Was brazos a bad product?

[monstercameron]

A certain podcaster called brazos a bad product, a dupe, a bait and switch etc. -paraphrasing, so i just want to see how people remember the product especially compared to it contemporaries.

Do you guy agree with his opinions then? https://youtu.be/Iejmm3SjqTw?t=4484

 

[Zodiark1593]

It was a better-than-Atom low power platform that can play 1080P video smoothly in leiu of an Ion chipset. Not too shabby at the time.

 

[Arachnotronic]

It was way better than Atom, so no, it wasn't.

 

[dark zero]

HELL NO!
Even more, VIA by that time was in tie with Brazos (even on GPU!)... but Brazos won since they can OC it.
And also... their GPU was WAY better than Intel's one....
Intel Atom on the other side... killed the WHOLE netbook industry. Nuff said.

Sadly, Intel had the promotion and marketing.... if AMD and VIA could had some of that marketing share.... the story could be different.

 

[toyota]

I used the E-350 and thought it was junk. even in just daily use, it was slow to me and would crap itself on a site with lots of flash.

 

[Exophase]

It was a much better product for netbooks than contemporary Atoms were, but Atoms were absolutely terrible for netbooks.

If anyone pulled a bait and switch it was Intel, offering a cheap Celeron for the original Eee then succeeding it with a much worse Atom lineup. Before then this ultra-cheap class of small notebooks didn't exist and all laptop-oriented Intel CPUs were above a certain price floor. So Intel pushed in their new uarch that was ostensibly designed for MIDs (going by a lot of their promotional material of the time) but wasn't anywhere close to ready for anything handheld thanks to needing a heavy weight chipset and not being on a power optimized process. They were leaving the door wide open for AMD and VIA to do a much better job with products that were actually designed to be good fits for netbooks (although VIA completely fumbled here)

But once they got serious with Atom they pretty easily swept back the netbook and convertible market. What's worse, AMD was left with a uarch evolutionary path that was basically best with netbooks (10-15W TDP sweet spot, small footprint/cheap) but not so good for tablets and nowhere close to suitable for phones.

 

[dark zero]

I used the E-350 and thought it was junk. even in just daily use, it was slow to me and would crap itself on a site with lots of flash.

Even a Big Core had problems with that junky tech :|
No joking, Flash was a BIG mistake who was finally corrected with HTML5 and is about to dissapear for good.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Brazos filled a niche better than Intel at the time and at a price that was attractive, regardless of what one may feel about it's performance. I'd say Windows Vista/7 were more the problem when you consider how RAM heavy they are and how little RAM netbooks and low end laptops had at the time, usually only 1 GB. With a properly optimized OS, those two Bobcat cores at ~1.6 GHz and 80 Stream Processors were a fair amount of computing power that cannibalized more complicated chipsets by having better performance and price.

 

[dark zero]

Brazos filled a niche better than Intel at the time and at a price that was attractive, regardless of what one may feel about it's performance. I'd say Windows Vista/7 were more the problem when you consider how RAM heavy they are and how little RAM netbooks and low end laptops had at the time, usually only 1 GB. With a properly optimized OS, those two Bobcat cores at ~1.6 GHz and 80 Stream Processors were a fair amount of computing power that cannibalized more complicated chipsets by having better performance and price.

Mmm... in Windows XP and 7 without those animations, the Brazos was a real beast.

 

[toyota]

Even a Big Core had problems with that junky tech :|
No joking, Flash was a BIG mistake who was finally corrected with HTML5 and is about to dissapear for good.

how about paying attention to the context here? it was too slow for me in daily use and was horrible with Flash compared to my other systems. and HTML5 has not replaced Flash as plenty of sites still use it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It was a better-than-Atom low power platform that can play 1080P video smoothly in leiu of an Ion chipset. Not too shabby at the time.

This. When it was released, it was actually not bad at all. I bought a Brazos / Zacate mini-ITX board when they came out, it was one of the most powerful low-power CPUs available at the time, and it supported 1080P video decode, including 1080P YouTube.

Fast-forward to current times, and yes, it's a pretty sluggish APU compared to contemporary Intel CPUs (Haswell Celerons). But back in the day, it was pretty decent.

 

[Shivansps]

The E-350 was better than Atom, but it was slower than the previous AMD CPUs, i remember to had a MSI U230 with a L335/780G, when i moved intro a HP dm1z with a E350...

I noticed inmidiately 2 things:

-L335 was slightly faster than E350 on CPU.
-For gaming i had no problem to OC the U230 780G, the result of that, plus the 780G behing DC capable, was the E-350 also bring near 0 gaming perf increase, ok it was no just to compare to a OC 780G, but it allowed me to do so, the E-350 was impossible to OC.
Overall a very dissapointing experience because on the DM1z ran as hot as the overclooked U230, the HP retarded mode, they crippled the bat, so i was not getting a lot on extra run time either.

Atoms by that time they where getting ION/ION2, HP Mini 311, Asus 1201N and 1215N where very popular by that time, and it whould have been even better if Intel did not went intro retarded mode with the X1 pci-e on next gen atoms, crippling ION2 perf.


Anyway, the E-350 was passable, but them OEMs went intro full idiotic mode and started to launch C-30/C-50, those where NOT better than Atoms, hell we where still suffering of C-60/70 showing up on Lenovo notebooks until not that long ago.

Personally i never understood why no one placed a Celeron/Pentium ULV + ION or ION 2... that was a way better choice than a Brazos, on perf.

 

[NTMBK]

Brazos was fantastic when used where it was intended, in ultraportables and netbooks. The problems arose when OEMs put Brazos into full sized laptops. 15" or 17" laptops should never have Brazos, Bay Trail, or Kabini in them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Brazos was fantastic when used where it was intended, in ultraportables and netbooks. The problems arose when OEMs put Brazos into full sized laptops. 15" or 17" laptops should never have Brazos, Bay Trail, or Kabini in them.

I think that you are leaving out the Brazos desktop PCs.

 

[StrangerGuy]

IMO, Brazos came years too late to capitalize on the netbook market and the R&D ROI was too little for AMD who had to pay the cost of going massively into debt to buyout ATI.

 

[NTMBK]

I think that you are leaving out the Brazos desktop PCs.

Oh god, don't even get me started on those abominations.

 

[CHADBOGA]

It was way better than Atom, so no, it wasn't.

I'm guessing you didn't watch the video?

The guy was complaining about Brazos going into 14 & 15" Laptops, when Brazos was an Atom competitor.

Didn't Intel restrict Atom to 11.6" screens?

There is an obvious nuance to the argument being made, that sadly MonsterCameron didn't grasp or intentionally ignored.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Brazos was a prime example of AMDs incompetence. They sit with a good product, and then what happens:
http://techreport.com/news/22050/amd-scrapping-wichita-krishna-ditching-glofo-at-28-nm

Throw it all on the ground. And try to put it into products it doesn't belong to as well.

 

[Idontcare]

The ramifications (then and now) of what it took to envision, greenlight, resource, and bring to market a "small x86 core" product at the time in which AMD initially started internal development of Brazos simply cannot be understated.

There are stories told, stories yet to be told, and stories that will unfortunately never be told. All of this is true of Brazos. And yet, the market today would look nothing like itself were it not for the day Brazos was conceived and given the go-ahead.

Let us not forget that Brazos was initiated at very near the same time that Intel's vision of our 64bit future was one of Itanium and not one of x86. We live in AMD's envisioned future, but unfortunately for them they failed in executing to their own vision (thank you Mr. Ruinz ), so the spoils continue to go to the victor that found a will and a way to ultimately beat them to the punch.

 

[monstercameron]

I'm guessing you didn't watch the video?

The guy was complaining about Brazos going into 14 & 15" Laptops, when Brazos was an Atom competitor.

Didn't Intel restrict Atom to 11.6" screens?

There is an obvious nuance to the argument being made, that sadly MonsterCameron didn't grasp or intentionally ignored.

I am think I left the op fairly open and asked what peoples memories were. Also I updated the op to include the video after that user had commented.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Brazos was fantastic when used where it was intended, in ultraportables and netbooks. The problems arose when OEMs put Brazos into full sized laptops. 15" or 17" laptops should never have Brazos, Bay Trail, or Kabini in them.

I think that you are leaving out the Brazos desktop PCs.

Agree with you both. Overall, Brazos wasn't a bad product at all. It was was just pushed into form factors where it didn't belong.

What's more it was often made to run x64 Windows, something it wasn't/isn't geared for. Having dealt with both a C60 and E300 running Windows 7 x64, they're slower then a snail in molasses on a cold day. An SSD and an x86 OS really kicks Brazos into gear, they're perfectly serviceable then. Just avoid flash.

 

[dark zero]

Oh god, don't even get me started on those abominations.

At least it was useable compared to Atoms :V

 

[frozentundra123456]

It wasnt a "bad" product per se, but they needed the 20nm version that I think was planned. I wanted one of the dm1z or whatever it was called, E-350 netbooks at one point, but ended up getting a full size laptop and cheap CT tablet instead.

And yes, I could not believe they put that chip into full size laptops and even desktops.

 

[mrmt]

Brazos wasn't a bad product at all. It was superbly executed by AMD, it had lean cost structure, it was the best and most efficient performer in the segments it was targeted, it exploited a gap in Intel product lines in a masterfully manner and it practically saved the company with the profits it brought (it was the beginning of the Bulldozer disaster). In fact, Brazos was the last good product from AMD. It's a pity that the company mismanagement team succeeded in bury what was a healthy product line.

 

[bononos]

I am think I left the op fairly open and asked what peoples memories were. Also I updated the op to include the video after that user had commented.

From your comment on youtube where you called the guy an ass*** and sh*t a half dozen times, it does sound like you didn't catch the nuance to his criticism.