Toshiba NB205 vs MSI Wind - CrystalMark R3 Benchmark test results

By: Raghav Kapoor

Toshiba NB205 gets a higher benchmark score

Toshiba NB205

MSI Wind

 The guys from Jkontherun.com have run the CrystalMark 2004R3 benchmark test on both Toshiba NB205 and MSI Wind netbook and were startled to see the results. Both these netbooks have a 10.1-inch display and 1GB DDR2 RAM. While the former is powered by a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, the later runs on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. For storage both the devices use a 5,400rpm hard disk drive and use Windows XP operating system.

The test was basically conducted to see the difference between the performance of Atom N270 and Atom N280 processors. If we talk about the architecture of the two processors, there is not much change, only that the bus speed of N280 is 667MHz and clock speed is 1.66GHz whereas, that of the Atom N270 processor is 533MHz (bus) and 1.6GHz (clock) respectively.

The Toshiba NB205 managed to get a CrystalMark score of 29,309 as compared to MSI Wind’s score of 27,365. This showed a meager 7% increase in performance but, if we look at the hard drive test scores then the NB205 scored 7,656 against Wind’s 6,780. This means that the NB205 has a hard disk with faster read (57.57 MB/s) and write (54.06 MB/s) speeds as compared to the read (44.82 MB/s) and write (42.77 MB/s) speed of MSI Wind’s HDD.

The test on the Toshiba NB205 was conducted when it was connected to a battery source and was in ‘Full Power’ mode but, in the normal scenario one has to use the netbook out in the open so the guys re-ran the test without connecting the charger when the netbook was in ‘Long Life’ mode, the results this time were startling. The Toshiba NB205 netbook could only score 21,625 marks which means there was nearly a 26% drop in overall benchmarked performance. Everything from graphics and hard drive to calculations and memory dropped as less power was provided to the components.