The Brazos Performance Preview: AMD E-350 Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2010 12:01 AM ESTDesktop IGP Comparison: Faster than Clarkdale
I split the graphics comparison into two sections: desktop and mobile. For the desktop section I compared the E-350 to the latest Clarkdale chips, AMD's own 890GX and a discrete Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. While the Radeon HD 5450 has the same number of shader processors as the E-350 (80), they run faster and it has a dedicated 1.6GHz memory bus to feed it. The E-350 has to share memory bandwidth between the two Bobcat cores and the 80 SPs, severely limiting its performance potential.
The E-350 does extremely well compared to its desktop brethren. In our Modern Warfare 2 and BioShock tests its easily faster than the Core i3/i5 and in the case of BioShock 2 it's even faster than AMD's 890GX. Dragon Age Origins is another story however as the benchmark is primarily CPU limited, giving the desktop parts a huge advantage. In GPU bound scenarios, it's clear that our initial Zacate benchmarking was accurate: the E-350's Radeon HD 6310 is quicker than Intel's HD Graphics.
Compared to the Radeon HD 5450 the 6310 offers between 66 - 69% of its performance in our GPU bound tests. The performance reduction is entirely due to the 6310's limited memory bandwidth being shared with the dual Bobcat cores on-die.
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mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Troll spoken. Beware.redisnidma - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
After reading this preview, I am starting to believe the rumors floating around in the web about Anand's bias to intel. Shame on him if it's true.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I don't believe that's true :) Is there anything in the article that you believe incorrectly stated the performance of the E-350 vs. its price (2.2GHz Pentium DC/i3-350) and power competitors (Atom)?Take care,
Anand
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Problem is not the numbers themselves.It is the focus of the article to workstation/gaming market along with an unfortunate selection of benchmarks.
For the uninitiated without a gift of reading between the lines, the whole article comes out saying "Oh, another over-hyped CPU crap from AMD barely matching a 2yrs old Intel Atom. Lets move on to discuss some important SB rumors".
khimera2000 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I am starting to get that feeling to unfortionately. Ive read this sight for a long time although i only this year started posting it does look like the language used is getting more and more lop sided, Although i still enjoy reading the sight im just not getting what I use to get out of there reviews.Then again I can be byast because of the AMD 6xxx reviews... which did feel vary vary bias, and was blasted not for the reviewing and conclusion but the choice of componants for testing. at least thats how i see it.
Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Are you serious? The gaming market was compared because well, you know, AMD HYPED Bobcat for gaming!This is ridiculous. AMD hyped gaming performance and GPU performance for Brazos, and therefore gaming benchmarks are perfectly applicable in this situation.
If AMD talks the talk, they need to walk the walk. AMD should have never hyped the GPU performance or gaming performance of Brazos in the first place, given that Brazos struggles in a variety of gaming situations.
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
No, AMD did not "HYPE" Bobcat for gaming.It said that Zacate is a game changer that provides discrete-class performance to the APU market.
That market is currently represented by a really mediocre Atom APU's that can not even launch the games, not to mention playing them.
It actually went out of its way NOT to hype Ontario by excluding it from its Fusion branding.
Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Zacate is not a game-changer, because it does NOT provide "discrete class" GPU performance.Bobcat was hyped through the hyping of Zacate.
silverblue - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
But it obviously DOES provide discrete-class GPU performance. Low end, yes, but it still fulfills its purpose. And for far less power than the low-end discrete cards will use.Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I am starting to believe the rumors of more and more AMD PR people infiltrating tech websites are true ...