So basically when I replace my current Ion HTPC head-end boxes I should look for a Brazos-based ones. And I will likely be replacing the guts of my media server with Sandy Bridge for the sweet transcoding performance.
AMD and Intel both win! ----------- Brian Follow Me [image: LinkedIn] <http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianweeden> [image: Twitter] <http://www.twitter.com/brianweeden> On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Stan Zaske <[email protected]> wrote: > > > http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx > > Final Words > With the settlement done and no DMI license in place, it's clear that there > won't be another ION from NVIDIA (at least not based on x86). What Brazos is > however is the ION successor that NVIDIA never built. For just over $100 > you'll be able to buy a mini-ITX board with an E-350 that's faster than > Atom, faster than ION and more feature rich than both. While I don't believe > Brazos has enough CPU power under the hood to be a truly high end HTPC, it's > easily good enough for a low cost, value HTPC. Popular codecs are well > accelerated and with full DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD bitstreaming support > Brazos is solid. Flash acceleration is also present although it looks like > there are still some kinks that need to be worked out there. > > > Overall performance is much better than Atom, particularly in single > threaded applications. Brazos and the E-350 can make for a very affordable > email/web browsing machine, and run those applications much faster than Atom > could. As our more complex workloads showed however, the E-350 is limited to > the same type of general usage models as Atom (with a bunch of new media and > gaming options). You can run heavier apps on the E-350, you'll just be far > better off with an Athlon II instead. > > The Radeon HD 6310 proves to be a good match for the Bobcat cores in the > E-350. There's not much value in adding a faster GPU via the on-board PCIe > x4 slot as most games will be at least somewhat CPU bound. The resulting > CPU/GPU combination is something that's typically as good as, if not better > than Intel's Core i5 661 in games. In some cases the Radeon HD 6310/E-350 > combination nips at the heels of Intel's Core i3 2100. Unfortunately in > modern titles that's not always enough to have a playable experience, but > with older games you should be able to do more with Brazos than you ever > could with Atom or even ION for that matter. The CPU/GPU balance in the > E-350 is good enough that I feel like Llano could make for a pretty decent > value gaming machine. > > Just as was the case with Atom, Brazos isn't going make for a very powerful > primary PC. Load up the thread count or throw heavier workloads at it and > the E-350 doesn't look all that much better than an Atom D510. What it will > give you however is better single-threaded performance than Atom and a much > better feature set. Brazos makes those secondary or tertiary computers you > build much better than they would have been otherwise with Atom. I would > like to see more CPU performance out of the platform and I'm not too keen on > meeting the single core versions, but viewed through ION glasses Brazos > looks good. > > For AMD, Brazos has to be exciting. The company finally has a value > offering that it doesn't have to discount heavily to sell. Brazos does very > well against Atom on absolute performance, die size and price. The E-350 > isn't the most powerful Fusion APU we'll meet, but it's a great way to > introduce the family. > > -- > Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ >
