How we test
Gigabyte uses what really is a mobile chip and puts it on a desktop board, making a hybrid of sorts. Comparing it becomes quite difficult, because it bridges two worlds.
Appreciating the mobile nature of the AMD E-350 chip and taking into account the likely price of a system build, it's put up against a recently reviewed Sapphire mini PC, which brings together a dual-core, four-threaded Atom chip and NVIDIA's ION 2 graphics.
But how to compare the E350N-USN against a proper desktop part? Rather unfairly, I've chosen to include an Intel Core i5 750 CPU sat on top of an ASUS P55 motherboard. Graphics come by way of a discrete Radeon HD 6850 1GB card, and it should mean that the desktop PC stomps all over the two low-power systems.
But I've gone a step further and also used the Radeon HD 6850 card in the E350N-USB3's PCIe x16 mechanical slot, to see how it fairs when paired with a Zacate chip.
Gaming benchmarks take place at a 1,280x720-pixel (low-quality) setting for all systems. The Radeon HD 6850-equipped duo also runs Just Cause 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops at the usual 1,680x1,050 HQ settings too.
| Comparison systems | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PC | Gigabyte E350N-USB3 | Sapphire Edge-HD mini PC | Intel Core i5 750 | ||
| Processor | AMD E-350 Zacate (1.66GHz, 1MB L2 cache, single-core) | Intel Atom D510 (1.66GHz, 1MB L2 cache, dual-core) | Intel Core i5 750 | ||
| Memory | 4GB DDR3 | 2GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 | ||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte E350N-USB3 | NVIDIA ION 2 (535MHz core, 1,580MHz memory) | ASUS P7P55D | Mobo drivers | Catalyst 11.2 | Intel 9.1.1.1025 | Intel 9.1.1.1025 |
| Graphics | Radeon HD 6310 IGP Radeon HD 6850 |
NVIDIA ION 2 (535MHz core, 1,580MHz memory) | Radeon HD 6850 1,024MB | ||
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 11.2 | NVIDIA Verde 266.89 | Catalyst 11.2 | ||
| Disk drive | Kingston SSDNow 128GB | Kingston SSDNow 128GB | Kingston SSDNow 128GB | ||
| PSU | Corsair 400CX | Meic 65W power-brick | Corsair 400CX | ||
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Ultimate, 64-bit | ||
| Benchmarks | |||||
| Geekbench 2.1.6 | A cross-platform benchmark used to measure memory and processor performance. | ||||
| Cinebench 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses as many cores as possible | ||||
| TrueCrypt 7.0a | An encryption/decryption benchmark that's executed in RAM | ||||
| X.264 HD | Video encode using Xvid codec. Intensive second pass noted | ||||
| 3DMark06 | A PC benchmark used to test the DirectX 9 performance of a system's graphics card. | ||||
| Just Cause 2 | DX10 shooter benchmarked at 1,280x720 low-quality settings | ||||
| Call of Duty: Black Ops | Super-popular first-person shooter. Benchmarked at 1,280x720 low-quality settings. | ||||
| Power consumption | We record mains power draw whilst playing back a 720p, H.264-encoded movie trailer and when running Just Cause 2. | ||||