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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
40 Comments
View All Comments
signorRossi - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
Sorry if I sounded impolite or nitpicking, it wasn't meant so. I just wanted to point out that it isn't a big deal that the Zino hasn't a mic jack on the front.But you actually can get an adapter for your analog headset for a few bucks.
bse8128 - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
When comparing power consumption, isn't really fair to compare with the old Atom boards with a i945GC chipset. I'd much prefer to see a comparison with for example the Intel D945GSEJT, using a i945GSE chipset like the EEE Box.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
I agree, but I needed something that allowed me to use a standard ATX power supply in order to do an apples-to-apples comparison. I included DC based platforms as a reference point though.Take care,
Anand
ganeshts - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Anand, I believe AMD has made it very clear in its driver release that support for Adobe Flash acceleration will be restricted to the HD4000 series and later. Users of the 3xxx series (and as a result the chipsets with Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics like the ZinoHD) will probably never be able to benefit from GPU Flash acceleration.Not wanting to sound like a Nvidia fanboy here (actually my HTPC uses a 3450 from ATI), but ATI really has a lot of catching up to do in terms of software support for its great hardware.
johnsonx - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
This AMD engineer here: http://blogs.amd.com/home/2009/11/30/it-came-it-sa...">http://blogs.amd.com/home/2009/11/30/it...n-update...claims he was able to get flash acceleration working on the ZinoHD.
AznBoi36 - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
We'll just have to wait for Flash 10.xxx to get out of beta and actually work properly, before we draw any of these conclusions.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
AMD told us that the 3200/780G would be accelerated and that the release notes were just pointing out their focus for acceleration.Hmm..
Take care,
Anand
Wirmish - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
"Hmm, that's unexpected. ION + Atom is actually a bit faster than the 2650e and AMD's integrated Radeon HD 3200."Intel use is CPU to boost his GPU performance:
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-028231...">http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-028231...
World of Warcraft is in the list.
shabby - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Its new years eve, take the rest of the day off :)Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
I'm going to go do just that :)Take care,
anand