Sony EE34: Sony Makes Budget AMD Laptops?
by Dustin Sklavos on February 22, 2011 4:43 PM ESTConclusion: A Sound Budget Purchase
I'll come clean and say I'm not a big fan of budget notebooks, at least not in the grand scheme of things. They do serve a purpose and periodically one comes along (like this one) that actually feels like a solid bargain, but historically I prefer to recommend to people I actually like to save money and invest in a good machine that will last for some time. Most people will buy a cheap computer and beat it like [insert offensive euphemism here], get upset when it doesn't work very well anymore, and complain about it for three years until they finally tightwad up, go back to the store, and buy another cheap computer to abuse and gripe about.
I've been paid to fix those computers. I don't like doing it anymore. There are bargains, and then there's getting what you pay for. When my dad's girlfriend complains because the illegal immigrant she paid a paltry eight bucks an hour to take care of her front yard didn't do a very good job, she sounds dense. And that's what consumers who buy cheap PCs sound like when they complain that their computer isn't fast.
Now, with that said, there are also college students in the world and other people who have silly things to pay for like rent and food and who can't afford the kind of computer we might want for them, and in those instances a good bargain can go a long way. I think the Sony Vaio EE34 is one of those bargains. Where a lot of extreme budget notebooks shut off pretty much as soon as you pull the plug, the EE34 gets some pretty strong battery life. The processor is enough to get the job done, and the integrated graphics will let you play Left 4 Dead 2 and StarCraft II in a pinch. That's not too bad. People looking to get in on the Blu-ray ground floor (now that HDTVs have gotten pretty cheap) can kill two birds with one stone by buying a notebook like this one, too.
A local store had the EE34 on sale for just $499, and at that point it's such a strong value proposition that it would be fine for people who just want something "good enough" and don't expect the world. NewEgg currently has it for $629 ($579 after coupon), and at that point it does get a little bit dicey. I think I could probably still recommend it at that price given the good build quality, design, and battery life, but anywhere north of it and there are better deals to be had on Intel-based machines from other manufacturers. If you want cheap Blu-ray, though, you're not going to be able to do better than the Sony Vaio EE34.
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rns.sr71 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
'While Llano's CPU performance doesn't promise to be a substantial improvement over what we've seen here (the cores are basically K10.5)'- now hold it. amd is doubleing l2 cache size, improving prefetchers, improving the mem. controller(hopefully efficiency), and i have to believe that they are increasing the width and/or the speed of the cpu/nb. it could outperform deneb clock for clock then factor in a REAL turbo....it could be 15-25 percent better than deneb depending on the app. 15-25 percent better than propus across the board.nitrousoxide - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
While improvements may occur, there won't be substantial changes in CPU performance for it's still a 3-issue design. And note there's no way Llano can be clocked at, say, 3.0GHz (at least without Turbo) due to TDP limit (Llano should have even higher TDP than quad-core i7s because there's a discrete level GPU packed in it). So you can't really expect a Llano faster than the desktop Athlon II X4 640 today. But anyway, with four cores, it should at least keep up with low-end dual core Sandybridge and would provide much much better IGP performance. I expect the IGP performance to be at the same level of downclocked versions of Mobility 5650 (ones equipped in Toshiba and Sony laptops). That performance is enough for most gaming with high (though not ultra high) settings at 1366x768 resolution.rns.sr71 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
not tryin to argue, but look at this- http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1443/1/"Quite a lot is known about Llano processor, which is a part of Sabine platform. As reported earlier, AMD Llano accelerated processing unit (APU) will have four x86 cores based on the current micro-architecture each of which will have 9.69mm² die size (without L2 cache), a little more than 35 million transistors (without L2 cache), 2.5W – 25W power consumption, 0.8V – 1.3V voltage and target clock-speeds at over 3.0GHz clock-speed. The cores will dynamically scale their clock-speeds and voltages within the designated thermal design power in order to boost performance when a program does not require all four processing engines or trim power consumption when there is no demand for resources. According to sources familiar with the matter, different versions of Llano processor will have thermal design power varying from 20W to 59W: high-end dual-core, triple-core and quad-core chips will have TDP between 35W and 59W; mainstream chips with two of four x86 cores will fit into 30W thermal envelope and low-power dual-core Llano chips will have 20W TDP." -
rns.sr71 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
also, yes it is still 3 issue. but changes to prefetchers, OoO buffer, scheduler efficiency, ect would improve ipc noticeably. i think the doubling of the l2 cache, lower latency, higher mem bandwidth, wider/faster cpu/nb(which has to be improved) would make up for not having an l3 cache. so it could outperform a deneb. maybe by the same amount that deneb outperformed its predecessor.nitrousoxide - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
IPC can only be improved with substantial architectural changes, not such minor adjustments. So you can't seriously expect too much CPU performance from Llano, but as I said, it could be as fast, if not faster than dual core sandybridge.Hrel - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
I really don't care about blu ray at all, and with this kind of performance of paltry screen...I just cannot justify paying more than 400 for this laptop. Either remove the blue ray and drop the price to 500 or less or put in a nice 500:1 contrast 1080p screen with a 6 cell battery.
Hrel - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
at 500 bucks with blu-ray I can see a place for it. Even a dollar more though and it's just not worth it. In 6 months every laptop on big box shelves will include Sandy Bridge IGP which greatly outperforms this in every single way. AMD really needs the ramp up their mobile offerings.mino - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
One thing where it also outperforms even those Xpress 1200 IGP's of old is in driver bugs on Windows and driver non-existence on Linux.It is worth keeping that in mind. I'd take ATi Xpress 200 from 2005 over HD Graphics any day. With an SB CPU to chug along, of course ;)
MobiusStrip - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
The screen doesn't matter as long is it's an asinine glossy one.The contrast ratio doesn't mean anything when the image is covered in a reflective sheen all the time. And it will be, even in a pitch-black room, because at the very least YOU will be reflected in it.
Unless you do all your computing in a ninja outfit, in a closet.
kevith - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
Haha, great:-)