I've long been a detractor of what Intel has been "doing" to the Atom processor, today I found more reasons to keep it so: 64bit benchmarks.
PCMark shows some improvement in 64-bit mode:
As does the heavily multi threaded Cinebench:
On Cinebench, a 23% performance improvement. Intel is keeping netbook users away from functionality which would enable them to run 64bit OS and that's contributing to a performance loss simply because they disable the 64bit mode. They're spending extra silicon on the thing and then don't let you access it because they're (although, rightfully so) afraid people would stay away from lower end Core 2's and Celerons - it's Netburst all over again. Careful planning would enable them to live without selling Celerons and still profit from it.
If you recall correctly, it's this same lack of performance that causes Intel to dissuade OEMs from building Atom based laptops.
I'm not exactly at a loss for words - this wasn't unexpected - but it's depressing to see a decent architecture being destroyed by purely marketing reasons.
Head to the full review for more benchmarks.
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