Here's an interesting comparison between a 1st-gen ATOM and a 500MHz Cortex-A9.
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/a...rried-2010016/

The test shows web rendering speeds on the different units despite the same browser, OS, and connection. The A9 performs more than admirably and compares quite well with the ATOM with most loads being a fraction slower.

Not exactly scientific, but interesting nonetheless.

ARM went on to claim that a cortex A9 @ 1GHz loads pages faster than ATOM!
http://netbooked.net/blog/arm-vs-ato...s-performance/

It seems that current gen A9 is more than capable of not too demanding productivity applications. The next generation is surely to improve on this greatly.