The Brazos Performance Preview: AMD E-350 Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2010 12:01 AM ESTMobile IGP Comparison
I narrowed down the platforms for our mobile IGP comparison. I simulated a Core i3 350M by taking an i3-530, underclocking it (I couldn't do anything about the 4MB vs. 3MB L3 cache) and capping its GPU frequency at 667MHz. This is the best case scenario for the i3-350M, and as you'll see below, it doesn't really matter. I also paired a 2.2GHz Pentium Dual-Core with a G45 motherboard, agian simulating the cheaper mobile Pentium platform. Finally I installed Windows 7 on the 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo based 11-inch MacBook Air with its GeForce 320M to give you an idea of the upper bound for mobile performance with what might as well be a low end discrete GPU.
Updated: I've added performance results from a simulated Core i3-330UM, the E-350's competition in ultra portables.
We'll start with Modern Warfare 2:
The E-350 puts the i3-350M, i3-330UM and Pentium DC to shame, delivering 67% better performance. The frame rate is just shy of being totally smooth however. I found that in most modern games 1024 x 768 would result in frame rates just under 30 fps.
BioShock 2 showed a similar performance advantage. Again we're not able to break 30 fps but the performance advantage is huge compared to the Intel platforms with integrated graphics.
Dragon Age: Origins is mostly CPU bound at low quality settings and thus there's no real advantage to the E-350's Radeon HD 6310 GPU. It's faster than the Pentium/G45 platform, but significantly slower than the i3-350M. I expect most games however to be GPU bound at these settings across the board.
World of Warcraft continued the trend. The E-350 ended up 57% faster than the i3-350M, although still fell short of a discrete GPU.
Of course I wondered how well Brazos would play Starcraft 2:
The GPU handles SC2 just fine, however the game is very CPU dependent and thus you see a pretty big advantage from the mainstream i3 system. The comparison is a lot closer when we look at the i3-330UM. The E-350 won't be able to play SC2 as well as a $500 mainstream notebook, but it'll be comparable to an ultraportable running ULV Arrandale.
We don't have numbers for the G45 platform here because the system wouldn't run our benchmark (our tests use an older version of SC2 which apparently had issues with the G45 drivers).
Our SC2 CPU test gives you an idea of the lower end of performance in large multiplayer battles:
The E-350 offers only 58% of the performance of the i3-350M system. The Bobcat cores do hold the platform back from time to time. Again, compared to the i3-330UM there's no performance difference at all.
Just for kicks I also ran the Civilization V benchmark, which gave us two datapoints: GPU performance and no-render/CPU performance.
The benchmark doesn't score well on either platform, although AMD does hold a 72% performance advantage over the i3 and G45 platforms. The CPU test puts the E-350 at about 55% of the speed of the Pentium dual core platform.
Civ V is one area where the Arrandale CPU advantage wins out over GPU performance.
Overall, the E-350 has no problems outperforming any of the current Intel integrated graphics offerings in 3D games. In CPU bound titles the E-350 loses out to the mainstream i3, but is competitive with ultra low voltage i3s. Just as with Atom, you'll have to sacrifice performance vs. a mainstream notebook, but compared to low voltage Arrandale the E-350 can hold its own.
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mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Yeah, as well as some fail to see the forest for the treas.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
The focus here is obviously Zacate, which is why the text that accompanies graphs is centered around comparisons with reference to Zacate.As far as the gaming benchmarks go. I tried to put together a varied list of titles to show performance across a spectrum of game types. Starcraft 2 was the largest non-FPS game release this year, it of course had to be included. DAO simply provided another datapoint for an RPG showing how CPU limits can appear even in 3D games.
I don't think anyone is arguing that Intel's HD Graphics are faster (note the title on the desktop IGP comparison page). But I do believe it's important to show both sides of the coin.
Once final hardware is out we'll definitely spend more time with the platform and run through an even wider range of games and benchmarks. This merely serves as a preview until then.
Take care,
Anand
mino - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
"Once final hardware is out we'll definitely spend more time with the platform and run through an even wider range of games and benchmarks. This merely serves as a preview until then."That is expected and waited for! :D
Just think about splitting at least the conclusion as I have mentioned above. ;)
Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I find it more strange that you're criticizing the gaming benchmark selections. Consumers don't talk about "this game is very CPU intensive" when they typically buy games.The average Joe does not care how CPU intensive Starcraft 2 or Civilization 5 is. They just want to play it.
These are both popular games, so their inclusion in the benchmarks is perfectly acceptable.
Crysis is quite CPU intensive. Are you going to criticize Crysis as well for being CPU intensive?
I guess any games that show Zacate as a poor performer should not be used according to you right?
Jamahl - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I have no issue with Starcraft 2 being used.I do have an issue with Starcraft 2, Civ 5 and Dragons Age being used however. These are supposed to be gaming benchmarks, yet the majority of them are far more cpu dependent.
This is not the norm in gaming, however it is the norm in Anands benchmarking.
You would be very hard pressed to find two games more cpu dependent than Starcraft 2 and Dragons Age.
Dark_Archonis - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I will bet you anything that Diablo 3 will be very CPU intensive.As I mentioned, Crysis is CPU intensive. What do you have to say regarding that?
While these are only a few games, these are very popular games.
What exactly do you mean that it is not "the norm"? Do you mean to say that most sites don't include Starcraft 2 or Dragon Age in benchmarks? I don't see why people would have issues with this. It illustrates a variety of games that stress different parts of a computer.
RPG and strategy games are typically quite CPU intensive. Also, they are rarely included in gaming benchmarks.
I for one applaud Anand for including them, as far too many sites lack these kinds of benchmarks.
Jamahl - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
Crysis is cpu AND gpu intensive. The point is most benchmarking suites would not have a MAJORITY of cpu intensive games. There's a reason why people actually spend a lot of money on gpu's.Did you even read Anands preview? Let me help you understand as you're making a great job of failing to.
Page 2 - "Setting Performance Expectations"
You get a slower CPU than most existing mainstream platforms, but a much better GPU.
The expectations here are better CPU performance than Atom, but lower than Arrandale ULV. GPU performance should easily trump both.
Then what does he do? Well lets look at the gaming benchmarks shall we?
First of all, lets look at the comparison benchmarks.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridg...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2952/2
So the 5450 was benched using a i5 661 and an i7 920 - And you wonder why Bobcat can't keep up? To see if it is actually close to discrete graphics performance, it should have been benched on a 1.5ghz athlon for a fair comparison.
1 in 3 of the desktop tests was Dragon age - a massively cpu bound game which hugely favours intel cpu's over AMD's...and he benched it in comparison to a 5450 with two fast intel cpu's. Not right however you look at it. MW2 is not particularly heavy on graphics either so basically the only true graphical test is Bioshock 2.
Next page
In the mobile gaming comparison, he's gone and added Starcraft 2 - TWICE.
Lets see what we got then -
MW 2 - 50/50 split cpu/gpu
Bioshock 2 - gpu
Dragon Age - cpu
Warcraft - 50/50 split
SC2 TWICE - (yes even the gpu test is more like cpu obviously looking at the results)
I'm not even gonna talk about using Civ 5. Civ 5 got a huge question mark over it's reliability in the fallout over the 6800 benchmarks, then he goes and uses it here?
So...yeah. ONE pure recognised gpu benchmark used in all of those tests compared to 3 or 4 cpu gaming benchmarks.
It's really very simple. benchmark 20 games at random and Bobcat will beat any intel integrated graphics by around 50% in 15 of them. Anand has managed to make it lose more often that not in the very, very few games that massively favour cpu's.
The fact is, he knows this or should. He said at the start what to expect, then went and benchmarked what he knew would happen.
techworm - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
all of us know anandtech is intel PR site so no complaintnitrousoxide - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Watch your words, unless you can give evidence that Anand is indeed an Intel PR.silverblue - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Do me a favour and step back before making judgements.If Anand was biased towards Intel, why would AMD even entertain him with an offer to benchmark their newest CPU, let alone let him publish the results? He already said he was time constrained so you can't very well do everything. Moreover, he did mention that this was a "preview" - this isn't final silicon, it's an engineering sample, and that the final product should use less power.
You should be grateful that there's a preview at all.
It is a shame that the chip seems bandwidth starved, but I don't think AMD ever intended for it to be a triple-channel, SMT-enabled, out-of-order ULV solution - just think of the cost. As long as it does what you want of it, isn't that its point? Atom was "just enough" for browsing, basic media and light workloads, yet Brazos is at the very least an improvement in IPC, and substantially better if you take into account gaming, movies and so on. If Anand truly wanted to give it a bad name, he wouldn't have benched so many games AND highlighted where the chip's true strengths are. He also mentioned that most games should be GPU bound and thus will extol the virtues of the Brazos architecture - how very anti-AMD of him (!).