AMD E-350 / E-450 and Intel i3-2367 Compared

AMD E-350 / E-450 and Intel i3-2367 Compared

Battle of the 2011 netbook CPU's compared. I know about time right? Better late than never.


Test Systems:

Systems compared were as follows:

Asus Eee 1215b
AMD E-350 with Radeon 6310 GPU
1x4GB DDR3 1066 RAM

HP DM1z
AMD E-450 with Radeon 6320 GPU
1x4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

HP DM1
Intel i3-2367 with HD 3000 GPU
1x4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

I primarily ran GPU benchmarks because it's difficult to find anything reasonable on the Intel version of the DM1 and there is much contention about which GPU is most powerful. The one thing that I found bizarre was that the AMD DM1z supports two RAM slots but only has a single channel memory controller, but the Intel DM1 only has a single RAM slot but it actually supports dual channel. This effectively gimps the Intel GPU by a solid 20-25% in my estimation, as well as CPU heavy performance.

Note that this test is not necessarily an indicator of actual performance of GPU's, since they can perform quite admirably in most games with lowered resolution and detail. Unless otherwise stated, I used 720p resolution since it's a standard.


Tempratures:

Another thing to note is that the max CPU temps when running Prime95 + MSI Kombustor torture test, after 20 minutes i3 peaked at 82C, AMD E-450 at 80C. The i3 idles at about 50C and E-450 at about 53C. Ambient is about 23C.


Battery Tests:

Browser test: Firefox 11, 4 flash web pages cycled in 1, 5, 10, 15 intervals using add-in "reloadevery", medium screen brightness, wi-fi on, balanced power profile, HDD set to shut off after 60 minutes (not sure if it ever did). I noted the time the power was cut, and then used eventvwr to determine shutdown time, so it was a real time measurement, not something calculated by batterybar or batterycare apps.

AMD E-450 - 6 hours 45 minutes to 5%
Intel i3-2367 - 6 hours 44 minutes to 5%

I call that pretty even!


General performance notes:

The Intel system seemed to have a better overall responsiveness than the AMD unit, but really only when used side by side. Otherwise it would be difficult to tell the difference if used separately. Both stream Flash/YouTube HD (720p) without issue. *HOWEVER* the AMD unit has issues playing Netflix HD. It plays Netflix SD just fine. But that's really an issue with Microsoft Silverlight, which Netflix uses, than it is with the hardware itself. No word on whether or not Microsoft will address the performance issues. Just something to consider.



Following are performance results.

GPU Benchmark Tests:
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3DMark06

Spoiler

1280x768 (non-standard, but works on native resolution of 1366x768)
E-350 system was not run at this resolution which is why it's showing as 0.


1280x1024 (standard 3DMark06 resolution)

3DMark Vantage

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3DMark11

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Only showing AMD CPU's because Intel HD 3000 does not support DirectX 11

Cinebench R10

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Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL GPU Test

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Crysis

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DirectX 9


DirectX 10

DiRT 2 Demo

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HAWX 2

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Just Cause 2

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Lost Planet 2

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Metro 2033

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Stalker Pripyat

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Resident Evil 5

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Skyrim Intro

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Street Fighter IV

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Trackmania

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CPU Benchmark Tests:
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PCMark05

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PCMark Vantage

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3DMark CPU Tests

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Cinebench R10

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Cinebench R11.5

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CPU Tests

x264

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Conclusions / Personal Thoughts:

If anything, this is a tough choice to make to choose between the two. For the HP DM1 laptops, AMD units can be found for as cheap as $375, typically about $400, and the Intel units range from $450-$500, typically closer to $500. I guess it's personal choice if the minor GPU improvement is worth it for you. But as stated earlier, the AMD units have issues playing Microsoft Silverlight Netflix HD which is a Silverlight issue, not hardware. So if Netflix streaming is important to you, the Intel version should weigh much more favorably. The caveat to the Intel system is that it doesn't support DirectX 11. Not a huge deal breaker because there are no DirectX exclusive titles that I know of yet.

If you can find an AMD unit and all you want to do is surf the web, play a couple older games, watch YouTube and listen to music, the AMD unit will save you some cash. In any case, neither machine should be considered a gaming powerhouse, but they can manage newer titles reasonably well if you cut resolution and detail. Skyrim actually plays decently on both machines at 1024x600 with low detail. I wouldn't want extended gaming sessions with it, but it will allow you to get a fix now and again while on the go.

 

reserved for future posts

 

thanks for the useful info!

if the AMD tend to consume more than 17w then it's a real embarrassment for amd!

 

Thanks for running this comparison. The difference in CPU is rather brutal but we already knew that, being as a few comparisons claim A-series quads to be nearly 4x more powerful than E-series duals. A couple of the tested games were absolutely CPU bound.

E-450 is altogether a nice improvement on E-350, with battery similar to i3 under typical load. Good enough and gets better when you can save $100 on the cheap end of the spectrum...but I can see why AMD thinks the next A4 should replace E-series. Depending on the task, a Trinity A4 should be 50%-1000% faster than even E-450. And AMD's power claims would indicate a potential to outperform on battery also.

*This assumes many dependent factors, such as inclusion of functional encryption and video-encoding circuits in the cheapest A-series mobile chips.

 

They may be CPU bound, but also memory bandwidth is a big bottleneck. I have no clue why AMD decided on single channel memory controller over dual channel. Unless they knew CPU would be bottleneck and dual channel wouldn't improve things much at all.

In any case a low power A4 would be much more ideal.

 

I think a better comparison probably would be e-series vs b950 and a4 vs i3.(price wise)

It does depend on the OEM offer though.

 

The issue is A4's are only offered in 14" and larger notebooks. These are both 17W/18W CPU's that are offered in 12" and under netbooks/notebooks.