Your Atom N455 is a single core hyper threaded CPU, which means it has only 1 physical core, but can process 2 threads simultaneously (although slower than an equivalent CPU with 2 physical cores).
The Raspberry Pi3 has 4 physical cores, so while its core speed is lower, it can process more threads in parallel.
Which is faster would depend on the task. It's hard to make direct performance comparisons across different architectures, but I would guess that the Pi3 would be faster on multi core performance, while the Atom would be faster for single core stuff.
However, you shouldn't be at 50% CPU usage while the OS is idle, so something is fishy there.
Andyroo wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 3:14 am
Throw some more RAM in the machine if possible.
The OP's netbook tops out at 2GB, I believe (that was the limit for the early single core Atom).
We have an old ASUS EeePC netbook somewhere (GF's old computer). It's a bit older (N280 series), but I believe it has 2GB in it. I remember running Crunchbang Linux on it, and it performed pretty well. Crunchbang was a lightweight Debian fork.
Now I'm getting curious and want to look for it...
Anyway... bumping the RAM up and swapping the HDD for an SSD would certainly help. Silicon Power makes a 128GB SSD that's a decent performer, and very affordable ($22.99 on Amazon USA). It's in their A55 "Ace" SSD series. I have a 128GB and 256GB on a couple of Pi computers. Not on the performance level of a Samsung 860 EVO or Crucial MX500, but good for the money. RAM prices have been a bit crazy lately, but a 2GB SODIMM should be around the same price now ($20-$25).
Not sure if you'd want to spend $40-$50 upgrading an old Netbook, though...
Might want to try Bunsenlabs Linux or Neverware's CloudReady (Chromium OS). Or figure out what's chewing on your CPU in the background.
My mind is like a browser. 27 tabs are open, 9 aren't responding,
lots of pop-ups...and where is that annoying music coming from?
