Previewing AMD's Brazos, Part 1: More Details on Zacate/Ontario and Fusion
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 9, 2010 1:09 AM ESTI hate to keep things from you all, but last week I was diligently working in a room at AMD’s new campus in Austin, Texas. You see, AMD wanted to give us more time with the Brazos/Zacate platform we tested at IDF ahead of its official launch. It’s too early for production worthy OEM systems and AMD wasn’t too keen on these reference platforms leaving its offices so it did the next best thing: fly us out to test the systems on AMD’s campus.
The rules were simple. We couldn’t run anything that would harm the system, but other than that we were free to bring whatever we wanted and test however we wanted. AMD dropped by our private room to check to see if we needed anything but other than that, it was all hands off.
The Brazos test platform
While I’d love to share performance data with you today, I can’t. You’ll have to wait another week or so for that. What AMD is allowing us to talk about are the specific configurations AMD’s first Fusion APUs will ship in and general impressions from the testing. Specific benchmarks are off limits unfortunately.
The platform felt final as far as stability goes. I didn’t encounter any crashes during my several hours of non-stop testing. Performance is also indicative of what will ship early next year. The system felt quick (very 11-inch MacBook Air like if you catch my drift) but you have to keep in mind that Zacate and its lower powered sibling Ontario will be used in systems priced between $299 - $549.
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Zoomer - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Sorry. I meant:The Sims 5000
dayanth - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
How fast it can run Minecraft?Freddo - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Really curious how well AMD C-50 will run 1080p H.264 videos, like this 1080p60 encode video from Digital Foundry; http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-f...If it can run it well, I will be sure to buy one AMD C-50 netbook next year, and use it as a HTPC. Also, it should obviously have HDMI for that, and preferably a good metal build quality.
Freddo - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Oh, and how well it can run a PS1 emulator.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
You mean a PS2 emulator? Anything should be able to run a PS1 emulator. I dont mess with ps1, but when I run the N64 emulator, I get literally 0% cpu usage from it.Freddo - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Nope, I mean a PS1 emulator.I remember it's not working well on my 833Mhz computer from 2000, but it worked fine on my 1.5GHz computer from 2002.
And AMD C-50 got two 1.0GHz cores.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
since the PS1 emulator runs relatively fine on a PSP i dont think it will be an issue.iwod - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
I have a Pentium M 1.8Ghz with Radeon X1600M Laptop. I wonder if the Top Range Dual Core 1.6Ghz Bobcat with 500Mhz 6310 will beat my Laptop Performance, which i considered to be capable for 95% of my work load with an SSD. It is only lacking in playing High Def Video, but UVD 3 solve that problem easily.How much would these thing cost? 70mm2 only sounds ridiculously cheap to make with only 480 pins on 40nm2.
mino - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
CPU will be a bit faster (think dual 1,5GHz Pentium M)GPU will be 1/2 the speed or less - you have a relatively powerful GPU in there.
nafhan - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
I think the GPU would actually be pretty close.Comparing the 530v (which should be pretty close to Bobcat performance: 80 shaders @ 470, 64bit mem bus) and the mobile x1600, the 530v comes out on top by a small margin according to notebook check:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-H...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X...
Ontario, on the other hand, should be about half since the GPU speed is around half.