ASRock's E350M1: AMD's Brazos Platform Hits The Desktop First

[rolli59]

Maybe we will end up with a Netbook that you can actually do some casual gaming on.

 

[amdfangirl]

Well if we assume that 3dMark06 roughly represents the power consumption during gaming, 4 1/2 hours on battery gaming is very impressive given most laptops get around 1 hour. Add that to the 1.5kg chassis we saw floating around at CES and I think we've found a winner for mobile gaming!

 

[Guest]

It does what it's supposed to do really well: web browsing, watching video, light gaming... The video encoding and other rendering type benchmarks are outside the scope of what this processor is meant for, nobody with an ounce of sense is going to buy a netbook CPU to do that sort of thing with.

I think ICC compiled synthetic benchmarks should stop being considered a valid test-bed, they've been thoroughly disgraced.

 

[shadowmaster625]

I too would love to see if/how the E-350 overclocks. Also, there is a celeron U3400 out there and I have not seen any benchmarks on it. I get the feeling intel could easily lower the price on that part to crush this market segment... assuming they'd even need to lower the price.

 

[jakall]

I think it`a great platform for HTPC, even fanless is possible. Asus has two models coming up - http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qSoDxhM5mAk1F607&templete=2 - this one should be a good mainboard for a miniATX HTPC. Waiting for Zotac & Co to release more miniITX versions, with wifi, USB 3.0, etc. onboard before a purchase.

 

[coldmast]

It's good to see that AMD has managed to make something that concentrates on what a low power nettop/netbook should do, the everyday things: web / light gaming (which was impressive). I'm interested in the applications that 4x PCIe offers for media centers.

 

[monkeysweat]

All these tests are great and all, but I'm looking at having a pc running dual duty as a upnp media server & htpc,, fusion APUs seem to be something with best price / lowest power consumption,, how well do they run XBMC and say AIRVIDEO at the same time or say play a movie with XBMC and stream a file to a remote media streamer? this is the kind of stuff I do on a daily basis with my main comp, but it is a "beefier" system as it is set up to do gaming as well with a much higher power draw than what a fusion system can do.

Also, I have the 785 chipset which they say can do 1080p all day long, i found that quite untrue when i took out my video card, i initially had some stuttering, so i shut off alot of other programs i would normally run with the vid card in, then it seemed to work OK, but then when system started streaming to remote player the issue popped up again,,, also i should mention that i am playing moves on a 720 panel so i'm not even pushing equipment to full potential

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]reprotected[/nom]Ironic of how Nvidia quality is worse than AMD.[/citation]

For a long time, ATi had superior image quality. Both companies have cheated at points. Swings and roundabouts, in the end.

 

[sandmanwn]

Are you sure this is the first Fusion...
HP is selling the Pavilion dm1z series on their site right now with an AMD fusion E350 processor. What board are they using in that?

 

[JohnA]

Looks like a great Nettop unit. I've been telling people to stay away from Atom, but now I've got a clear alternative for them.

While those numbers looked good, it would be nice to see a couple of those benches at 720p, especially the marginal games like CoD and L4D. There are a bunch of those TV's out there, and this looks like it would be perfect for them. Seems like just about anything would work smoothly at that setting, but a chart or two would have been nice.

 

[sandmanwn]

I also don't understand all the squabbling about power. You seem to understand that the E350 is higher than the Celeron or Atom because it has the graphics cores so there is literally no reason to have those numbers there unless you include the gpu's needed to run those other systems.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

[citation][nom]nevertell[/nom]I was hoping for better performance per watt I really would like a tegra 2 notebook with a proper and supported OS.[/citation]

tegra 2 is based on ARM ISA.Brazos is x86.

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]sandmanwn[/nom]Are you sure this is the first Fusion...HP is selling the Pavilion dm1z series on their site right now with an AMD fusion E350 processor. What board are they using in that?[/citation]

I don't think that's actually available yet, besides pre-orders. That said, HP can't be the only manufacturer offering portable Fusion products.

 

[sandmanwn]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]I don't think that's actually available yet, besides pre-orders. That said, HP can't be the only manufacturer offering portable Fusion products.[/citation]
Says the build date is January 26th. 12 days, just like most other products on their site.

I was wondering since they are just testing this board if another manufacturer is pushing their boards out to OEM first and this ASRock is just the first available at the consumer level. I know HP tends to favor ASUS at the motherboard level.

 

[silverblue]

Yes, but I hear there are Brazos desktop boards already out in the wild. Not had any luck finding any yet in the UK, though...

 

[-Fran-]

Finally, the perfect match for my 42" TV and gaming on the go!

Cheers!

 

[rwpritchett]

I would be interested in a few more media benchmarks such as:

■AVC and VC-1 CPU usage with hardware acceleration turned off (some poorly encoded video don't work well with HA and must be decoded through software)
■HD HQV score comparison, even though it's subjective
■HD flash video testing with and without hardware acceleration

Good article though. I am eagerly awaiting Asus' E35MI-I Deluxe fusion board to be released.

 

[digiex]

Yeah! it trashed atom completely.

 

[mowston]

Why did they disable MVC on UVD3, or is it a different UVD3? Did they expect that anyone who wanted 3D-Blu-ray woud just get an expensive upgrade card or an Nvidia card? Maybe they just didn't want to compete with their higher end PCs. Or can it be enabled through some other means?

 

[ProDigit10]

why not compare the AMD processor to the Atom D510?
The 330 is a generation old processor.

In fact, a comparison to the N550 might have been nicer!

 

[flodisar]

There seems to be something wrong with the blender chart. It says 1:25 for the Athlon II, but the bar length is showing the double of that...

 

[Guest]

I think your next test should be integrated CPU(APU) M-itx motherboards. Take a host of newest atoms against this and whatever other integrated motherboads you can find and see which one would do best as a nettop/htpc.

Bet that new video card is the 6990... can i have it when your done?

 

[Guest]

Does this motherboard support ECC RAM?

If not, is that a limitation of the board, or of the Fusion platform?

If ECC is supported, this could be a big deal for low-cost firewalls and NAS devices.

 

[megamanx00]

That's a pretty cool little CPU and that board can actually make a useful net top (unlike atom even with ion). I wonder how the netbooks are going to look. Looking forward to what Lano can do and of course also waiting for bulldozer .

 

[enzo matrix]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Didn't get a chance to mess with overclocking. If this is something you guys want to see, I might try to push it a little harder over the weekend.[/citation]
Another vote from me for "something I'd like to see"
Nice review.