decembermouse :
I'll have to look this up; is the E-450's IMC a slight upgrade over the E-350? Since it's 1.65GHz and the E-350 is 1.6GHz, I figured it just uses a 16.5x multiplier instead of the 16x that the E-350 uses. I thought either chip could only really take advantage of DDR3-1333 though? I mean, I see E-350 mobos that have DDR3-1600 support, but haven't seen any benchmarks or articles on whether this offers a tangible benefit. I'll try and look for some now that you mention there's an advantage as it would be good information to have, but if you're thinking of a certain article would you mind posting a linky? 😀 thanks!
Anand did a Brazos update article a few months back which included a preview of the E-450.
link
As for why Brazos boards can support DDR3-1600, it's become perfectly normal for the board itself to support faster RAM than a CPU's (or APU's) internal memory controller is capable of supporting. As an example, any memory speed above DDR3-1600 (for many current CPUs/APUs, any speed above 1066 or 1333) can only be achieved via overclocking, but many DDR3 boards claim support up DDR3-2133 speeds.
And yeah, the E-450 is a slight upgrade over the E-350, but not by much based on clock rate(s) alone. The 50 MHz CPU clock rate boost is rather paltry, but it's something. The GPU got also got a little boost to 508 MHz. (This is up from the E-350's 492 MHz GPU clock, and it can OC itself to 600 MHz in some instances.) The real advantage the 450 offers is it's increased memory bandwidth through DDR3-1600 use, which should increase performance within more memory intensive programs (audio/video editing & compression), as well as overall 3D performance (since the GPU uses system memory). (I wish more notebook makers would actually use the A6-3410MX, A8-3510MX, and A8-3530MX with their similar DDR3-1600 support for the same reasons.)
What I don't understand is the current pricing of machines using the E-450. No matter where I look, they're all in the $500+ range, which easily enters A6-3400M Llano territory. Sure, the E-450 uses far less power and you might not need the A6's quad-cores, but if 3- to 5-hours of battery life is enough and you're looking for something that you can game on occasionally, the A6 blows the E-450 away. So does the A4-3300, for that matter. This HP announcement that they're releasing one at $400 is a step in the right direction towards more affordable low-power computing.