not having to touch the screen. I use the pen on my Note II 99% of the time and I never ink. While I would prefer a device that supported a pen the difficulty of navigating the Modern UI with a pen made it mostly useless to me.What makes the X2 a better device then the TPT2 is the keyboard , battery life, ports, and larger screen. For me anyway. YMMV.
I am as mad as hell - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
1366x768... that's all I needed to read.VivekGowri - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
You're not going to see higher than that on an Atom-based tablet, nor any of the RT slates. Disappointing reality, but I don't think Clover Trail would offer a satisfactory experience at 1080p anyways - maybe CT+?Snotling - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Do the test, plug in an old Atom netbook in a 1080p display... for everything except 3D games or HD video, it will be fine (and I'm talking OLD single core Atom) New Atoms are far more capable, especially for HD video.jeffkibuule - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
My guess is battery life suffers running at 1080p resolution.