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 ESTTest Setup
| Processor |
AMD Fusion E-350 2 Cores, 2 Threads, 1.6 GHz |
| Motherboards |
ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe ECS HDC-I Zotac FUSION350-A-E |
| Cooling | Onboard |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory |
G.Skill Sniper DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 2x4GB Kit, 1.25V G.Skill SODIMM DDR3-1066 9-9-9-24 2x4GB Kit 1.5V |
| Memory Settings | Auto |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 10.12 NVIDIA Drivers 275.33 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
Many thanks to...
G.Skill have happily provided us with a set of their low voltage, gamer oriented, Sniper series DDR3 memory for this a future reviews, where low power usage may be of interest to the consumer. This 2x4 GB kit (D3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2) runs at 1600 MHz speeds with 9-9-9-24 2N timings at 1.25 V, and is currently available for $90.
What's actually interesting for me is to see how the power consumption readings change when going from normal 1.5 V memory, to the low voltage 1.25 V stuff. Technically we should see a power drop, but after playing around with the ASUS board in this review and the memory, the most I could predict (with general power levels fluctuating +/- 1 W as you would expect) is 1-2W maximum saving, if any at all. Over a year, it's true it's not that much power, and in a 60W system we're only talking 1% - it's more of a tool to say that people are being energy conscious (in my view).
G.Skill have also supplied us with a set of DDR3-1066 C9 SO-DIMM for the Zotac board review. This 2x4GB kit (F3-10666CL9D-8GBSQ) runs at 1066 Mhz with 9-9-9-24 timings at 1.5 V, and is currently available for $63.
Comparison to Previous Results
Where applicable, the results in this review are directly compared to the following chipsets and boards which we have reviewed previously:
Power Consumption
The Zotac scores best across the board in terms of power consumption.
(Note: I was using a less than ideal power supply for the power draw tests which was very inefficient in this range (<20% of maximum power), and unfortunately I don't have anything more appropriate at hand to test with. The comparisons (I believe) between the boards are more than relevant though. I will hopefully rectify this in future reviews of lower powered systems.)
CPU Temperatures
Given that both the Zotac and the ASUS boards are passive, you would expect their temperatures across the board to be higher than that of the ECS. However, the ECS has a small heatsink, meaning at idle the CPU is actually quite warm, and the fan spins up according to the temperature. Given a flat 45 Celsius from the ECS, I redid the tests by cooling the heatsink with other fans, removing them, and letting it warm up at idle, and ended with the same result. Overall, the Zotac performs the best out of these three.
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CZroe - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
Regarding the Asus board not having HDMI1.4, you never seem to confirm that the others do or don't. have it. Should I assume they do or don't?"...and a Wifi card with a pair of antenna"
Antennae is the plural of "antenna." ;)
You wonder about the VGA reference in the Asus board's BIOS, but other boards clearly include a DVI to VGA adapter. Even if the Asus board doesn't include it, it could be referring to that unless it is DVI-D only. Does it support a VGA adapter?
"how overclocking effects gaming"
"Effects" should be affects.
Akdor 1154 - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
Given these boards are clearly pushed at the HTPC usage scenario (HDMI, TOSLINK optical outputs, one of the most powerful onboard GPUs ever made, passive cooling, etc) it is very disappointing to not see any of this functionality tested out.How did they perform decoding video? Given the high CPU usage on network utilization, is there any issue playing high bitrate content from a NAS somewhere else? Can I encode? How did the GPU perform on OpenCL tasks (namely, again, content encoding)? Can the PCI-E slot take a TV tuner? What about Flash, if only for Youtube? How about upscaling low-resolution content?
And for the love of God, given two passive and one active cooling setups, how did they fare in a REAL case? Don't know many people who run their HTPCs in open-air, and the nice small cases available can be quite restrictive in terms of airflow - so will the passively cooled boards even be suitable for these? How about fan noise? It would seem Zotac and ASUS went passive because of noise concerns, so how bad was the ECS's little 40mm fan?
What about WiFi performance? You complained about one only supporting HDMI 1.3b; did the others support 1.4 (and hence 3D) perfectly? Did you test this? There was an issue with Windows' audio buffer latency - it would have been great to see this actually tested out to see if it made any difference, instead of a vague "some people might be able to hear it". Did the problematic board skip at all?
Summing up the lack of insight in the way this review was carried out.. <b>did you even test Blu-Ray playback</b>?
I'd love to see this information added to this review - I'd also be interested to know how many people you think would purchase this intending to run Metro 2033 on it.
And finally it seems your comment form is broken in Opera.
evolucion8 - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
And the odd thing is when they were testing its IGP performance with Metro 2033, calling it "the Crysis of DX11 until Crysis 2 arrives, so Crysis 2 haven't been released yet? Mishmash of old and new sentences of old articles glued together. Pretty much the same thing that apoppin does on Allienbabletech and his horrible lack of focus and handbacked marketing propagandism.Plus the fact that the review has a lack of objectivity as it isnt compared to its direct rival the Atom/ION combination. I wonder who will stick a GTX 580, play games or will use it for WinRaR archiving. Atom and Fusion aren't powerhouses, are CPU's for very basic stuff and HTPC and they would had done tests in that arena, like web browsing tests, movie playback, Flash tests, USB and HD performance etc. Totally irrelevant, how low can this go?! Definitively one of the worst reviews I've ever seen.
Overall, a HTPC oriented system tested with unconventional tests against much more expensive and powerful solutions. It is like taking a Ferrari and test its performance under water and in outerspace and comparing it against the Columbia Shuttle and Navy's Nuclear Submarine. Things had gone under spiral lately and integrity has been long gone in here, a pity.
PR3ACH3R - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
@ Ian CutressThanks for the review,
I think you touched upon a few important points like thermal performance, but as a whole, this review leaves a lot to be desired.
it is incomplete, & fails to address what the target audience of these products, wants to know.
Did this review help me decide what board to buy for HTPC use?
I'm afraid not.
Ichinisan - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
It's pretty clear why the Asus BIOS mentions "VGA." The Asus and Zotac boards have DVI-I connectors, so they have extra pins for analog and work with a VGA adapters.dakky21 - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I registered on this board just to say that... not ALL boards have overclock function !!!!I just bought HDC-I v1.0 yesterday, in fact only because I read it had overclock option, but what a cold shower - it does not have. At least not where it should be, under Frequency/Voltage control in BIOS.
dakky21 - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
To clarify, my board has BIOS version 2.10.1208 (03/24/2011) and there is NO Turbo Mode in Frequency/Voltage control. No way of getting around 33% more speed. Unfortunately, I bought this board just because of that. Never again trust reviewers or ECS...