The Brazos Performance Preview: AMD E-350 Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2010 12:01 AM ESTFinal Words
The Brazos platform really poses the question of what is fast enough from a CPU standpoint. Netbook makers often argued that Atom was fast enough, and honestly they'd be right if Atom wasn't paired with such a heavyweight OS. Running Windows 7, Atom just wasn't fast enough but many made the sacrifice in order to get the form factor and battery life benefits that went along with the platform. The E-350 offers an alternative. You get faster than Atom CPU performance (particularly in single threaded tasks) and a fairly potent GPU. The only issue is that the E-350 doesn't compete against Atom. Most of the time you'll find it up against Pentium or low end Core i3 notebooks.
From a CPU performance standpoint, the E-350 can't compete with either of those CPUs clock for clock. Where AMD has the advantage is in power consumption and GPU performance. This is effectively AMD's answer to Intel's CULV platform, but with better graphics performance.
This is a huge statement from AMD, echoing what Apple has been saying for the past year: while CPU performance matters, GPU performance must scale at least as quickly, if not more to make up for lost time. The only thing we're really lacking are the killer apps (outside of 3D gaming and HD video) to support this mentality today.
The Radeon HD 6310 in the E-350 does very well, despite the memory bandwidth limitations. Its easily faster than Intel's HD Graphics, although some games (e.g. Starcraft 2) are still held back by the performance of AMD's Bobcat cores. Despite being a significant step forward for integrated graphics at this price point, I would be lying if I said I didn't wish it were faster. Ideally I would like to see > 30 fps performance across the board from the E-350.
There's also the GPU compute argument that AMD makes for Fusion, however the GPU compute tests I tried to run on Brazos didn't exactly work. Cyberlink Media Espresso would not use the GPU for encoding and the Civilization V compute shader test wouldn't run either. Both I suspect will be worked out by the time the platform actually ships.
What matters the most with Brazos is what the OEMs do with it. We'll of course get mini-ITX boards to turn into HTPCs, but on the mobile side Brazos needs to be paired with a sleek/well built chassis, good display, fast storage and a large battery to truly be attractive. I am also concerned about the performance of the Ontario based APUs. In many areas the E-350 isn't that much quicker than a dual-core Atom, which makes me wonder how the C-30 and C-50 would do.
Brazos ultimately has the same problem Atom had at its introduction. Compared to similarly priced notebooks based around 2.2GHz Pentium dual-core CPUs or Core i3s, the CPU just isn’t competitive. Unlike Atom however, in GPU bound scenarios the E-350 is actually faster than those two. The only issue, as I mentioned above, is that currently the majority of mainstream applications that are GPU bound are 3D games. Like Atom however, the Brazos platform is also destined for ultra thin formfactors - places a low end Core i3 can’t go. It’s in that comparison that AMD is most successful.
Compared to a Core i3-330UM, Brazos offers much better GPU performance and it’s even competitive in CPU dependent games like Starcraft 2. The i3-330UM is still faster CPU bound scenarios though, reinforcing the CPU speed for GPU performance tradeoff that you’re faced with when considering these two.
The E-350 delivers 50 - 60% of the multithreaded CPU performance of the Core i3-330UM, and nearly 70% of the single threaded performance. It’s a noticeable gap, but AMD attempts to make up for it by delivering up to twice the GPU performance in games.
Then there’s the issue of die size. For years AMD has had to give sell you a larger die at a lower price than Intel in order to remain competitive. The Brazos platform changes that. At 75mm^2, the Zacate die is smaller than just the CPU portion of a Core i3 and it’s less than 40% of the total die area when you include Intel’s HD Graphics. While more CPU performance would be nice to have, this is a good start.
AMD is committed to revving the Brazos platform yearly. We’ll obviously see updated graphics next year but I’m hoping for updates to the CPU cores as well. The biggest mistake Intel made with Atom was to be too conservative with its roadmap. AMD has a history of not making the same mistakes as Intel, so hopefully the Brazos roadmap looks good. Now we wait for the notebooks.
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mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Why else would anyone spend 90% of the space boasting about multithreaded benchmarks that are COMPLETELY meaningless for the target markets?Anand, it is a sad fact that you are not humble enough to do a proper review of the low end stuff anymore.
Leave the space to people who are not so pampered by having the top-end stuff to play with for over a decade.
Stick to the luxury stuff where your mind is. Your time as a "mortal" reviewer is over.
You are far too out-of-touch to not get manipulated by PR lads without realizing it. As far as low-end and mainstream parts go, that is.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
These days it's actually very difficult to find workloads that don't at least stress 2 cores, even installing Modern Warfare 2 on the Brazos system ate up 61% of the 2 cores. That's why the Cinebench test is so handy because it does give us an idea of single threaded performance as well.Single threaded performance does matter quite a bit to how fast the system feels. Application launch time and how quickly windows pop up is greatly based on this, which is why I pointed it out in our single threaded performance results.
I tried to show single threaded performance, multithreaded performance in both high and low IPC workloads as well as a lot of gaming performance data to present as complete of a picture of Brazos' performance as possible.
If I've failed in doing so by your standards I do apologize. I wanted to run a lot more but with time constraints on how long I had access to the platform I had to limit what I could run.
Take care,
Anand
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I am pretty sure you have a very good understanding of Zacate's performance.Where I see the problem that your articles have, over the years, come to be written from an upper class POW.
As if subconsciously disregarding the pricing part.
Then when a part comes out that is _designed_ to be cheap first and anything else second you make an article sound as the part was a piece of crap by definition.
While i certainly hope it was not the idea, it is how it came out ...
People are subjective by definition and our lives DO affect our expressions however much we would like it to stay otherwise.
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
One just needs to contrast the tone of this article with the Atom one. While Atom was being heavily praised for delivering acceptable performance for a low price an power.link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2537
Nevermind that Silverthorne, while itself good, represented very much a crappy and imbalanced platform. (Outside the non-existent MID market.)
Compared to that Brazos, while almost shouting out "Atom done right" gets a stamp of "undewhelming" ...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I appreciate the feedback. It's not my intention to discredit value as a piece of the equation, in fact pricing is always a major component of anything we discuss here.I believe we need to look at Atom in context. Two years ago Atom's level of performance might've been a decent balance of perf/power, especially given the price of good systems at the time. Today that is no longer true. Outside of smartphones, the overwhelming response tends to be that Atom based netbooks running Windows 7 aren't exactly fast enough.
The E-350 is clearly faster than Atom. My worry is that the E-350 won't be the chip aimed at Atom. In a $299 netbook the E-350 would easily trump anything else out there. But if we're talking about $500, then you start getting into Pentium DC and Core i3 territory.
While video encoding, 3D rendering and file compression/archive recovery aren't the only things you'd do with such a system, these are good tests of CPU performance which is the unknown we were looking to answer in this article. The tests told us three things:
1) The E-350 is faster than a dual-core Atom by varying amounts depending on the type of workload (the tests also highlighted the limits of Bobcat's front end in high IPC workloads).
2) The E-350 does achieve AMD's design target of 90% of the performance of a K8, and
3) The E-350 does suffer the same fate as Atom does when it comes to CPU performance. You can get a faster CPU in a similarly priced system, although you will likely give up form factor and/or battery life.
The E-350 is easily better than Atom, but when it comes to the Pentium/i3 comparison you have to make the tradeoff between CPU performance or GPU performance. I simply tried to present enough data to allow users to understand that tradeoff.
Take care,
Anand
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Just try more care when publicly judging stuff by your personal expectations.Very few people will get the subtle praise in the background which a mere recognition of Zacate competing with mainstream platforms represents.
Thanks for the reply and keep up the good work,
Cheers!
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
It now came to me that what was really called for is a three-progned look at Brazos:1) as a netbook/ultra-thin solution
2) as a HTPC solution
3) as an ultra cheap alternative to mainstream parts
IMO it shines in all those roles but for a VERY different reasons:
1) solves GPU bottleneck that plagues this market since inception
2) provides Atom-class power with CULV-class connectivity and performance
3) is the cheapest kid on the block while providing _acceptable_ performance across the board (outside workstation tasks)
Maybe a topic for a follow-up analytic article ? :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I would LOVE to have a netbook/ultraportable laptop to test right now using Brazos, but that's not what AMD is ready to show just yet. They're showing early hardware that needs the big OEMs to put it all into a compelling package. Unfortunately, I think they're going to fall short as well. Do you want an alternative to ION netbooks? This will definitely work, and even come out ahead. But ION, frankly, isn't good. Yes, it can play multimedia content a lot better than just Atom (or Atom with CrystalHD), but then so can ULV stuff.And the big problem is that you can get ION netbooks for $500, and ULV starting at $600. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... So if AMD were to say that Brazos is going to target the $300 to $350 netbook world, I'd be ecstatic. When they say it's going after the $500 laptop world, I'm a lot less impressed. Intel already has CULV laptops that cost under $500; add in a G 310M (which is still too slow for most recent games) and you'd have something faster than Brazos in pretty much every way. It's just nothing special.
Is it a bad design? No. Is it an awesome design? Equally, no. It's an okay design that will fill a niche--a niche that already has plenty of options, unfortunately.
mino - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
Well, Jared, I was hoping there is a chance for AT to recover.After this reply of yours, I am pretty sure you have lost the ability to see the forest behind the trees.
I will still not call you paid, but you are REALLY pushing for that.
Never mind, just no more hope left.
silverblue - Thursday, November 18, 2010 - link
Jarred didn't write the preview. He's entitled to his own opinion.