Review: AMD’s Fusion APUs aren’t just for netbooks, as this Mini-ITX Atom-smasher from our friends at MSI demonstrates.
Netbook CPUs don’t normally fall into the remit of Atomic. Intel’s Atom is slow, in-order, doesn’t overclock and the graphics aren’t even advanced enough to describe as shit. In many ways Intel saw the lack of competition in the space and phoned it in with a processor that was remarkable compared to AMD’s Geode and VIA’s Epia but kinda retrograde when compared to real CPUs.
This strategy has worked well for Intel, but the Atom’s time has come thanks to AMD’s Fusion processors. These are the first of the company’s Accelerated Processing Units, which combine the new ‘Bobcat’ CPU core with a tiny GPU and AMD’s UVD video decoding hardware on a single piece of Silicon. These APUs come in two initial flavours, the 9Watt C series, codenamed Ontario, and the 18W Zacate E series. These aren’t designed for the desktop – that comes later this year. Instead AMD has firmly targeted the APUs at Atom-based netbooks and the like.
Unlike Atom, which uses an in-order execution design akin to that used back in the Pentium 3 days, Bobcat is designed as an out-of-order execution core. This allows for much more efficient processing, and means that when side-by-side Fusion seems more responsive than an equivalent Atom. The other major issue with Atom is that it uses a version of Intel’s integrated graphics from before the company got base-level performance right with Sandy Bridge. AMD is using a highly cut down version of its desktop GPU architecture for Fusion – in the case of the E series it is dubbed a RADEON HD 6310
We have been really impressed by the Fusion netbooks passing in our periphery, but Fusion just seems more naturally Atomic in Mini-ITX form. Being able to get a CPU/GPU combo that is capable of HD video and very light gaming while drawing little power makes a great starting block for everything from media boxes to NAS devices, and you don’t need a huge amount of extra gear to get such a system built.
MSI’s Mini-ITX Fusion offering is dubbed the E350IA-E45. It packs AMD’s (current) top end APU, the E-350, and AMD’s Hudson M1 chipset. This means that the board ends up with support for dual channel DDR3-1066, 8-channel HD audio, Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2 ports (with headers for four more), four SATA 6Gbps ports and thanks to the inclusion of an NEC USB 3 chip, two USB 3 ports.
There’s a mechanical x16 PCI-Express slot on the mobo, however it’s important to keep in mind that the Hudson M1 only supports x4 PCI-Express electrically. This means that it will be unlikely that you’ll get much out of a discreet graphics card, but if you want a mini-ITX gaming powerhouse you’ll need something other than a netbook processor to drive it. Future APUs will likely bring support for Crossfire – where the inbuilt GPU will work in tandem with a discreet AMD card, but for now this has not been officially confirmed (but numerous AMD sources have indicated to Atomic that this will indeed be happening at some point in the APU rollout).
Atomic’s usual GPU benchmarks are designed to stress the high end of PC graphics, and as such fail miserably when trying to run on the Fusion GPU. After struggling to get Crysis running we shifted gears and ran a few pass/fail tests using common games. World of Warcraft, in its infinite scalability, ran wonderfully at low detail levels, while titles like CODBLOPS and Mass Effect 2 teetered on the brink of playability but ultimately fell short.
On the other hand the e-350 happily chewed through any video we threw at it. HD wasn’t a problem, both 1080p files and flash video played well (likely boosted by the recent release of GPU-accelerated Flash). The audio on MSI’s motherboard is competent but it’s just a Realtek integrated solution, important to keep in mind if the motherboard is destined for a mediabox.
With a pricetag of $219 this isn’t the cheapest E-350-based motherboard, but it does add USB 3, which is lacking in the $200 price range products. Considering it just needs storage, RAM, PSU and a chassis and you have a fully functioning, quiet media box it works out as pretty good value. The E350IA-E45 lacks that little something extra that would push it into hot territory, but it is still a great piece of kit.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012