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The Brazos Round-Up: Eight AMD E-350-Based Motherboards

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  • Motherboards
  • Round-Up
  • AMD
  • Product
Last response: in Reviews comments
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a b V Motherboard
July 4, 2011 4:00:04 AM

AMD’s Brazos platform, driven by the Zacate APU, offers a lot of performance per watt. It comes up short on features, though. Eight manufacturers try to change that perception by adding slots, controllers, and even overclocking in a couple of cases.

The Brazos Round-Up: Eight AMD E-350-Based Motherboards : Read more

More about : brazos round amd 350 based motherboards

July 4, 2011 6:11:42 AM

Wow! AS-rocks!
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July 4, 2011 6:14:29 AM

Odd timing for the roundup, Llano just came out, these will be discontinued asap.

Not good for much save storage, but that wasn't tested. Would have much rather see an A8 board roundup since they are on newegg now. Picked up one myself for my htpc/storage setup.
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July 4, 2011 6:18:00 AM

noob2222Odd timing for the roundup, Llano just came out, these will be discontinued asap.Not good for much save storage, but that wasn't tested. Would have much rather see an A8 board roundup since they are on newegg now. Picked up one myself for my htpc/storage setup.


Uh no, Brazos is bast on the Bobcat core which is a low power version of Bulldozer. These are meant for ultra portables and netbooks, nettops, ultrathin notebooks and the likes.

Llano is the entry level desktop APU until they switch from Stars cores on those to the newer bulldozer cores.
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July 4, 2011 6:28:13 AM

mathosUh no, Brazos is bast on the Bobcat core which is a low power version of Bulldozer. These are meant for ultra portables and netbooks, nettops, ultrathin notebooks and the likes.

And yet this roundup is .... desktop boards.

And brazos has nothing in common with bulldozer.
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July 4, 2011 7:53:13 AM

mathosUh no, Brazos is bast on the Bobcat core which is a low power version of Bulldozer. These are meant for ultra portables and netbooks, nettops, ultrathin notebooks and the likes. Llano is the entry level desktop APU until they switch from Stars cores on those to the newer bulldozer cores.


noob2222And yet this roundup is .... desktop boards. And brazos has nothing in common with bulldozer.



Net TOP. Meaning a low power ITX board. Brazos is merely a stopgap till AMD has the tooling to kick out tons of BD cores. Though I will agree this roundup is a bit late it is at least thorough.
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July 4, 2011 8:29:57 AM

gamewormThe Zotac board actually is available on Newegghttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813500068Only problem is that it is $160 instead of $130Otherwise very nice roundup. I've been thinking of using one of these for a server/NAS.


Good call--that board only recently became available, after this story was scheduled to be published. We've since updated the conclusion and price chart to reflect the market as of July 4th, 2011.

Cheers,
Chris
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July 4, 2011 9:30:20 AM

BulkZerkerNet TOP. Meaning a low power ITX board. Brazos is merely a stopgap till AMD has the tooling to kick out tons of BD cores. Though I will agree this roundup is a bit late it is at least thorough.


Brazos is NOT a stopgap, it is meant for very low power applications. It's basically AMD's take on Atom style devices. Bulldozer is not meant to scale to this low power envelope. That's why there are already plans for Brazos successors. Ontario/Zacate will be replaced by Khrishna/Wichita. Llano will be succeeded by Trinity, which is Bulldozer based. Zambezi is supposed to be succeeded by something called Komodo, which I haven't read much about.
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July 4, 2011 12:16:02 PM

Trinity and Komodo are both Enhanced Bulldozer. As such, Trinity will not be using Zambezi cores.
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Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
July 4, 2011 2:13:05 PM

Well, aside from a few bits about Brazos being a stop-gap based on Bulldozer being wrong, the basic premise of "odd timing for a Brazos roundup" holds true.

Llano for laptops is out-freaking-standing, Llano for desktops is amazing for cheap OEM-built desktops and small form-factor HTPCs. TBH, it shouldn't excite much of anyone else, nor was it intended to replace Phenom II + dGPU for enthusiasts.
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July 4, 2011 2:25:54 PM

These CPUs and graphics are pitiful for a desktop system. Might as well buy a cheap laptop and hook it up to whatever display you want. You can buy a Toshiba P6200 with 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, DVD RW, webcam, wireless, bluetooth and W7HP 64bit for less than $400.
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July 4, 2011 3:57:18 PM

When you ran an Atom board comparison, you included performance data for an old Pentium (or Athlon; don't remember). This was very helpful, as I'd get a feel for how good/bad is 5 minutes for your workload. Of course, this was just an anchor point, and would be excluded from any value/efficiency graphs.

Does anyone else feel the performance graphs would be more meaningful with a typical Atom and a cheap Athlon X2 as points of reference?
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July 4, 2011 5:23:15 PM

These are not design to be purely performer, we all know that. Their purpose is to compete with the Intel Atom processors.
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July 4, 2011 5:30:25 PM

For all the data that's included in the chart, it's quite astonishing that there's nothing to distinguish which boards use SO-DIMMs and which ones use DDR3-1333. Most users are going to care a LOT more about this than whether or not there exists an internal parallel port connector.

All of these setups are about twice as expensive as they should be. By the time you add all the trimmings to build up a complete system, you're spending nearly what you would for an economy desktop where a $100 WD TV or $200 pre-built Atom machine would be a much better investment. Wrapping a $10 chip in a $165 board just makes zero sense. In fact, I'd be very interested in seeing a detailed cost-breakdown on one of the more expensive boards - I just can't understand how they could possibly be valued so highly.
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a c 100 V Motherboard
a b À AMD
July 4, 2011 7:30:01 PM

I would have liked to see how these perform as an HTPC. Can the handle BD at 1080i? How is websurfing? Can they place facebook games that my grandkids love... usefull things like that. We already know these cant game or handle intensive apps so why waste time benching these...
Perhaps a future article.
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July 4, 2011 9:02:54 PM

Nice round up!!

I really would love to use the AMD APUs for a lower power server application.

Only problem is that the boards are all 4x PCIE and single nic. Come on! Let see something with dual nics and 8x PCIE.

Yea yea yea Llano here now, but hell I've love to have an E-350 with a board like this. Its all about the power consumption baby!
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July 4, 2011 9:24:34 PM

silverblueTrinity and Komodo are both Enhanced Bulldozer. As such, Trinity will not be using Zambezi cores.


The name "enhanced" Bulldozer had me guessing. I wasn't sure if the cores would actually be different in Trinity, or if it was the same BD cores "enhanced" with graphics. Did you read anything more detailed on it?
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July 4, 2011 9:26:22 PM

jsowocDoes anyone else feel the performance graphs would be more meaningful with a typical Atom and a cheap Athlon X2 as points of reference?


Well I always appreciate more data, so yes.
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July 4, 2011 9:51:42 PM

Yes, I do recall hearing 'enhanced' and 'next-gen' are two separate things, and the document doesn't seem to mention the enhanced version. Perhaps it is out of date.
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July 4, 2011 9:59:05 PM

AMD certainly aren't helping with throwing out conflicting documents.
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a b V Motherboard
July 4, 2011 10:37:04 PM

hatethisbullFor all the data that's included in the chart, it's quite astonishing that there's nothing to distinguish which boards use SO-DIMMs and which ones use DDR3-1333.
Look at the photos? It's easy to tell a SODIMM from a long DIMM
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July 5, 2011 7:58:54 AM

Some of you are really bad at reading AMD's simple Desktop roadmaps.

(1) Performance/Enthusiast end...

2011 => FX-series (Zambezi) => 1st gen Bulldozer (Introduction.)
2012 => Komodo => 2nd gen Bulldozer (Refinement of 1st gen. => "Enhanced")
2013 => ??? => 3rd gen Bulldozer (Major changes. => "Next-Generation")

(2) Mainstream market

2011 => A-series (Llano) => K10.5-based with modifications. Up to 4-cores.
2012 => Trinity => 2nd gen Bulldozer (refinement of 1st gen). Up to 4-cores.

(3) Low-power (Nettop/Low-power/Small-Form-Factor)

2011 => E-series (Zacate) => Bobcat in 40nm
2012 => Krishna => Enhanced-Bobcat in 28nm
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July 5, 2011 11:26:54 AM

That's because AMD's "simple desktop roadmaps" are in the wild along with conflicting AMD documentation. Anyway, nothing of what I've posted is incorrect. :p 
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July 6, 2011 9:44:46 PM

Thomas,

I'm somewhat disappointed given the form-factor and power envelope of the boards reviewed here that there were no media consumption tests performed while monitoring temperature, power, and noise. I understand that not all of the boards were designed with HTPC applications in mind (Jetway), but certainly HTPCs would be a significant portion of the interest in these boards.

-Pyrroc
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a b V Motherboard
July 6, 2011 10:41:02 PM

pyrroccThomas,I'm somewhat disappointed given the form-factor and power envelope of the boards reviewed here that there were no media consumption tests performed while monitoring temperature, power, and noise. I understand that not all of the boards were designed with HTPC applications in mind (Jetway), but certainly HTPCs would be a significant portion of the interest in these boards.-Pyrroc
Given that they all use the same APU, I refer to the original APU review by Chris Angelini and only look for "performance problems" in benchmarks. The real point of the roundup was to see what kind of features and cooling you could get for your money.
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Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
July 7, 2011 4:19:36 AM

I'd like to see more FANLESS motherboards. Those 40mm cooling fans are annoyingly loud.
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a b V Motherboard
July 7, 2011 4:36:31 AM

penguin386I'd like to see more FANLESS motherboards. Those 40mm cooling fans are annoyingly loud.
Given the heat output and some of the cases that people are putting these in, I'd like to see some 92mm slim fans running at like 600 RPM.
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Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
July 8, 2011 1:48:24 PM

One of these would be a great base for Windows Home Server.
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July 18, 2011 5:41:53 AM

Uhm, no direct comparison to Atom?
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a b V Motherboard
July 18, 2011 5:44:44 AM

kartuUhm, no direct comparison to Atom?
You missed that article? Chris Angelini wrote the E-350 APU article months ago.
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April 12, 2012 4:35:30 AM

seems to me they range from $110 to $175 - what do u get for $65 now - imagine the cost & hassle of dicovering u need a port etc u didnt anticipate

extra $ on a top mobo is the best $ u ever spent

tp me - the asus deluxe seems to win

passive cpu & psu cooling would be a must for me - maybe both - a big slow fan too
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April 12, 2012 4:42:25 AM

it may sound dumb, but may also help some

the only power consumption figure that matters is the idle for a 24/7 PC. if its busy doing work - who cares - just do what u gotta do - but if its sitting on its ass & chewing juice - thats relevant - cos thats most of the time mostly - we all gotta sleep etc.
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August 9, 2012 10:46:33 AM

i've got this one, very low gaming power T_T
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January 26, 2013 10:58:40 AM

Quote:
Four minutes to compress a nearly CD-sized folder brings found memories of Pentium 4s. It’s fortunate for AMD, then, that these systems use around 1/6th the power of those long-forgotten relics. Efficiency is this platform’s raison d'être.


It's 2013 and I'm contradicting you from one of those long-forgotten Pentium 4 relics. ;o)
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