The Brazos Performance Preview: AMD E-350 Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2010 12:01 AM ESTSetting Performance Expectations
AMD provided this slide of PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage performance of Brazos compared to its existing mobile platforms (Danube and Nile):
If you look at the PCMark Vantage numbers you'll see that AMD's E-350 provides roughly the same performance as an Athlon V120. That's a single core, 45nm chip running at 2.2GHz with a 512KB L2 cache. Or compared to a dual core processor, it's within striking distance of the Athlon Neo K325 which features two cores running at 1.3GHz and 1MB L2 per core. The GPU performance however tells a very important story. While AMD's previous platforms offered a great deal of CPU performance and an arguably imbalanced amount of GPU performance, Brazos almost does the opposite. You get a slower CPU than most existing mainstream platforms, but a much better GPU.
In the sub-$500 market, you're not going to get much in the way of a discrete GPU. What AMD is hoping for is that you'll be happy enough with Brazos' CPU performance and be sold on its GPU performance and total power consumption. From AMD's standpoint, there's not much expense involved in producing a Zacate/Ontario APU, making Brazos a nice way of capitalizing on mainstream platforms. The 75mm2 die itself is smaller than most discrete GPUs as well as anything Intel is selling into these market segments.
AMD's Zacate APU, 19mm x 19mm package, 413 balls, 75mm^2 die
The Comparison
Brazos, like Atom, will fight a two front war. On the one hand you have the price comparison. The E-350 will be found in notebooks in the $400 - $500 range according to AMD. That puts it up against mainstream notebooks with 2.2GHz Intel Pentium DC and 2.26GHz Core i3-350M processors. Against these platforms, Brazos won't stand a chance as far as CPU performance goes but it should do very well in GPU bound games. I've included results from a 2.2GHz Pentium dual-core part (1MB L2 cache) as well as a simulated Core i3-350M in the mobile IGP comparison.
The other front is, of course, the ultraportable space. Here you'll see the E-350 go head to head with dual-core Atom, Core 2 ULV and Arrandale ULV parts. AMD's CPU performance should be much more competitive here. From this camp we've got the Atom D510 (close enough to the N550) and a simulated Core i3-330UM. The expectations here are better CPU performance than Atom, but lower than Arrandale ULV. GPU performance should easily trump both.
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GeorgeH - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Yep, they should have definitely said something like "Here's a reasonably adequate product in its niche. Please buy it. Or not. There's lots of good stuff out there." ;)At any rate, Fusion is like Centrino - broad market speak for a concept, not any specific product. Trinity (the first Bulldozer+GPU) will be a 'Fusion' product just as much as Ontario, Zacate, and Llano are.
wickedgtr - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
"When it comes to power consumption however, the E-350 can't be touched. I measured max system power consumption at " ???Page three, between the double graphs for x264
Aone - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Silly to compare E350 with Atom. You should have done C50/C30 comparison with Atom.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Unfortunately all we had access to was the E-350. As soon as there are C-x0 platforms available we'll review em :)Take care,
Anand
KaarlisK - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Couldn't you have tried to cap the E-350 at 1GHz using Windows' power management settings? Or was Cool'n'Quiet disabled?wongpitu - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
well, I guess it's still early to make a judgement in this product, and I should wait for the final version. But still, when I see it it's no different from atom on cpu power. when my expectation is this brazo at least 50% faster than atom, and this will upper the competition.Maybe I will more interest if the fusion is make a good boost on most of application.
NST - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Anand,in this preview you 're putting E-350 against desktop processors (some of them really old), a dual core Atom and an ''i3-350M''.None of the above is in the same market AMD is targeting with this chip, which is the ultraportable market (11''-13'' screen).D510 has a lower TDP (13W) and i3-530M a much higher one (35W).As you stated, ''This is effectively AMD's answer to Intel's CULV platform, but with better graphics performance''.Please compare E-350 with the i7/i5-XXXUM line of processors,so we can really evaluate the performance of this APU.
Sincerely,
NST
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Ask and you shall receive. I just updated the gaming benchmarks with results from a simulated Core i3 330-UM, will be adding the general performance benchmarks as well :)Take care,
Anand
Roland00Address - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
And while I am grateful for the update I was wondering if you could also test a1) Celeron Dual Core SU2300 or Pentium Dual Core SU4100 which are based off the Penryn CULV and go for about 450 to 700 online.
2) Pentium U5400 aka the I3 Derivative with features turned off such as Multithreading since this is the closest priced Arrandale ULV you are going to find that competes with Zacate. Moste U5400 systems go for 580 to 700 online.
Thank You
8steve8 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
AMD E-350 gets destroyed by core i3/i5 ULV cpus at the same wattage (18W for CPU/GPU).and sandy bridge will make this much worse for AMD in a matter of months.
gpu performance is really not a concern for the type of products these processors are intended for. intel core i5 ULV IGP is good enough for video/flash-games etc.
this seems like a total waste.