Three Sub-$500 AMD Brazos-Based Notebooks Rounded Up

Features
By Andrew Ku
published

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption

All of the notebooks die when you hit ~5% of battery life, which is a fairly standard alarm for Windows 7.

This is the percent drop in battery life you should see in Windows 7 if you put the system into Suspend mode. Remember that Microsoft rounds off. For example, depending on where you are on the capacity scale, you may see a 1% or 2% drop over six hours for HP's dm1z.

Remember that IE8 is threaded (one tab, one thread). So, this multi-threaded benchmark includes navigation of Web sites, including scrolling calculated to a reading speed of about 200 WPM. On Amazon, we shopped for GPS units and common biology textbooks.

This session consists of the following run sequentially in the order listed:

  • 24 minutes of Wikipedia Reading (4 Entries): one tab per entry
  • 4 minutes of Amazon.com: two tabs
  • 3 minutes of CNN.com: two tabs
  • 2 minutes of Google Finance: one tab
  • 2 minutes of Accuweather: one tab
  • 25 minutes of Flash 10.1 (YouTube 360p, H.264, hardware acceleration enabled): one tab

This is a multiprocess benchmark in that it reflects some multitasking.

This session consists of the following:

  • 2 x 1000 word papers typed in Word 2010 at ~45 WPM
  • Four minutes of H.264 480p playback during some portion of word processing
  • 2 x 45 word emails sent via Outlook 2010 at ~45 WPM
  • Five minutes editing a large Excel table

Despite similar TSUP numbers, these results are going to differ because of the varying battery capacities in play. Remember again that Microsoft rounds off when calculating remaining capacity. Our metric is designed to show you how fast capacity will fall off if you use all systems under the same conditions over one hour.

All notebooks die when you reach about 5% of battery life, which is the standard alarm for Windows 7.

Andrew Ku
71 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tacoslave
    they should have put a larger battery on these!
    Reply
  • matthewspencershell
    I got my acer E-350 for $399 w/ 3gb ram, and 320G hd from hhgreg
    Reply
  • one-shot
    I ordered a Lenovo X120e E350 4GB RAM Win 7 Pro for $529. Lenovo's build quality and matte screen made the deal for me. Personally, I think the DM1Z is hideous.
    Reply
  • hp79
    Yeah, I also had a lenovo x120e. Build quality is excellent on those. I wasn't impressed with the performance too much though. It's was little bit slower than my thinkpad x61t core2duo L7500 which was from 4 years ago. But video playback was really smooth. It played 1080p mkv videos with only 30% cpu usage.

    Since I got my x120e with e-350 for $305, I eventually sold mine for a small profit.

    ---unrelated to the article---
    Toms, please fix the navigation menu!!!
    Everyone that is annoyed at the navigation menu, please vote this suggestion.

    http://feedbacks.tomshardware.com/forums/14581-site-forum-ideas/suggestions/1297969-page-navigation-really-sucks?ref=title
    Reply
  • bobdozer
    The D525 can only go toe-to-toe with the 3-350 if you only look at the results of multi-threaded benchmarks.

    Use the D525 then use the E-350 and you will not go back to the D525 and it will be obvious why.
    Reply
  • juliom
    Impressive how much bias Tom's has these days... E-350 performs quite a bit better than Atom in pure CPU power and don't even get me started on the GPU performance. All in just ONE chip! As much as it hurts you Tom's, Brazos is a much, much better platform than Atom is.
    Reply
  • Strange how the first picture(from AMD) in the conclusion puts i7 higher than BULLDOZER!
    Reply
  • They wont put a large battery nor will they price it lower.Know why ,bcos the blue monster has found a new and novel way to continue its monopoly.
    Reply
  • acku
    9512452 said:
    Impressive how much bias Tom's has these days... E-350 performs quite a bit better than Atom in pure CPU power and don't even get me started on the GPU performance. All in just ONE chip! As much as it hurts you Tom's, Brazos is a much, much better platform than Atom is.

    9512451 said:
    The D525 can only go toe-to-toe with the 3-350 if you only look at the results of multi-threaded benchmarks.

    Use the D525 then use the E-350 and you will not go back to the D525 and it will be obvious why.

    I'll admit that is a bit of stinging indictment. :) Can't we play nice? But I understand the sentiment. I really was after the point that the E-350 isn't all that different from the D525/Ion2 combo. It is better in graphics but in terms of CPU it is probably the closest to SU3700. And to be fair, many applications and tasks we preform on a daily basis continue to be multi-threaded.

    I completely agree that Brazos is much better than Atom, but I don't think it's one of those automatic game changers, unless you're talking about a netbook. Now if AMD wants to completely and utterly destroy Intel in the the low-end market, I say drop the price another $50 bucks. Price per performance is where AMD historically has had an advantage. Remember X2? But right now, the company is benefiting from Intel having not released a successor to Pine Trail. For the netbook market, Brazos is great, but that isn't what is going to help AMD dominate the market. The lack of products in the mainstream mobile space is why AMD fired Dirk Meyer.

    On a side note, I'm a hardware agnostic. That's the way it should always be. I believe in competition and Brazos is delivering it. I just want AMD to bring a bigger fight to the table. They talked so much about Fusion, it's time to deliver. At the moment, I tend to cringe every time Gartner or IDC talks to me about market share.

    I think part of the disappointment is that AMD promised me an epic gunfight and I'm watching two people duke it out with peashooters. Ooo so Ion2 does 9 fps Brazos does 12 fps.
    Reply
  • juliom
    Yes, I also think that Brazos belongs to notebooks and not normal laptops.
    Reply