So Intel released some new CULV chips this week.  Awesome!  You can even order them today from Dell and others… but how do they stack up in comparison to the Atom chips and other CULV chips?

Intel already has some CULV chips out and about like the Dell 11z’s Celeron™ 723 (1.2GHz/800MHz FSB/1MB cache) that frankly is only marginally better than the standard Atom.  Their new chips however are based on the Core 2 Duo which potentially should be a much stronger work horse.  But how much stronger?

Sadly even with all the new devices announce, there is not a single review of even a pre-production unit to give us an idea of how these new chips will stack up.  So we are forced to turn to our old pal: Math.  ;)

We took the known processing power of the older Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz (2MB cache 533MHz FSB) of the Sony Vaio TZ and the more recent Core 2 Duo SL9400 @ 1.86GHz (6M cache 1066 MHz FSB) of the HP EliteBook 2530p to determine the horsepower per clock.  The new chips sit between these reference chips in terms of cache and bus speed so we averaged their prime calcs per cycle.  Don’t worry, we won’t bore you with the math – here’s the estimated wPrime 32M times for the new chips:

Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3ghz 800 MHz, 3 MB cache – wPrime: 64.2 sec

Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4ghz 800 MHz, 3 MB cache – wPrime: 59.6 sec

For comparison: Intel Atom N280 @ 1.66GHz – wPrime: 114.7 sec

For comparison: Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53GHz – wPrime: 30.9 sec

So even at the relatively slow 1.3 Ghz in the upcoming 11″-12″ almost-netbooks, the Core 2 Duo CULVs should be a huge improvement over the Atom in processing power.  And with a TDP of only 10W instead of the the normal 25-35W for notebook Core 2 Duos – the new chips should easily carve out a new niche between netbooks and notebooks.

UPDATE:  I was reminded that you don’t even need FRAPs as you can simply pull down the console (tab) and type “stat fps” to display the frames per second in the corner and even keeps a running average for you.  How easy is that!