HP dm1z: Taking Fusion on the Road
by Dustin Sklavos on February 21, 2011 7:00 PM ESTAlmost There For Mobile Gaming
While the E-350 at least brings netbooks into the era of genuine usability and the Radeon HD 6310 is definitely a step up from the Nile platform's IGP, you'll see that unfortunately CPU performance isn't quite there yet.
In all cases the HD 6310 acquits itself fairly well compared to the other integrated parts, but CPU performance takes its pound of flesh. Bumping settings down can improve the situation (usually these lower-powered parts will hit bandwidth limitations at 720p and can come into their own at around 800x600) and at that point you're liable to see a substantial improvement over the Nile platform's Mobility Radeon HD 4225, but at the end of the day we're still pretty heavily processor limited.
Jarred's working on some additional gaming tests for his E-350 review, but the general rule of thumb is that you'll want to look at slightly older games (or very undemanding current games). As an example, the original Half-Life 2 runs reasonably well at 1366x768 and medium quality settings; move to the later episodes, however, and performance starts to drop into the 20s and teens—and don't even try bumping the shadow quality above "Low". Maybe now would be a good time to rediscover some of the gaming gems from before 2007?
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balancedthinking - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
first of all, the mini 311 has only an N270the E-350 has more than twice the cpu power (cinebench etc.) and it was a hassle to work with an N270, an E-350 works almost like a normal laptop, office etc. quick and responsive. Multitasking, no problem.
Thats a huge difference and it does so with higher battery life and a lower price.
So what is so special about brazos? It beats hands down everything Intel/Nvidia have to offer right now in this mobile market space and that is a 1st for AMD.
Better performance, geat battery life and great price. Ther is no point in buying an atom anymore.
joe4324 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
This even looks just like my HP Mini 311, Infact I bet its the same Chassis at least. I love seeing this ultra-portable market advance but HP really turned me sour and I will steer clear of them forever at any price point.If this machine suffers from the same flaws my Mini 311 did please be warned!
HP refused to service mine in anyway 72 days after warranty despite it basically falling apart. I paid $500 for my Mini 311. To keep yourself from falling into the same boat as me watch out for this:
1) Fan if the fan makes *any* weird noise at all even once, And or it runs continuously have it serviced or at least file a request. My fan started to die in less than a year but I limped along just past my warranty date then it completely died. I can find no replacement for less than an $65...
2) My speakers quit a couple weeks after the warranty, The audio jack works but not the speakers.
3) Check the temp sensor in the Bios, Mine had a bad habit of turning back on, or continuing to run when I thought it was in standby and if I was not diligent it would have overheated inside of backpacks cases etc.
I work in computer repair and I feel like I'm one of the best people to get stiffed with a dying computer as I have a lot of resources to fix it, but even then I feel like I am out almost $500 and HP showed zero signs of desire to help me out.
Unless they make it right I'm going to continue advocating a different brand. I see HP Dv6000's come into my work everyday with similar problems. I think HP is the most repaired/Dead laptops we see. Sony/IBM being the best. This is just a observation.
joe4324 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
I forgot to mention, in 15 months my batter life went from 4.5 hours to 20 minutes also...tammlam - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
I bought one of these for my wife and everything was going well for the first 3 weeks until this past weekend. Turned it on and all we got was a bunch of distorted, horizontal lines. The screen periodically went dark as well. Once in a while, it clears up and the screen looks normal but this didn't last long. Now it is waiting to be picked up for repair and hopefully everything will work the way it should.Besides this glitch, it is a very nice notebook and I removed most of the preloaded programs. Got it down to 50 processes.
AlohaMike - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
Once again I am disappointed in HP. I keep WANTING to buy an HP and they keep forgetting to put a HOME and an END key on their netbooks. So I bought an Acer from Costco. Nothing fancy but I can type with it.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
Fn+Left Arrow is Home, Fn+Right Arrow is End. They're there, they just aren't marked.silverblue - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
...a 2GHz Brazos. :) Unfortunately, I still think that whilst a faster CPU would help, the single-channel memory interface is choking it.swaaye - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
That's a horribly slow subnote, not a netbook.swaaye - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
That's a super slow subnotebook, not a netbook. You could've gotten something like this 2-3 years ago.mino - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
You could have got something like this 4 yrs ago. For $2000+.Game. Set. Match.