Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

by Tarinder Sandhu on 28 February 2011, 05:00 4.0

Tags: Gigabyte (TPE:2376)

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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.