Fusion E-350 Review: ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe, ECS HDC-I and Zotac FUSION350-A-E
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2011 11:00 AM ESTBIOS
The first thing you notice when you turn on the motherboard is that it beeps at you - a few low pitched beeps for all the USB devices connected, and a final high pitch to confirm it's booted. In my mind, a good addition to have(!), but it needs a switch or a BIOS option to turn the beeping on or off.
Speaking of the BIOS, unfortunately nothing in the Zotac BIOS is spectacular - it's a simple American Megatrends interface, with not a lot of style or substance. This is a problem with some of the more niche motherboard makers such as Zotac who have to licence in a default BIOS. ASUS, ASRock and the like can make their own, but Zotac use a default base and build on it with their own design.
I initially started this review on the release BIOS, and was supplied the latest internal BIOS Zotac had for further testing - the latest BIOS I had (which should be available on the Zotac website soon) had some mild USB 2.0 performance increases, but not a lot else.
The BIOS main screen at least has a variety of information, such as the processor, frequency, voltage and the memory details. There are still a few vendors not providing this information on the front screen, and it should be the default, really.
The IDE configuration screen automatically lists the SATA ports as IDE by default, rather than AHCI, so users of faster HDDs or SSDs will have to change this setting to extract maximum performance. The fan controls are found in the PC Health menu, showing start up temperature goals, temperature ramps and temperature goal when the fans are 100%.
Overclocking on the Zotac board is essentially non-existent. There's no option to increase any frequencies, any multipliers, of either the CPU, memory or the integrated GPU. The only thing you can change is the memory voltage, in an obscure menu where the numbers aren't lined up properly:
Overclocking
As I wrote in the previous paragraph, there are no options to overclock (or underclock) this Fusion board, not even from the operating system. As far as I know, there are no plans to add this feature to the board.
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ET - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
Here are a few links to E-350 reviews using a desktop PSU. Not a comprehensive list by any means:http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-brazos-platform-...
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_f...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/displa...
http://www.eteknix.com/motherboards/jetway-nc85-e3...
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4093/asus_e35m1_i...
And of course Anandtech's first review of the platform:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-revi...
ET - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
In the conclusion you say about the ECS: "Having 33% free of anything is usually a good idea, so when it comes part of the package with very little increase in power consumption, it is a good thing. As a result, all the benchmarks and all the games had much, much higher scores than the other boards we tested."Unfortunately these gaming performance figures don't appear in the article. This looks like an oversight that needs to be corrected.
Mitalca - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
I second that.Through the review there's a lot of times when Ian talks about the marvell the ECS did with the 33% OC. Then why you didn't show the results?
One of the bigest flaws in this review, that make a lot of people suspect of a way-too-much-biased review.
Testing with a 580 is ridiculous, even if you want to "provide a plausible maximum ceiling". I spend $500 and I only get 50% more frames. What about a U$ 50-100 gpu?? If the CPU and the memory are by far the bottleneck, we should see similar results.
And, once you show the huge benefits that overclocking does to the iGPU, why not try it with the dGPU?
ET - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
The main thing I would like to see added to the discrete GPU test is an AMD GPU. The CPU usage of NVIDIA and AMD drivers are different, so results may be different.I don't think that a discrete GPU is worth using with the E-350 in any case, and the test with the GeForce 580 pretty much proved that. It's just too CPU limited.
xorbit - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
This review is a steaming pile. At least it lends credibility that Anandtech might not be biased, just woefully incompetent.An HTPC review without HTPC benchmarks and coupling the chips with impropper PSU/GPUs.
silverblue - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
Without wanting to start a huge squabble, if you guys think you could do better...lestr - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
Tom's already did: Daily Hardware 7/6. 8 boards with more relevant tests though somewhat incomplete.My big question is: WHAT is AMD afraid of? SUCCESS? AMD fanboy but when they could really kick a** they give us another "almost".
Another question: Does the PCIe slot support anything other than graphics? Can I stuff a Hauppauge 2250 or a Ceton card in it? This is totally ignored on almost ALL current ITX boards. You're about as likely to win the Kentucky Derby with a 3-legged horse as playing any games on this platform. What's the point?
The E450 (1.65 / 1333 / HD 6320) is due out any time. Standards on this platform should include 6 audio outs (hello Asus!), mPCIe, fp USB3.. how about DUAL channel memory? What's a few more watts anyway? Is 35W APU too many? RAID?
I wish AMD would pull out all the stops and do this little thing right.. entice the partners as well. If they can't do anything else but bury Atom/NV ... AMD needs to win something sometime.. why not NOW?
Any comments, Ian?
mino - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
Brazos is sigle channle.There are 35W Llano E2 series APU's on the way.
Brazos is SOLD OUT for 3 quarters allready ... talk about AMD being afraid ...
medi01 - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
Idiot detected.Wander7 - Friday, July 15, 2011 - link
Just by looking at the two heatsinks and not doing any measurements, it looks like the Asus' heatsink is suffering from air stagnation because the fins are too close together....