AMD Brazos E-350 Processor For Heavy Surfing

[frozentundra123456]

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...

Yea, I say one of those celeron netbooks in best buy the other day. It looked like a nice package, but I wonder what the battery life is compared to brazos/atom.
The size and performance could be really nice if the battery life is decent.

I just got a new Dell laptop for my work, 15.6 inch screen. It is very nice, but quite heavy to carry from one lab to another and from the lab to my house. Makes me more more likely to consider 14 inch or below light formfactor if I purchase one for myself. I didnt really realize how heavy would be, but I work for a University, so we had to take what was on contract anyway.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Yea, I say one of those celeron netbooks in best buy the other day. It looked like a nice package, but I wonder what the battery life is compared to brazos/atom.
The size and performance could be really nice if the battery life is decent.

I just got a new Dell laptop for my work, 15.6 inch screen. It is very nice, but quite heavy to carry from one lab to another and from the lab to my house. Makes me more more likely to consider 14 inch or below light formfactor if I purchase one for myself. I didnt really realize how heavy would be, but I work for a University, so we had to take what was on contract anyway.

i saw that acer hes referring to as well. i was ready to get one at first but then the trackpad was so awful that it ruined the whole machine for me. a celeron netbook with an 11 inch screen is an appealing concept to me though

 

[podspi]

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

Only obsolete if you don't care about performance/watt/$. There is more than one dimension of quality.

Let's face it, before the Pentium M laptops were pretty terrible. I had a C2D, an Atom-based laptop, and the DM1z that I mentioned earlier in that order. Out of the three machines, the C2D machine is the most power and had the best battery life, but that was with two battery slices and probably around ~ 10 lbs. The thing is (still going!) huge.

I bought the Atom because I wanted something a lot more portable. It was slower than the C2D, but it was portable and much cheaper (over $1000 cheaper, though they of course were not bought at the same time). I wouldn't have called it obsolete when I bought it, and for what I wanted it has served me well.

The DM1z is a happy medium between the two. Larger but also faster than the Atom machine, and it still managed to get decent battery life. It also isn't obsolete, and frankly for $200 dollars I don't regret the purchase. I personally would hesitate to buy one for $399 today, but most of the machines you could get for that price range might be faster, but they probably don't get better battery life and they are probably less portable, which is important to me.

 

[Tushaar]

Oh well, this discussion has sealed the deal for me. It'll be a no-go. I'll probably try and run my nx7300 to the ground while I'm still at university (another year and a half). It's certainly built like it. Upgraded the HDD from 80 GB to 500 GB, added 3 GB of RAM from 1 GB (now at 4GB) and the easy maintenance allows me to clean the insides fairly regularly. It's a peach of a machine, now that I look at it.

Thanks a lot fellows. I was about to bite the bullet and buy the X120e today, but your inputs have helped me save a ton of money for what would probably not have been a very good purchase a year down the line. I never expected this level of participation for a thread by a first time poster on this forum. Thanks a LOT! I'll try to keep involved here when I can (though this CPU and overclocking category has stuff I usually don't do) - kind of feel obligated to with the kind of help I've received from you guys.

In rounding off, the Acer 756 is not a good deal actually. It has only a 4 cell battery and no bigger battery upgrade available, and the heat dissipation is frankly terrible. One of my good friends has it and it's quite crap.

Thank you!

 

[CTho9305]

Guess I'm a bit late, but my take is similar to podspi's. It handles any web surfing just fine (except extremely flash-heavy sites in multiple tabs), and it handles video playback (other than Netflix, which refuses to take advantage of hardware video decoders) fine. I've done some work in Adobe Lightroom, but not much because it isn't really fast enough when I have a lot of pictures. It's good enough for cleaning up images for Facebook while I'm on the go. If there's a Thinkpad with an E-450 in it, I think that'd be a great option. If the HP dm1z is still around, avoid the original (black outside, gray inside) with the crappy trackpad; the newer version should be fine. The E-350-based dm1z is my only laptop (though it was free, so I may have felt differently if I had to pay for it). I should point out that I use my iPhone and an HP TouchPad tablet more than the dm1z, so I'm not exactly worried about fast performance (and I'm probably biased).

 

[RU482]

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.

I have the x120e w/ 4GB and 64GB SSD that I use for my traveling laptop for work. Your usage scenario is about exactly what I typically have going on when sitting in meetings, ect while traveling. For the price, and weight, it is a very sufficient performer. It's not going to be too far off from that T7200 performance wise and will run a lot cooler and longer on a charge (I used to have a big ole laptop with that CPU a few years back for couch surfing, not while I owned the x120e)

The x120e has a professional enough look and brand image, and a quality feel to it. It feels durable

 

[SPBHM]

I'm using a cheap NB with the Celeron B820 (dual core sandy at 1.7GHz) and it feels just fine for web browsing, but I wouldn't go much lower than that... for a reference it score 1.33 points in cinebnench 11.5, the E-350 scores less than half I think... but... it's a 35w TDP CPU.

from my past experience with Atom, I would say you should really try to get at least an A4 llano, or dual core sandy bridge.

 

[leper84]

What are yall doing wrong?

I had a hp d1mz when they first came out w/ e350, hdd, and 4gb of ram.

I'd have 2 windows open with about 10 tabs a piece, word, excel and adobe pdf running in the background. Never a single slow down, no lag switching tabs, unless it was some rare flash game you would never see any stutter.

The netflix issue is overblown. I'd rarely get a slowdown only on hd content and even then it would go away on its own most of the time.

For what use the OP is looking for you really can't beat it.

I swear too many people on here act like if any AMD doesn't run as fast in benchmarks as a 3960 they have to convince themselves its useless at any task.

 

[SPBHM]

who is talking about high end CPUs?
let's be realistic, the E-350 is clearly slower than a K8 with 100MHz less
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/328?vs=116
it's slower then ATOM in some tests... so it probably will have a hard time with multiple tabs with flash and all of that...

 

[Tushaar]

I guess what the others meant was that the tasks you (and I) mentioned are memory intensive tasks, but the processor will choke up quickly once the processor is burdened. Or so I gather.

 

[AtenRa]

I dont know if you like Sony but they have the SV-E1111M1EB 11.6" with the new AMD E2-1800 but it seams to be overpriced.

E2-1800 @ 1.7GHz dual core, 11,6" @ 1366x768, 4GB ram 1333MHz, 500GB HDD, win 7 and USB3.

 

[jae]

The CQ60 overheats because they have that garbage blue foam thermal pad.

A friend of mine has a laptop with the E-350 and 3GB. From using it and fixing it myself, I would suggest installing noscript. Don't think the laptop will be useful for anything more than web browsing and document viewing.

 

[beginner99]

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

Hey I still sometimes use by 3 yrs old netbook with a z520 atom (=eg the weakest of the atoms). However it now runs some netbook type ubuntu-dervied OS (that actually helped a lot in terms of speed..not so much for battery life). Kind of like it on flights due to the small size. And it can play 720p mkv rips if you don't mind some frame drops.

But yeah surfing is a pain and flash video is problematic, page load times also nothing for the impatient user. Also still use when I go to places were you can't really lock up your stuff.

 

[rahul]

x120e user here, with 2GB RAM, and I think it is a fairly capable machine. I run Ubuntu 10.04 and often have browsers with half a dozen tabs (chrome or firefox), openoffice and adobe reader 9 with multiple PDFs open at the same time. It runs much cooler and longer than a colleague's Lenovo with an i3 processor and win7. I also occasionally run winxp, and associated software, in a VM without issues (more RAM will make life easier here). I don't stream video, but it has no trouble playing video (720p) off the HDD. The only minus is the speakers sound a bit tinny to me.

I get about 6 hours out of one charge with wifi off and about 4.5 hours with wifi on (display at 75% brightness). Openoffice drags down battery usage a bit. I am told battery management on win7 is much better than in Ubuntu, so you might get better battery life than I do.

 

[Madpacket]

For the slower CPU's like the e350 you want to marry them to an SSD. I have a zotac e350 and was using a conventional 320GB rotational hdd for about a year and it felt pretty slow but I eventually replaced it with a 120GB SSD and it feels like a completely different computer. It's actually quite usable with the SSD and I have no problems with the speed of the machine any more. I'm sure it could handle intense browsing and PDF viewing just fine, just make sure you run with flashblock/noscript etc (you should run these apps with any computer) to keep the speeds up.

Good luck.

 

[CTho9305]

What are yall doing wrong?

I had a hp d1mz when they first came out w/ e350, hdd, and 4gb of ram.

I'd have 2 windows open with about 10 tabs a piece, word, excel and adobe pdf running in the background. Never a single slow down, no lag switching tabs, unless it was some rare flash game you would never see any stutter.

The netflix issue is overblown. I'd rarely get a slowdown only on hd content and even then it would go away on its own most of the time.

For what use the OP is looking for you really can't beat it.

I swear too many people on here act like if any AMD doesn't run as fast in benchmarks as a 3960 they have to convince themselves its useless at any task.

I don't think it's an anti-AMD thing... I think computer "enthusiasts" who gravitate to forums like this (i.e. people who get excited by computers) tend to be much more interested in the high end, and underestimate the low end. There are occasionally threads where someone will ask something like "Can a Pentium III handle Starcraft 1?" and some people will say no, even though the P3 wasn't even released when Starcraft came out. It's possible many people who aren't speaking from experience with Bobcat are speculating based on Atom, which truly is too slow for general use (unlike Bobcat).

The Netflix thing is definitely overblown unless it was something you wanted to use, in which case it is a legitimate dealbreaker. If you use Amazon Prime Instant Video/YouTube/Hulu instead, it's a non-issue.

 

[Fox5]

I don't think it's an anti-AMD thing... I think computer "enthusiasts" who gravitate to forums like this (i.e. people who get excited by computers) tend to be much more interested in the high end, and underestimate the low end. There are occasionally threads where someone will ask something like "Can a Pentium III handle Starcraft 1?" and some people will say no, even though the P3 wasn't even released when Starcraft came out. It's possible many people who aren't speaking from experience with Bobcat are speculating based on Atom, which truly is too slow for general use (unlike Bobcat).

The Netflix thing is definitely overblown unless it was something you wanted to use, in which case it is a legitimate dealbreaker. If you use Amazon Prime Instant Video/YouTube/Hulu instead, it's a non-issue.

True story. Most media content will be accelerated by Brazo's gpu, one of the few exceptions is Netflix HD.
Even web browsers have gpu acceleration now, and it helps a lot on a platform like Brazos.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I don't think it's an anti-AMD thing... I think computer "enthusiasts" who gravitate to forums like this (i.e. people who get excited by computers) tend to be much more interested in the high end, and underestimate the low end. There are occasionally threads where someone will ask something like "Can a Pentium III handle Starcraft 1?" and some people will say no, even though the P3 wasn't even released when Starcraft came out. It's possible many people who aren't speaking from experience with Bobcat are speculating based on Atom, which truly is too slow for general use (unlike Bobcat).

The Netflix thing is definitely overblown unless it was something you wanted to use, in which case it is a legitimate dealbreaker. If you use Amazon Prime Instant Video/YouTube/Hulu instead, it's a non-issue.

So true, Brazos is plenty enough for non power users. Especially with an SSD. Many "enthusiasts", myself included, are often surprised at how low performance most people are willing to accept if it just works. Another thing is most of these people have never used a high performance "enthusiast" PC, and thus do not know what they are missing from their computers. When some of my friends have used my main PC they are often blown completely away, coming from old C2D and worse laptops...

Brazos would be perfect with 2 extra cores, a bump in frequency to ~ 2GHz and the GPU at ~ 800MHz. Oh well, perhaps at 28nm...

The E-450 handles 3D blu-ray decoding and -that- is properly the most demanding consumer oriented task your average Joe is going to throw at his computer.

 

[deimos3428]

Kind of, but it's a significant step up from Atom processors. I've tried it in a store, but without WiFi, I couldn't really put the system under any kind of real life testing/load. Anyone who has one can describe their experience?

I have one as an HTPC. It mostly just shepherds data from the TV capture card to the NAS via iSCSI, and plays back video to the extender (X-box 360). I wouldn't ask it to do anything hard, honestly...