Brazos Testing Requests

[wmbrant]

Suggestions... I'd like to see your take on the Lenovo X120e.

As far as testing... I've used a Dell Mini 9 since it came out. I'm not a gamer, and find the Mini 9 to be adequate for basic office functions when using Open/Libre Office and an external keyboard. However, the system bogs down when the going gets tough and I'm running several apps at a time. Mostly, I want to know that a system can handle a large work load (word processing, spreadsheets, browser w/several tabs open, etc., etc.) and still be responsive without running out of RAM or paging like crazy. How about a RAM recommendation? Yes more RAM=better, but with budget systems sometimes more=just too much $ - particularly now since Fusion isn't limited to a paltry 2GB of RAM.

I've always wondered how intrusive Office's large ribbon bar would be on a limited netbook display.

While the quantitative display metrics are all well and good, they don't do a good job of describing what I'll think about a display, and whether I will end up liking it or not. I really like the Mini 9's (glossy) display, but honestly I could not tell you how my home desktop's display or my office monitor would compare to the Mini 9's display; they're both in that fuzzy area of 'good enough'. The difference is that unlike you, I don't look critically at 10 different displays a week, so I have little appreciation of what a 'black level' means to me. And frankly whenever you mention 'nits', Rid - a head lice medication - is what comes to mind.

Keyboard layout and feel are also worth a paragraph or so. For example, looking at the picture of the dm1z's keyboard I could not find the page up/page down keys. I assume they're there. Are they a hassle to use?

I'm also curious about the state of Linux compatibility with Fusion - a trial install of Linux would be appreciated.

I'd also be curious about the impact of replacing the HD with an inexpensive SSD in these systems; how much would a modest (price-appropriate) SSD impact performance and battery life?

Gaming... Not so much. Maybe you could equate a laptop's processor and graphics capability back to a year when that much horsepower was available in a good desktop gaming system. Would that date be a good predictor of whether a system could handle a given game?

-- Bill

 

[PingSpike]

I'll run some gaming (3DMark06 loop) while on battery to see how that goes, though truthfully the gaming potential for E-350 is quite limited. Batman does "okay" (30FPS average at low detail, but minimum frame rates drop into single digits). Half-Life 2 was much better; nearly all of the regular suite of modern games that we benchmark fall short of 30FPS. I don't think it's the GPU so much as the Bobcat CPU holding things back.

I think most people understand that these kinds of systems aren't going to run Crysis well, but who was really going to play that on a netbook anyway? It's sort of interesting to see how different low power/low cost platforms stack up in newer games...but when they're all getting framerates that barely break double digits on low settings its really more academic than useful. When I look for netbook reviews I want to see how old classic games run, and yet there are never any benchmarks on them. Run older stuff that might at least be playable, like UT2004 or even a Quake3 engine game. And what about something like Minecraft? Lots of people play that and its the kind of casual game that might actually end up played on a netbook a lot.

 

[Hacp]

I think most people understand that these kinds of systems aren't going to run Crysis well, but who was really going to play that on a netbook anyway? It's sort of interesting to see how different low power/low cost platforms stack up in newer games...but when they're all getting framerates that barely break double digits on low settings its really more academic than useful. When I look for netbook reviews I want to see how old classic games run, and yet there are never any benchmarks on them. Run older stuff that might at least be playable, like UT2004 or even a Quake3 engine game. And what about something like Minecraft? Lots of people play that and its the kind of casual game that might actually end up played on a netbook a lot.

Exactly. Most people would like to know how Civ4 or WoW runs rather than Batman. Starcraft 2 is a good example where AMD should consider something like TurboBoost.

 

[c0re2x48]

Would be real nice to see a review of the yet to be shipped x120e from lenovo, and a comparison with the hp fusion

 

[chewietobbacca]

I think most people understand that these kinds of systems aren't going to run Crysis well, but who was really going to play that on a netbook anyway? It's sort of interesting to see how different low power/low cost platforms stack up in newer games...but when they're all getting framerates that barely break double digits on low settings its really more academic than useful. When I look for netbook reviews I want to see how old classic games run, and yet there are never any benchmarks on them. Run older stuff that might at least be playable, like UT2004 or even a Quake3 engine game. And what about something like Minecraft? Lots of people play that and its the kind of casual game that might actually end up played on a netbook a lot.

+1

These things are going to have a lot more casual games out there - indie titles too - that won't require a ton of horsepower, but will make a difference with the entry level GPUs involved in testing

Would love to see how they run

 

[JarredWalton]

Just to update an old thread... well, not that old, but anyway. Here's the "final" list of games I'm planning to test with Brazos (C-50 and E-350), Nile, Danube, CULV, Arrandale, and SNB:

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Battlefield 2
Civilization IV
Civilization V
Company of Heroes
Crysis: Warhead
Fallout 3
Far Cry
FEAR (original)
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
League of Legends
Minecraft
Need for Speed: World
Oblivion
Quake 4
STALKER (original)
Supreme Commander
Torchlight
Unreal Tournament 3
World of Warcraft

That's 21 games representing most major genres and a large variety of performance requirements. A few are newer titles, but they're similar to older titles (i.e. NFS: World is perfectly playable at 1366x768 and "Low" settings -- maybe not as nice looking as some of the older NFS games, but I sort of quit the series after Underground/Carbon.

If you can make a good case for another game (i.e. nothing similar in requirements is currently in the list), go for it and I'll see what I can do. My goal isn't to test everything, but to at least cover a good chunk of lower demand games. Maybe I should add Sims 3, but crud I hate that series; it's almost as bad as WoW!

 

[Emulex]

OSX

 

[mnewsham]

*crosses fingers for good minecraft performance all around*

 

[obidamnkenobi]

That list looks good to me! I'm considering these laptops mostly for turn based games and I think most of those should be covered well by Civ IV and V. Supreme commander is also a title I believe is pretty CPU dependent so that should be interesting to compare.

 

[JarredWalton]

Did someone really just ask me to try and make a hacintosh out of an E-350? Wow... I'm highly skeptical it would work right now; maybe in a few months it will have all the drivers hacked in by the community. Anyway, you'd be looking at roughly 1/3 the performance of the 2010 MacBook (i.e. P8600 with 320M graphics), which might be too slow. Then again, it's running Win7 fine, so who knows? But for now, I'm going to pass on trying to install OS X on it. Sorry.

As for Minecraft, I can tell you that at native res if you try to turn on everything (Far + Fancy + Smooth lighting) you'll really chug. I measured 13.8 average FPS (low of 10, high of 16) at those settings, walking out of my "abode" into the great outdoors. Dropping to Far + Fast + No Smooth brings the performance up to 22.4FPS (low of 17, high of 26), which was certainly playable--Minecraft isn't a twitch game, after all. If you want to reduce the view distance to Normal you should get well above 30FPS; Short view distance is no trouble whatsoever. Note that in running around, the test scenario I ended up using is one of the worst I could find for frame rates, so unless there are some Internet servers with even higher demands you should be fine.

SupCom on the other hand didn't do so well. At relatively low settings (not sure if they were minimum or just low), average FPS was only 12.6 for the benchmark--definitely not something I'd enjoy playing. Crysis (not surprisingly) isn't really playable, getting just 22FPS at the minimum settings. Oblivion also chugged a bit at "Low" settings (not "minimum"), managing only 20.2FPS--but keep in mind, at launch Oblivion was pulling 20FPS on pretty decent GPUs. Fallout 3 was better (33FPS), but maybe the scenery just isn't as demanding?

I still need to come up with test scenarios for Civ4/Civ5. But other than the above list of games with lower performance, most of the titles are getting 30+ FPS at minimum to low/medium settings and native resolution.

 

[JarredWalton]

Hi guys (and if there are any, gals),

The MSI X370 and Sony VAIO YB review is posted, with the initial list of gaming performance results (on page six).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4218/amds-brazo-e350-msi-x370-sony-vaio-yb

Not yet done: SunSpider (and maybe Rightware Browsermark), SSD testing, testing of other IGP solutions with older games. Any particular requests for application benchmarks that I may have missed?

Also, in case you wanted to know, you can find the HP dm1z, MSI X370, and Sony YB in the Mobile Bench list now (or at least, you will find them in a few minutes).

 

[mnewsham]

Hi guys (and if there are any, gals),

The MSI X370 and Sony VAIO YB review is posted, with the initial list of gaming performance results (on page six).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4218/amds-brazo-e350-msi-x370-sony-vaio-yb

Not yet done: SunSpider (and maybe Rightware Browsermark), SSD testing, testing of other IGP solutions with older games. Any particular requests for application benchmarks that I may have missed?

Also, in case you wanted to know, you can find the HP dm1z, MSI X370, and Sony YB in the Mobile Bench list now (or at least, you will find them in a few minutes).

Just finished reading, good review! They are too expensive compared to the HP dm1z BUT i was waiting to see the CPU results more then anything.

 

[PingSpike]

Great review on this, really appreciated the older game benchmarks.