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Amd Dual

AMD's first Fusion processors–chips

AMD's first Fusion processors–chips that combine both a CPU and graphics–were initially meant to get the company into the netbook game. But the market has changed and these low-power APUs, or Accelerated Processing Units, are finding their way into everything from tablets to 15-inch laptops.

Later this year, AMD will release its Llano processor, a more powerful APU with a quad- or even eight-core CPU and better graphics that will replace the aging Phenom IIs and Turion IIs in the laptops and desktops you see at Best Buy. But for now the low-power variants are the only Fusion parts that AMD has to offer. This includes both the C-Series (Ontario), which is designed for netbooks, and the E-Series (Zacate), which is employed in everything from ultra-thin laptops to 15-inch budget notebooks.

Over the past few weeks, I've been testing out a number of these Fusion systems. In this post, I'll cover some of the smaller systems including laptop batteries the Acer Aspire One 522 netbook and two ultra-thin laptops, the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e, and the HP Pavilion dm1z. Tomorrow I'll do a follow-up post on several budget laptops with 15-inch displays including the Acer Aspire 5253, Gateway NV51B Series and Toshiba Satellite C650. Some of these systems have already gotten the full reviews treatment from CNET or others (links below).

Before you consider one of these laptops, it's important to understand just what you're getting with these first Fusion chips. In general, these notebooks offer better performance than Atom-based netbooks, but they fall short of the performance of even entry-level laptops with Intel's Celeron, Pentium and Core i3 processors based on last year's microarchitecture. They aren't even in the same ballpark as the second-generation Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, which also combine a multi-core CPU and graphics processor on a single chip. The Llano, or A-Series APUs, will go toe-to-toe with these Sandy Bridge processors.

(The site Xbit Labs posted a roundup that compares the performance of AMD's E-350 to Intel's entire lineup from the dual-core Atom to the Core i3-2100T, an entry-level Sandy Bridge processor.)

Benchmarks are one thing, but what really matters is how systems perform in the real world. In my experience using these Fusion laptops over a few weeks, I found the performance was sufficient for basic productivity tasks, Web browsing, listening to music and watching video, and simple multi-tasking. Much of this is due to the Radeon HD 6310M GPU, which supports DirectX 11 and gives these lightweight laptops better graphics and video performance than some entry-level Intel-based laptops. The AMD graphics also includes a dedicated HD video decoder. None of the Fusion systems had the slightest trouble with Web pages loaded with Adobe Flash content or with 1080p video playback. The Pavilion dm1z I tested Tablet PC even came with an external Blu-ray player (a $129 option), which worked flawlessly.

In addition to decent graphics performance, the Fusion laptops also offer significantly better battery life than their Turion-based brethren. On a torture test, most of these lasted three to four hours, but you could easily get six hours or more from the Pavilion dm1z in real-world usage–a big improvement for AMD laptops though it comes at the expense of application performance.

Acer Aspire One 522
Acer rode the netbook wave all the way to a No. 2 ranking in the world by PC shipments. Lately that strategy has come under pressure and Acer has lost some ground, but it continues to crank out inexpensive netbooks. The Aspire One 522 looks a lot like Acer's other 10.1-inch netbooks, which are typically based on Atom processors. It is about an inch thick (and only 10.2 inches wide by 7.3 inches deep), weighs less than 3 pounds and has a compact Chiclet-style keyboard (which is a bit tougher to type on than a standard, full-size keyboard), and a decent multi-touch touchpad with separate buttons. The difference is that this Aspire One does not use Atom. Instead, it has AMD's 1.0GHz C-50 dual-core processor with Radeon HD 6250 integrated graphics driving a 1280-by-720 display.

Don't confuse the Aspire One 522 with a notebook, it is pure netbook and comes with some limitations. The Fusion APU provides better graphics, but the application performance of the C-50 isn't much better than a dual-core Atom and well below Intel's entry-level dual-core processors for laptops. For example, a Monte Carlo simulation in an Excel spreadsheet that finished in 22 seconds on a laptop with a 2.13GHz Core i3-330M dual-core took nearly 2 minutes on the Aspire One 522. An image editing task in Google's Picasa and a test involving transcoding audio files in iTunes each took about four times as long with the Aspire One 522.

The battery life was better. The 6-cell battery lasted 3 hours 20 minutes on a tough test of continuous Web browsing over Wi-Fi with the display set to full brightness. I got around five to six hours in real-world use, which is about what you'd expect from a 10-inch netbook.

The Aspire One 522 is also stuck with the Starter Edition of Windows 7, which means it is missing some features such as the Aero interface, Windows Media Center and Windows XP compatibility mode. Out of the box it couldn't complete a video encoding test because it was missing the codecs that come with full versions of Windows 7 (though you can always download codecs).

The model I tested, the Aspire One 522-BZ897, costs $329.99 with 1GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive. That puts it in a very particular niche. It isn't the cheapest netbook out there. The Aspire One 255, for example, has the same basic design but starts at $249.99 with the Atom N455 single-core, 1GB and a 250GB hard drive. On the other hand, the Aspire One 522 still falls short of the performance and features of an entry-level laptop. Essentially what you're buying here is better graphics performance. The Aspire One 522 is worth a look Touch Screen Monitor if you want a netbook with features such as a 720p display, HDMI-out and the ability to smoothly handle HD video.

Overall I'd give a slight edge to the Pavilion dm1z because it has a more interesting design, longer battery life and lower price tag. But if you are a fan of laptops with a little red TrackPoint–and there are lots of you out there–the X120e is the closest thing to a ThinkPad ultraportable on a netbook budget.

Read More:http://www.wholesaleeshop.com.au/Wholesale-Electronics-News/battery-news-use-the-ocean-to-recharge-batteries/

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Is an AMD Dual core fast enough to handle any games today (on high settings, provided with a decent video card?

I would like to get a phenom but I see those Windsors and was wondering. They are cheap and 3.0-3.1 ghz.

Any thoughts?

yeah, they are still good options, especially if your stuck with an AM2 mobo, than why not, just grab a processor.

Here's a cpu chart that will show you how well the AMD stacks up in games.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2008-q1-2008/Prey,387.html

They kik some ass still. 3.0 and the 3.2 ones are neck and neck with intels 2.4ghz core 2 duo.

and with a slight overclock to 3.6ghz you'll be laughin!

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