How bad is the AMD Brazos? (and thoughts on ASUS X501U)

I've seen the ASUS X501U which I really like the look of, the fact it's light, has good battery life and the price is good too.

I will only be using it for browsing the net, iTunes, watching videos (720p or outputting 1080p to a TV through HDMI) and some development work (all coding though, no GFX stuff)

I also have a Dell XPS 15 with an i5, would this laptop feel a lot slower (doing the same things on both)

I can only imagine apps opening a little slower and extracting RARs, etc.. being slower from what I use it for. I also play games on the Dell but I don't expect this to play any games.

Cheers

 

Mm.. well, it will suck in the way that anything not hardware-accelerated on the gpu (or apu) is going to run slowly.

..pretty sure you actually won't have any problems with streaming 1080 content on a current driver and flash-plugin, though.. Playing blu-ray in any amount of free or non-free video-players should work even better. The examples I've seen on the e-350 chipsets actually performed better than I expected - because of the way the media-acceleration works.. Very low cpu-use, no framedropping, etc.

edit: good preview, from the olden days AMD E-350 1.6 GHz APU Brazos Platform Preview - Zacate APU Benchmarked | PC Perspective

 

The difference in processing power between an i5 and a Brazos APU is quite significant. However, for the tasks you intend on using it for, it shouldn't be too bad. Like you said, under certain circumstances you will feel a bit of slow down (those that are CPU dependent). This feeling can also be attributed to the HDD or SSD being used and the system RAM available.

Have you considered the ASUS U32U? It is also available with a Brazos APU (E-450), has USB 3.0, has a smaller 13.3" display but same 1366x768 resolution, weighs 4lbs & comes with an 8-Cell 5600mAh 83Whrs battery (versus 6-Cell 4400mAh 47Whrs). Compared to the X501U, these factors might be an advantage (or not depending on what you like). What I thought was odd was that the X501U, being a 15.6" notebook, doesn't included a CD/DVD player. Neither does the U32U.

1. Do you currently use an SSD in your Dell XPS 15?
2. How much would the X501U cost you?
3. Is the U32U even available to you?

 

Hi, thanks for that. It's not the e-350 it's the 1Ghz (1.3Ghz boost) AMD C-60 with Radeon 6290 chip

I've not seen that device, but the screen is a bit too small for me. I really like the numpad on the X501U

I don't use an SSD in my XPS. I was going to set up a caddy to have an SSD for Windows and the 750GB HDD as storage, but I didn't bother.

I would like to use an SSD in the Asus, but you have to take the whole thing apart AFAIK (not much documentation on it)

I would be able to get the X501U for £252 (2GB & 320GB) or £270 (4GB & 500GB)

the RAM is under the motherboard supposedly, so think I would go for the 4GB just incase (even though I want to swap the HDD)

would there be any point having an SSD on a 1GHz C-60?

Edit: also, you guys may think I'm crazy, but as I don't use the XPS for gaming when out and about I was going to sell it and buy the Asus and then put the rest towards a gaming PC, or maybe just a tablet (as I have a 360 and don't play games much any more anyway)

 

>_< Right, the dual-core they had with some increased boost speeds because of the bios-update, and all that.

Go for it. It's marginally different. I would pick one of the new e2-1800 instead, because of the increased dram bus speed support (1333Mhz vs. 1033Mhz). And, obviously, because I get a sense of fulfillment and inner peace of being by watching benchmark numbers.

But you'll run into the identical issues. If you try to run 1080 video only on the processor, it's going to croak on either setup (like on the Atom setups, or any 1Ghz-1.3Ghz processor). With hardware/apu-acceleration, it's going to about the same margin to go on as the e-350 system. It's going to be sensitive towards extra cpu-draining controls, might have trouble streaming if you have more than one flash-plugin control running, that sort of thing. But other than that, not a problem.

 

Thanks. I was going to get the X501U just because of the lightness with a big screen (I can live without a DVD drive) and price because I just got a tax rebate, but I decided to get an SSD drive for my Dell instead and I'll wait lol, or get a tablet lol

I'm sure the speed of my Dell will pass the time until a better model comes out

Thanks again guys