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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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.