AMD Athlon 2650e & X2 3250e - Better than Atom for SFF Desktops
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
I’ve updated our Bench database with the full set of Athlon 2650e and Athlon X2 3250e results if you’re concerned about performance in a specific area. But overall the breakdown is like this - single threaded performance is much better on the Athlon 2650e than the Atom 330 or D510. Multi-threaded performance is clearly better on the Atom processors though. They have two cores and Hyper Threading (four threads total) and can extract quite a bit of performance that way. The only way to be faster across the board would be to use something like the Athlon X2 3250e.
From a performance standpoint I’d probably still prefer the 2650e over an Atom for a basic web browsing machine. Once you start multitasking (even with multiple browser windows) you start to create an environment that’s better suited for the Atom or the dual-core 3250e.
Price isn’t an issue if you buy the base Dell zino HD with an Athlon 2650e. At $249 you’re basically looking at spending a bit more than you would on a single-core Atom machine like the Acer Aspire Revo ($199). I didn’t do much of a comparison to the single-core Atom but trust me, the 2650e is much better (consult Bench if you don’t believe me :)...).
Even upgrading to the Athlon X2 3250e only brings the price up to $314. Still well within the range of reasonable. You’re getting something that’s way faster than a dual-core Atom, but about the same price as a Pine Trail or ION nettop.
DIYers unfortunately lose out. You can’t buy the Athlon 2650e or Athlon X2 3250e unless you’re an OEM and I haven’t seen any made available through the channel.
Power consumption is definitely higher compared to Atom, particularly on the dual-core variant. It’s not enough to make a real difference in your power bill, but it’s enough to keep the chips out of ultra small form factors like the Zotac Mag and definitely out of netbooks. Which is why you don’t see any in anything smaller than a zino HD.
But overall, if you’re fine with Atom-class performance - you’ll love these two CPUs from AMD. The Athlon X2 3250e brings the best of both worlds, but even the 2650e is a good alternative to the big, er little-A. Especially a single-core Atom.
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AznBoi36 - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
Pinetrail is useless for an HTPC ... There is HDMI, but you're limited to a max resolution of 1366x768. Pretty useless for anything above 720p HD.signorRossi - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
I read somewhere that Ion 2 for Pinetrail is in the works...Penti - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
They can just make a mobile graphics card that sits on some of the four PCI-e lanes available, it's PCI-e 2.0 and is more then enough for a low-end graphics solution. There's no problem there. One lane (x1) for Gigabit ethernet, One lane (x1) for wireless (Mini PCI-e) leaves two lanes (x2 or 1000MB/s uni-directional) for graphics. It's enough. Easily faster then an IGP solutions. But most will probably just go with the Broadcom Crystal HD.Kobaljov - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
The Zotac created a new mini-ITX board with dual-core Pineview with HDMI (similary limited res) and 2 PCIe Mini Card and a PCIe x1 slot! Price is unknown but hopefully closer to the Intel prices than the previous Ion boards.Penti - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Sounds good, will definitively check it out. But it's still too resolution limited and a discrete chip would solve that. But you can solve that with a x1 graphic card :) Though not that cheap, I only know of HD4350. But at least you get full resolution HDMI then.essemzed - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Just looking at the picture I think something is conspicuously missing: a socket for a microphone jack beside the phone one.Being a nettop it is very likely it will be used for VOIP applications too (Skype or whatever) and I'd really like to plug my headset jacks, both phone and mike, in the same place, not one in the front and one (hopefully) in the back.
Bad design, IMHO.
Sergio
signorRossi - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
Ever heard of USB-attached headsets? ;-)Mic/headphone tu USB adapters exist too...
Calin - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
Also, there are USB webcams with integrated audio.essemzed - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
my point was not that it is impossible to attach an headset to the box (of course it is), but that it would be impractical if you already own one of the typical kind, i.e. analog.hardwareguy - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
There's a mic jack on the back of the Zino HD, along with another headphone jack.http://gopaultech.com/files/2009/11/Dell-Zino-HD-B...">http://gopaultech.com/files/2009/11/Dell-Zino-HD-B...