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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Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
The Athlon 64 2650e is the CPU in my Acer Aspire 5515. It's by no means a scorcher but I often have 10-15 Firefox tabs open with no noticeable decrease in speed. I think RAM might be the difference here. As for power use, keep in mind that you're comparing the latest Atoms to an Athlon 64 that's about 2 years old. There's not much really to expect there. Remember just how low these numbers really are. Those performance bars look big but the scale must be taken into account. We're splitting hairs. I doubt we'd really notice from one to the next except in very isolated circumstances.FlyTexas - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Dell wants $65 to upgrade to the dual core CPU, right?NewEgg sells an Intel dual core CPU at 2.4ghz for $52 that will run rings around any of these CPUs... It is almost as fast as the one in the review.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
So, what am I missing? This is an overpriced computer from Dell in a fancy mini case. Maybe that makes it expensive, but lets be honest, you're paying for the small pretty case, not the weak computer inside.
Just buy a Dell Inspiron 537s slim desktop, it even comes with the rubber mounts to put it flat with the rest of your components, looks good (in the right color of course) with your XBox/PS3/DVD Player/Whatever...
How much? About the same $450 this thing costs, and it comes with a 2.6Ghz Pentium Dual Core. It just lacks the super small case.
Just my opinion... :)
bearshat - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Small form factor and attractiveness is definitely a feature you have to pay a premium for but that doesn't make it overpriced. I can think of a few other things in this world that small and pretty is better than fast and powerful. :)I bought the Zino with Neo X2 6850e and Radeon 4330. I wish I could see the test benchmarks with that configuration.
orionmgomg - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Thanks for the great article and info on these AMD CPUs.Been building AND selling performance systems for years using only intel until just a few months ago, when I had a client insist on an AMD Quad Core CPU for his gaming system.
I was SHOCKED to see that for less than 200$ dollars (Phenom II X4 965) I could get a Quad Core CPU with 8MB cache and clocked at 3.4 factory, using a sub 100$ASUS AM3 EVO mobo and Radeon 5870 GPU all for the price of a single Intel QX9650! (999$)
Umm, lets just say I have been using AMD ever since - in these touch economic times, and out here in the mid west of the US in the middle of winter - people need the very best bang for their buck, dual cores are even "enough" for most people and at the higher end price points - Intel products just become un-necessary... (for the average consumer who cares about base performance and not how much cache or microseconds his latencies run at)
Of course for me…
PS: My current system is:
Core i7 920 @ 3.3
Cooler Master V8
ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
6GBs DDR3 OCZ Gold
EVGA GTX 280FTW
Samsung DVD & 3x1TB HDDs
Corsiar TX850W PSU
No case - spagetios!
Dream Build:
Intel i7 980XT (or just a i7 920 with D0 stepping:)
Cooler Master V8
ASUS P6X58D Premium
6 GBs DDR3 OCZ Gold
ASUS Radeon HD 5970
Samsung DVD & 4x1TB HDDs - or the new OCZ SDD you just reviewed!
Corsiar PSU 850
Cooler Master CosmosS 1100
marraco - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
A bit late, but:Thanks for a great work in 2009.
Have an excelent 2010, Anand!!
jaydee - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Wonder how the Neo x2 stacks up...Cogman - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Come-on, from a tech site I would expect a little more :P.x264 is an H.264 encoder (or MPEG-4 AVC if you prefer). There is no such thing as x264 video format as it adheres very strictly to the H.264 standard.
You meant to say H.264 acceleration, not x264 acceleration.
Cogman - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
The exact line is on page two, "The first test is H.264 decode acceleration. I fired up the latest version of Media Player Classic and tested x264 acceleration."You got the first right, the second slipped in as an x264.
Penti - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Actually it's right as that's the solution for accelerated bitstream decoding(-only) x264. They didn't test acceleration for H264 blu-rays for example. Then it also does motion compensation and IDCT on the GPU-hardware. So the description is correct in that he tested x264 acceleration. As in x264 encoded videos in MKV format not (fully) supported by standard commercial codecs. And not as in commercially encoded downloaded H264 or H264 BD. Formats matter even if it's details especially when the decoding is done with different decoders and software. The test and x264 reference is valid.Cogman - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
x264 follows the H.264 standard. Any optimizations for "x264" apply to all H.264 film, that is the standard.There is NOTHING that says that an x264 output stream has to be shoved into an MKV. It can be put into an MP4, AVI, whatever. It is a H.264 video stream, so it can go anywhere that the H.264 video streams go.
x264 acceleration would be a test to see how long it takes to encode a video.