AMD Brazos E-350 Processor For Heavy Surfing

[Insert_Nickname]

The 100$ question. Whats faster, your P4 or an E-350? Should be quite obvious. A hint might be that an X2 255 is around 3 times faster.

That would be the P4... (sorry couldn't resist...)

As a secondary note, my "toy" Celeron G465 ties with a P4EE 3,73GHz. And is quite usable as a tertiary PC...

 

[Tushaar]

Work will consist of a lot of PDFs, Word and a lot of tabs in the browser, nothing more.

I welcome all your suggestions, but then the price and solid build and reliability is a factor. My laptop tends to remain on around 12-18 hours a day, and I'd ideally like it to last at least three years, if not four.

For reliability I chose the Lenovo ThinkpadX120E because it was quite cheap, and because frankly speaking, other Lenovo Thinkpads are bloody expensive. The only other machines which I can bring within my range with a lot of huffing and puffing are the HP Probook 4430S or the Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 430. Don't know about reliability of either of those models.

*Sigh*, I really wish the X120e had been up to the mark, it looked like the perfect blend of reliability, portability and battery life within my budget.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

The only other machines which I can bring within my range with a lot of huffing and puffing are the HP Probook 4430S or the Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 430. Don't know about reliability of either of those models.

Have you looked at the Edge 530 series?. With a basic pentium they should not be -that- expensive.

 

[Tushaar]

Thinkpad Edge 430 is around $600 here. Edge 530 not yet available. Is the Edge series as good as traditional Thinkpads? Some of the design choices seem a bit strange, like no separate buttons below touchpad.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Thinkpad Edge 430 is around $600 here. Edge 530 not yet available. Is the Edge series as good as traditional Thinkpads? Some of the design choices seem a bit strange, like no separate buttons below touchpad.

May I ask what CPU it comes with?

Here (Denmark) you can get an Edge E530 for around $550. But that is only with a basic Pentium B960, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD.

As for build quality, well they are not as well built as a T series Thinkpad. But they are better then your average consumer "plastic" laptops.

 

[ShintaiDK]

In AT's E-350 review, Brazos is faster than P4 2.66GHz, so i guess it should be close with the 3GHz P4.

But i would spend a little more and go with a Dual Core Llano Laptop because you also want to do work and not only Web surfing.

Cept you compare it to a singlecore 2.66Ghz P4 with 533Mhz FSB. vs your dualcore 3Ghz P4 with 800Mhz FSB.

 

[NTMBK]

The sad thing is that my parents are still using a 1.6GHz Pentium 4, so an E-350 would be a huge leap forwards for them.

 

[Tushaar]

May I ask what CPU it comes with?

Here (Denmark) you can get an Edge E530 for around $550. But that is only with a basic Pentium B960, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD.

As for build quality, well they are not as well built as a T series Thinkpad. But they are better then your average consumer "plastic" laptops.

Core i3-2330M (2.2GHz). B960 isn't even available here :/ Lenovo likes to keep their offerings highly premium in India, I think. Also, $600 is with an exchange rate of 53 to the dollar. So around 32,000 in my currency, with no OS.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Core i3-2330M (2.2GHz). B960 isn't even available here :/ Lenovo likes to keep their offerings highly premium in India, I think. Also, $600 is with an exchange rate of 53 to the dollar. So around 32,000 in my currency, with no OS.

The Pentium B960 is only a small step down from i3-2330. Same frequency but without HT and AVX extensions. Why Lenovo would chose to keep such a product out of the market I do not understand...

The E530 I was looking at cost 3095,- DKK (Danish Krone) + freight (about $550). But if you are able to buy it without VAT (I can't remember the correct translation, but business-to-business will suffice) you save 25% on that.

 

[jacktesterson]

I can tell you it will be no prob.

I had a mini ITX E-350 for close to a year, handled 1080p video fine too, all except Netflix HD.

I had a SSD in mine. For web browsing, email, office, Video, etc, it felt snappy, but probably more so because of the SSD. I never tried it without it.

 

[AtenRa]

Cept you compare it to a singlecore 2.66Ghz P4 with 533Mhz FSB. vs your dualcore 3Ghz P4 with 800Mhz FSB.

I though that was a dual core P4 in the review, i have to test this myself :biggrin:

 

[Tushaar]

I can tell you it will be no prob.

I had a mini ITX E-350 for close to a year, handled 1080p video fine too, all except Netflix HD.

I had a SSD in mine. For web browsing, email, office, Video, etc, it felt snappy, but probably more so because of the SSD. I never tried it without it.

All the above mentioned activities simultaneously? Also, I tend to work with PDFs a bit, and prefer Adobe Acrobat Reader, which, I am guessing, places quite a load on the processor?

 

[Tushaar]

The Pentium B960 is only a small step down from i3-2330. Same frequency but without HT and AVX extensions. Why Lenovo would chose to keep such a product out of the market I do not understand...

The E530 I was looking at cost 3095,- DKK (Danish Krone) + freight (about $550). But if you are able to buy it without VAT (I can't remember the correct translation, but business-to-business will suffice) you save 25% on that.

I know! Other brands sell B960 laptops for so much cheaper and the performance is almost the same! Lenovo sells B960 laptops only on in its non-Thinkpad line.

 

[pelov]

All the above mentioned activities simultaneously? Also, I tend to work with PDFs a bit, and prefer Adobe Acrobat Reader, which, I am guessing, places quite a load on the processor?

It does... PDFs are weird like that. I'm hoping that standard kicks the bucket sooner rather than later. Most of the delay in PDFs relies on I/O still, but nevertheless can use up quite a bit of RAM and processing power.

The ThinkPad Edge line is pretty good. It's certainly better than the budget laptops you'll get from HP or Dell in that price range, but don't expect higher end ThinkPad magnesium roll cage and port selection.

The E-350, while it thoroughly kicked the Atom's butt, is frankly a bit too expensive and slow in today's market. The chip itself isn't expensive, but when you can only get so low in BoM, the processor's price doesn't make that much of a difference in overall cost. You can find quad core Llanos and Sandy i3's for the going rate of netbooks when the E-350 was released.

If you can find a ThinkPad Edge for a good price, I'd recommend it.

 

[happysmiles]

as long as you tweak your windows well, your E-350 can handle all the things you wrote in your original post.

with PDF use foxit reader!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I can tell you it will be no prob.

I had a mini ITX E-350 for close to a year, handled 1080p video fine too, all except Netflix HD.

I had a SSD in mine. For web browsing, email, office, Video, etc, it felt snappy, but probably more so because of the SSD. I never tried it without it.

This. Get an SSD, and it will be all good.

 

[sm625]

With 15 tabs open it wont take long for some random javascript to peg the cpu and make you want to pull your hair out. I wouldnt touch it.... You either want 4 threads as fast as the E350, or two threads equivalent to ivy bridge 2GHz. The E350 is roughly equivalent to 800MHz ivy. So if you want to test it find someone with an i3 sb notebook, and hack the P-States to force it to run at its lowest possible speed. THAT is about how fast the E350 will be.

 

[86waterpumper]

The e-350 is fairly snappy with single windows and light usage especially with a ssd. It's under multi tasking it will struggle. For instance especially something like windows updates. If it's doing that just let it be and don't even attempt anything else. In alot of things it is probably fairly comparable to a p4, but it sure will suck alot less fuel out of wall outlet I agree about netflix, but I agree with what some others have said that it's pathetic people's cellphones today will run netflix smoothly and a atom or e-350 can't. Since most cpu today have a abundance of power the software has gotten really sloppy.

 

[podspi]

I have an HP DM1z with the E-350 AND an SSD that I put in aftermarket.

For general browsing it is decent, way better than a tablet. Where it really gets bogged down is flash. It almost makes me want to install an advertisement blocker, because browsing a forum like Anandtech with a ton of silly flash ads slow the thing to a crawl.

Outside of that, it is perfectly competent. I've even played Civ5 on it at very low settings


BTW, I have a friend who just bought the Edge. He more-or-less seems to be happy with it, with the exception of some of the preinstalled nag-ware being a pain apparently. I think they are fantastic looking machines myself. I don't think I would buy a Bobcat-based machine today, I'd wait for Jaguar or go with a Pentium/i3-based machine if you need something cheap, or spend a bit more and get something portable and much faster.

 

[zijin_cheng]

I'm planning to buy the Lenovo x120e (E-350) and I was wondering if anyone here can answer a few questions?

The primary use I put my laptops to is heavy surfing (10-15 tabs open) and maybe a couple of Word docs open alongside. Maximum, I'll have both Firefox and Chrome running alongside with Chrome having around 10-15 tabs and Firefox with 1-2 tabs. Maybe a few PDFs open in the browser too.

Will the E-350 processor be able to handle this with 4 GB RAM? My Core 2 Duo T7200 manages it just fine (though it runs quite hot) with 3GB RAM. Any thoughts/experience with this would be greatly appreciated since I plan to buy it in a day or two.

If you are just going to be using it for word, 10-15 tabs open, pdfs, you'll be fine. However, the slower the CPU, the faster a laptop will slow down, so in a year or 2, expect slow downs.

Also, you have to be sure you won't be doing anything else, as in absolutely sure, because it won't do anything else. As stated above, if this CPU can't run netflix, it kind of sucks for everything except what you need it for.

EDIT: about the 4GB of ram, it will be able to handle 4GB of ram, but will it be able to utilize all of it? No, max 2GB, the other 2GB is just installed into your laptop so the specs look beefier

 

[beginner99]

Your old CPU is a lot faster than an E-350 and you will notice a difference in non-trivial web pages load times. The thing is that web page rendering is mainly single threaded and I'm pretty sure that old pentium 4 (even the single core 2.66 ghz) will be faster in that.

So no i would not buy it. Get a pentium, i3, llano or trinity. All of them will be a lot faster than an E-350. Personally I would get oen with a pentium, cheapest of all and very fast single-threaded.

 

[sm625]

Acer AO756 Aspire One 11.6" Netbook $249.99
Celeron 877 double the passmark cpu score of an E-350.
Not sure about the gpu but I think they are close to the same.
There is a celeron 887 now, so watch out! What a beast of a little 17W chip. And it isnt even 22nm...

 

[cantholdanymore]

My wife owns the DM1z for more than a year an it is holding pretty good; her blog gets updated in time . But I don't think you can buy an E-350 based laptop/netbook and expect 4 years of service.
And AFAIK the netflix issue is due to the netflix software not being able to use iGPU acceleration (there's a thread for that)

 

[Hubb1e]

My wife's ULV C2D at 1.3 ghz smokes the e-350 and it is hard to use. She is fine with it but I can't use it for much more than casual browsing and even that feels pretty slow.

 

[ShintaiDK]

My wife's ULV C2D at 1.3 ghz smokes the e-350 and it is hard to use. She is fine with it but I can't use it for much more than casual browsing and even that feels pretty slow.

That basicly the problem with netbook/smartphone/tablet CPUs like ARM/Atom/Bobcat etc. They are close to, if not already obsolete at release.