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ASUS K53E: Testing Dual-Core Sandy Bridgeby Jarred Walton on 4/8/2011 1:00 AM EST
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- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Asus
- Laptops
78 Comments
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duploxxx - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkwhat a lousy comment:
On the other side of the charts—literally—is AMD's E-350. We know it's not meant to compete with Sandy Bridge (or even Arrandale or Core 2 Duo), but keep in mind that the cheapest price for such a laptop is going to be around $450. On average, the i5-2520M lays the smack down hard and ends up roughly four times faster than an E-350. Ah, but the E-350 has a much better IGP, right?
you could have also put some higher rated atom's here,Tthey all would have performed even worse for the same price. Its OEM who are pushing this price higher of the Brazos,
Watch the HD3000 scores and how they will be demolished by the LIano A8 series within a month the acer with P520 provides already a good idea about that besides the fact that it will have 4 cores at a much higher turbo frequency. The only thing that will be left is the higher single and dual core turbo mode for intel,.Afterall the i5M is exactly what should be compared with AMD A8M series, not a brazos...... Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkExactly, which is why I mention Llano oh... about nine times in the article, and point out that it should double the Brazos IGP performance with a CPU that "is a huge step up in performance from Bobcat." As for Atom: "There's little (well, nothing really) to recommend an Atom netbook over a Brazos alternative at the $300 to $350 price bracket." Elsewhere I make fun of netbooks (Atom) for being, "slow, often poorly built, slow, too small for many to use comfortably, and above all really slow."
The point with the SNB vs. E-350 comparison is that lots of people rip on Intel's graphics as being unfit for just about anything. The reality is that if we take the same mindset, Bobcat is just as bad because the CPU is such a massive bottleneck that it can only muster average graphics performance that's slightly faster than Arrandale. In reality, without the CPU bottleneck (or RAM bandwidth bottleneck) I suspect HD 6310M would be slightly faster than HD 3000. But when SNB offers about twice the graphics performance and four times the CPU performance and 80% of the battery life, yeah, those are items worth mentioning. It's also about 50% more expensive, of course.
A balanced approach is the best for laptops, and that's my complaint with a lot of systems. Sandy Bridge is at least fast enough on the GPU side that the only people who won't be happy are serious gamers--casual gamers can get by. Brazos is also somewhat balanced, but the Bobcat core isn't enough even if it beat Atom--it's less than half the CPU performance of an Athlon II P320 for instance, and you will notice that when installing programs, loading applications, booting Windows, etc. Right now, Brazos needs more CPU, Danube needs more battery life and less power/heat and a better IGP, and gamers need a discrete GPU. Llano could easily take care of all three items. Reply
crazyape995 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI think the point duploxxx might be trying to make is that you intentionally compared Sandy Bridge against the E-350 to make it look bad.
I understand the comments about AMD graphics being better than Intel's, but those were directed specifically at the Atom platform.
AMD's E-350 destroys anything Intel's Atom platform can do, even with Nvidia's help. But what sets me off is how you don't hesitate to put it against Intel's flagship processors, but nowhere do I see Atom's results in the benchmarks.
The chart looks like it was devised specifically to make the E-350 look like the worst chip available. And no amount of explainations/disclaimers change that. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkFact: There are $600+ E-350 laptops available. Regardless of whether or not they should exist, they do exist, and as such it's a fair comparison. I didn't include Atom because it's not even remotely in contention -- and if I had C-50 results I wouldn't include those either. If people don't understand that we selected 12-15 laptops for the charts out of our catalog of over 80+ reviews, I'm not going to apologize. Use Mobile Bench and make your own comparisons.
The conclusion talks a lot about the strengths of Brazos and AMD, but some people have a history of being strong AMD advocates in our comments. Every time I/we suggest that AMD might not be the best choice, they have to post a rant about how we're paid off or blind/stupid/[insert pejorative]. Read our Brazos reviews and you'll see we focused a lot of good attention on the platform, though we didn't hesitate to call out the weaknesses.
Simply put, E-350 is not good for current games, and it's not particularly fast in general applications. It's fine for multimedia and basic office work, it gets good battery life, and it doesn't cost a lot. If that's what you want, it's a great solution. Personally, there are too many things I like to do that are sluggish on E-350 (i.e. casual browser games like Bejeweled Blitz come to mind). Reply
derricker - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link"The conclusion talks a lot about the strengths of Brazos and AMD, but some people have a history of being strong AMD advocates in our comments. Every time I/we suggest that AMD might not be the best choice, they have to post a rant about how we're paid off or blind/stupid/[insert pejorative]. "
Has it occurred that it's too obvious in front of everybody's eyes and that you particularly are not doing that great of a job in trying to deny the blatant bias in favor of intel??
The rudeness of your replies comes as a surprise for me here at anand, seeing a heavily biased articled in favor of those who pay the bills, that's yesterday news. Reply
TypeS - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkThere's no rudeness in his post and it's quite clear the bias towards AMD that you and the other two posters who are attacking Jarred have. Seems Jarred has a point made about AMD fanboys and comments.
Learn to be more observant and aware before you make such biased and unfounded accusations. It's OEMs like Sony who are placing Brazos into a regular notebook form factor and pricing it within striking distance of the ASUS notebook. The point that should come across is that if you start looking at some unbalanced (perhaps even overpriced) E-350 options out there, its worth an extra $100 for overall better performance.
There's no Intel bias here. And AMD fanboys need to face reality, AMD has a brief moment in the spotlight with K8 but Intel has been 1 or 2 steps ahead ever since Conroe. Even when comparing appropriate alternatives (based on SKUs), Intel wins.
But you'll find lots of articles where the writers here Anandtech praise AMD, maybe not as much in the CPU market but quite often a lot in the GPU market where they immensely improved and given nVidia a lot of smackdowns that no one expected woujld come.
So take your defensive AMD fanboyism out the door and learn to be more observant and open-minded. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkTo be reality is , don't trust the benchmark. it's not going to benefit you anything. It's only let Intel earn 86% in the market.
i trust the benchmark , review . now i suffer in Dell N4110. it's doesn't perform well.
I would said , value of money is most important. when u buy the new notebook , you can save RM3-400 ,why you need to buy Intel? it's wouldn't last you up to 3 years. your model will just out of date in another 9months.
I will go back to AMD after i can let go this Dell N4110.
To be frank to whole world ,80% PC user wouldn't notice the speed different in his work space. you can't notice the speed different in 80% time you turn on your computer , you wouldn't notice the different when u doing autoCAD , sending email , log in facebook . but only thing u notice is when u loading the program. (just because this reason we let Intel earn 80% in market.) Reply
erple2 - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - linkDo you also believe that the Moon Landings were a staged hoax because the Astronauts gave up swearing to things that they were actually at the moon?
It's not obvious in my eyes at all. If you want to be rude, go ahead. I think that Jarred (and most of Anandtech) has been quite unbiased towards either camp. Just because your team doesn't win out on every (reasonable) comparison, doesn't imply any kind of bias at all. Reply
ET - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkJarred, I agree with your reasoning for including the E-350. Some people are blinded by AMD fanboyism, it seems. I have a preference for AMD, but I think your comments are right on the money. I bought a Thinkpad X120e because I think that AMD did a great job reinvigorating the small form factor. At 15.6" the E-350 has more competition and the premium for Intel based solutions is lower, so I think it's a good idea to give buyers an idea of how it compares in this form factor.
That said, I think it would have been interesting to see how the i3-2310M version of this laptop compares. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linki would tell u , u wouldn't notice you are using E350 or core i3 2310. i totally dislike my Dell N4110 core i3 2310 . because the battery life is just 3hours .(normal price is RM1899 from Dell website , i buy promotion price from dealer , RM1.6k with HD6630 , 4GB , 500GB 7200rpm) E350 is about 6 hours & price is just RM1099. of course i wouldnt go for that model , because i need to play game , i need some model at least with HD6470.
in fact currently Llano notebook is going crazy . pair with 6650 but only help the benchmark about 10% & the price is nearly to the core i5 model. core i5 2410 + GT540 RM2299. Llano sell RM 1800.
Dell i5 2410 + HD6470 is selling RM1899.
i would agree the price if AMD Llano w.o the HD6650 & the price is selling RM1.4k with 5-6 hours battery life
in fact i using C50 to complete all my office work with 8hours battery life . but i think i can't do it with Atom. if not why most of my friend sell it after 2 week? Reply
MrSpadge - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkI'm totally with you here, Jarred.
In this review and in the Brazos review it was made very clear that you can totally forget about Atom. And there's a reason you don't include a Pentium 1 laptop from 1995 in these reviews.
And the i5-25xxM being about 4 times as fast as Brazos in CPU intensive tasks is certainly worth mentioning. You have to say it, because it's ******* true. Whether this matters to someone or not is an entirely different qeustion and up to everyone individually. I think you really made this totally clear.
MrS Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkbe frank , CPU not your sport car. you hardly notice the different in your 80% of time while you using it for work.
I would said we happy to see the technology improve , but we better make up our mind to look at value of money.
RM1.4k for Llano , within another 3-4 months time vs RM2k core i5 or RM1.4k core i3 2310. what do u think? core i5 only help u fast loading the program. core i3 can't handle the game. Llano A3400 will handle both easily. of course if you keep look at benchmark , u unable to sleep even you have a Core i7. i just throw my intel extreme cpu. Reply
lenghui - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkI agree with you, Jarred. I am a AMD fan, but the includsion and comparison of E-350 is valid and does not take away anything from your well written article. Keep up the nice work! Reply
tuskers - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - linkFact-check: a simple search on Amazon for "E-350" can get you a 15.6" laptop for $357.70, as of this posting. Not exactly "around $450" or "$500 for similar components" as the article claims. And that's without even really looking for an affordable one. On the other hand, nothing in retail channels comes up for $600 on Amazon.
In the article you artificially creep the price of what you're testing down, and creep the price of an E-350 solutions up, in order to make your claims that they're worth comparing. They're different segments: the E-350 was invented to be an ultraportable chip, and you're comparing it to a mainstream (or even desktop replacement) chip.
People don't choose the E-350 because it's has a good graphics chip-- it merely has a good graphics chip for its market segment, compared to intel's CULV/UM, Atom, and Atom/Ion solutions. Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - linkSony YB pricing is coming down, and it looks like the MSI X370 should start selling in the US for around $550 as well. And really, E-350 shouldn't ever go to $500, let alone $550, which is the point I have been making.
So now Acer has a 15.6" E-350 system for $335 or whatever. Great. Twice the price gets you more than double the performance, and Acer's 15.6" designs have NOT impressed me in the past. Is it cheap and fast enough for some people, yes. You're still getting what you pay for.
Acer Aspire 5253-BZ602:
15.6" 1366x768 LCD
2x1GB RAM (so if you want to upgrade, you throw out a 1GB SO-DIMM)
6-cell battery (quoted battery life of just 3.3 hours... not sure what they ran for that test though)
Win7 Home Premium
For that much money, sure, it's a fair price, but as I've said this is what I felt netbooks should have been from day one. Atom just sucks too much, and while there are performance compromises with E-350 it's at least going to handle multimedia content. If I'm going to actually use a laptop on a daily basis, I'll save up and spend more money on a good quality device. Just because something is really cheap doesn't make it a great bargain. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkin fact , battery life is because except Asus giving you 56wh in common, non of them give you this high capacity battery pack . Acer will only provide you 48wh , to avoid hurt his flagship timeline 66wh ,claim can go up to 8 hours.
currently i using Dell , 48wh. i3 2310 only can last 3hours.
my friend K43U , E350 last 6 hours office work. 4 hours in facebook game. (i recommend him to buy it, but i fall in the Intel trap) i need to sell my N4110 fast , just 2 days using it. i hope to see Llano base notebook sell at RM1.4k without the HD6650 Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkinfact Malaysia are selling RM1499 for HP DM1 , Asus K43U is just about RM1099. currently Malaysia ringgit is grow up , USD 1 convert to RM 3 (before this is RM3.8) you keep telling the fake answer , USD 600 ,it's RM1800 .(pervious is RM2.4k ) we can buy Core i5 with HD6470 RM1899 from Dell ,even Timeline 4830TG for RM2449, but not the E350. in fact i just get my brand new Dell N4110 ,core i3 2310+ HD6630 just RM1600.
currently Acer 5560G , is selling RM1800 A3400 + HD6650.
I dont think the 2310 (or even core i5) cpu is so good to keep battery life go long. in fact is only the Asus quality factory given 56wh instead of 48wh battery to extend the battery life. Currently my Dell N4110 hardly get even 3h10mins when setting 30% brightness , wifi on , power saving mode. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkDell N4110 core i3 2310 , HDD 500GB 7200rpm , HD6630 , 4GB . 14" LCD. this model you should do a review & tell whole world the Dell had a worse design ever . they put the 7200rpm HDD at the left palm rest area ,after 5mins turn on , it's start cook my palm. battery life even just 3hours 10 minutes.(HD3000 only) ,idle upto 5hours. power saving mode , 30% brightness , wifi & bluetooth on. only start maxthon 3 browser , no back ground program , no antivirus , no firewall. (this model seem like cant only turn on wifi)
in air condition room you wouldn't notice that much about the left palm area heat issue. but i wonder how much lousy engineer work inside Dell. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkactually i dont mind you put the E350 , i like to know more review before i do a purchase. but in term of battery life the major reason not the CPU ,but the factory who willing give u the 56wh above battery pack.
i buy Dell major reason is the person who doing promotion to sell it at RM1.6k . but the core i3 2310 not perform as what i read in most review. i read the Toshiba intel B940 can acheived 5h28mins . most of the review also show core i3 2310 will go up to 4-5 hours. but in fact it's just 3hours.
now 2h15mins -56% , but in fact starting battery drop so fast , & it's doesn't me 4h 30mins even i just unplug the adapter. Reply
fic2 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link"lots of people rip on Intel's graphics as being unfit for just about anything"
Lots of people rip on Intel's graphics because until Sandy Bridge they weren't fit for anything. Reply
mino - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link2 non-Intel participants:
a) A netbook/ultraportable platform (with not a SINGLE other result from a system at its TDP level)
b) A single, low-end P520, in a chart overflowing with mid-range, high-end and even extreme-class Intel chips and ZERO comparable Celerons/Pentiums.
Sure, this is not bias. It is a professional editorial-level PR campaign. Reply
DigitalFreak - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkTake your fanboy rantings elsewhere. Reply
ekerazha - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link2011? No USB 3.0? Asus... seriously? Come on... Reply
phatboye - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkdon't blame ASUS for the lack of USB 3.0 blame Intel for not including it in the chipset Reply
vol7ron - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkYes and that is a BIG disappointment. Reply
Hrel - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkSo, Newegg has a HD6850 on sale right now for 140! After promo code. I know this has nothing to do with this article but I want as many people who might care to know as possible. That's a REALLY good price for that GPU. It's a Saphire GPU.
http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/apr-0-2011/72... Reply
DigitalFreak - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkNice try Reply
SteelCity1981 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkAMD or an Nvidia discrete graphics mobile chip solution for gaming is the only way to go. Reply
starfalcon - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkBut not for that long. Reply
SteelCity1981 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkNot for long? yeah it will be a long time. Reply
DanNeely - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkLlano's IGP have the potential to be moderately faster than the current entry level mobile IGPs. On paper it's the equivalent to a 6630-6730M. Having to share the DDR3 memory with the CPU will probably hold it back somewhat, but it very much has the potential to a viable part for light gaming systems. Reply
mino - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link"to be moderately faster than the current entry level mobile IGPs"
Is that a joke or what ?
Llano has the potential to challenge the mid-range mobile GPU market with even its cheapest version running circles around any other IGP/APU around. Reply
kevlno3 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkPls dont comments when you not read review. Mino , i 100% support you. Llano is the IGP is same speed as HD5650 ,HD6550 or even HD6630. it's not HD5470 or even HD3000 can be compare.
it's totally complete solution for value of money best buy. but Intel keep creat the high benchmark score to blur the consumer . try to make people feel regret if you pay such money to buy the low end Llano. in fact , i was totally disappointed with Intel. Core i3 2310 can't perform well. i even felt lag when i play in war craft 3 frozen throne in battlenet during 3 vs 3. i can't find my pointer. it's normally lag will make u have this problem. Reply
biostud - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkboth s and b models :) Reply
jonup - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkJust from curiosity, does dropping from dual channel to single channel have any significant effect on the performance of the modern laptops/desktops? Many manufactures have been shipping their laptops with odd RAM capacities 3GB/6GB, which has been a turnoff for me, but it appears to be a good marketing gimmick for those who have no clue.
Thank for the nice laptop reviews you guys put out there! Reply
IntelUser2000 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkThe manufacturers I think bundle the smaller capacity DIMM for free so sell that and get a matching stick from NCIX or something.
The way the asynchronous dual channel(Intel Flex Memory) works is only half of the greater capacity DIMM is transferring data simultaneously with the smaller DIMM.
4GB stick: 2GB Dual channel + 2GB Single channel
2GB stick: This is doubled up with half of the 4GB stick
So in theory your max bandwidth is like 1.5 channels. Measured bandwidth is between single and dual channel too, but the complexity of splitting the greater capacity puts performance closer to a single channel in some applications. Reply
mino - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - linkIt does not work that way. In any mixed config the IMC falls back to a single-channel-like operating mode. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - linkIt would be nice if you at least tried to do some research before making completely false statements. Flex memory works exactly as IU2k describes, with basic details here:
Pretty much every Intel CPU/chipset since the P45/X38 has supported flex memory. All you have to do is check ARK:
Quote: "Intel Flex Memory Technology -- Facilitates easier upgrades by allowing different memory sizes to be populated and remain in dual-channel mode." Don't confuse limitations of older chipsets and AMD's (older) IMC with current implementations. Reply
silverblue - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link...that Brazos isn't clocked higher nor operates on a dual channel memory bus. It would be amusing to expect a 500MHz GPU sporting a bandwidth limitation with a mobile part which is 650MHz and, with Turbo, 1.3GHz, and utilises a dual-channel bus, and that's well before we factor CPU performance into things.
For what it does, Brazos is excellent, but people really shouldn't think of it as competition for Sandy Bridge. It's really not meant to be anywhere near close to it in terms of performance or price, and it's a shame that some manufacturers seem to have forgotten that. Unfortunately, as said before, Brazos machines may encroach on CULV territory... Reply
IntelUser2000 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkAn error and few points I'd like to make:
"Even the U41JF can't match the K53E for efficiency, despite underclocking the i3-380M to 700-900MHz (instead of the normal 933-1200MHz) and having a smaller 14" LCD."
i3-380M is a 2.53GHz part. Why are you testing an underclocked version on the battery life test again?
"What really impresses me is that you can get similar battery life (in light workloads) with either the dual-core or quad-core SND parts,"
Huh. Equalizing to battery capacity:
DC(QC) min/WHr
Idle: 7.66(6.63) +15.5%
Internet: 6.43(5.86) +9.7%
H.264 playback: 4.77(3.66) +30.3%
10-15% increase in battery life is not identical. Also, the screen on the QC system is larger, but sports a more efficient SSD drive. If the Hurry up and Get Idle works well, it would be better on the QC thanks to the SSD.
"Ah, but the E-350 has a much better IGP, right?"
I'm not sure whether that's a question or a statement. While the E-350 has a HD5450/5470 core, its severely bottlenecked by memory subsystem, in addition to having it share with the GPU, before the CPU differences.
"The result is better battery life, but compared to Arrandale it's not a huge change in two of our tests."
Idle: 7.66(6.64) +15.3%
Internet: 6.43(5.29) +21.6%
H.264 playback: 4.77(3.07) +55.3%
While Idle and Internet battery life isn't big as H.264, 15-20% battery isn't something minor. In fact, if you look back to Core 2 vs Core Duo and Penryn vs Merom comparisons, the battery gains are equal to 2x for the ones back then.
Overall I think the DC Sandy Bridge is being underrated on the review. The asynchronous RAM is a bit of a sore to look at too. Last benchmark I put the bandwidth figure at somewhere between single and dual channel, and Intel documents indicate increased latency when transferring between sticks. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkOur battery life testing has always targeted maximum battery life while still being able to complete all tasks. So with Core 2 Duo, Athlon II, Core i-series, etc. we've always set minimum CPU and maximum CPU to 0%, and enabled any special power saving features as applicable. (I should note that there are exceptions to the above: Atom, Brazos, and CULV/ULV have always been tested at 0/100% CPU settings, mostly because they are already slow--particularly Atom. The laptop needs to be able to play our H.264 video without stuttering or dropping frames.) On the ASUS U41JF, if you use the "Battery Saving" Power4Gear profile, it automatically underclocks and locks the CPU to run at no more than 900MHz. Running stock instead of underclocked reduces battery life by 5-10% as noted in the U41JF review. Finally, as I point out, it's interesting that for SNB, 0/0% actually reduces battery life compared to 0/100% CPU in two of the three battery tests--this is not the case with Arrandale.
Regarding power efficiency: 10 to 15% better efficiency is "similar" in my book. The 30% difference in H.264 is a lot more pronounced, true. As for SSD vs. HDD, SSDs really don't use that much less power at idle, and often even under load. Look at the ASUS U30Jc with an SSD comparison: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/266?vs=267 SSD wins by 7% at idle, HDD wins by 3% in the Internet, and the H.264 is a tie (0.3% difference). The 17.3" LCD vs. 15.6" LCD is going to be more than a 5% difference I'd bet, and the K53E actually has an LCD that appears to use very little power. The same applies to the comparison with Dell's E6410: 15-20% isn't massive in my book, but 55% certainly qualifies. It's better, yes, but not a huge change.
Your E-350 comment is already addressed in the text if you don't take just one piece of the paragraph: "Ah, but the E-350 has a much better IGP, right? Well, maybe it's better, but it's certainly not faster than Intel's HD 3000 when it's bottlenecked by the CPU...." I suppose I can add "and memory bandwidth" for you though.
Anyway, what individuals think of DC vs. QC Sandy Bridge is a matter of opinion. I was more impressed by QC, and if I could get QC over DC in the form factor I want that's what I'd do. Dell's XPS L502x for instance gives you both options, and with a moderately large 15.6" chassis the quad-core is an easy sell for me. Others might be more impressed with the dual-core stuff, but we've had dual-core Arrandale for a year and increasing battery life by 20% with 15-20% more performance is still "incremental" in my book. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link"What about AMD's Fusion E-350 platform? If the 3DMark results hold in our actual gaming tests, Intel's "horrible" HD 3000 IGP offers over twice the performance of the HD 6310M. In fact, even an Arrandale IGP would come within 10% of the E-350 results in 3DMark. It's not that we love Intel or want them to pummel AMD, and we understand that the E-350 competes in a lower price bracket. Still, many people like to get carried away in discussions of how much better AMD's graphics are compared to Intel's IGP. That's certainly true when you're looking at discrete GPUs, and compatibility is still better with AMD and NVIDIA drivers, but the latest SNB IGP changed the status quo."
What is this nonsense? You claim to understand that the E-350 competes in a lower price bracket. But it is obvious you simply cannot comprehend that there is a difference between a $50 part and a $225 part. Sandy Bridge is too expensive to ever change the status quo. That product line is so expensive that it changes nothing. Except you are paying the price of a discrete gpu, plus a hefty markup, to have an integrated gpu. Intel will not lower those prices even when llano blows it out of the sky for half the price. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkDid you even read the whole conclusion? Where I repeatedly cede the sub-$600 territory to AMD? And I only mention Llano nine times throughout the review. Obviously nonsense.... Except, $600 SNB is now a viable alternative to what used to be $900 laptops. The U30Jc is slower in every regard than the current i5-2xxx CPUs -- the 310M can't keep up with HD 3000, and Arrandale can't keep up with SNB. So yes, that's "changing the status quo". Integrated graphics no longer suck quite as bad, to the point where HD 5470 is dead and so is G 310M. Reply
JPForums - Friday, April 08, 2011 - link
H.264 content is a place where Sandy Bridge excels, however, and with only a 10 minute difference between the 11.6"-screen HP dm1z and the 15.6"-screen ASUS K53E it's pretty clear that's one metric where SNB is more efficient.
SNB is probably more efficient at H.264 decode, but one fact makes it a little less than clear. Ironically, you point it out here:
Setting the LCD to 100% brightness (instead of 50%, which corresponds with 100nits), idle battery life drops 10%. Put another way, the LCD uses an extra 0.87W at 205nits. That's a very low figure for a 15.6" LCD, ...
That does seem like a rather low power draw for a 15.6" and makes me wonder how much power HP's 11.6" draws. The question is purely academic, though, as I would be willing to sacrifice some battery life for a better looking screen. Further, 13.3" is about as small as I'll go.
That aside, this article makes me wonder how well similarly equipped notebooks with Optimus technology will do. It would be nice to see some designs that get most of the battery life under normal usage while giving you the ability to game when you want. Hopefully, nVidia realizes that the GPU is no longer needed for H.264 decode with SNB and will leave the CPU to take care of it. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkAll of the Optimus Arrandale stuff I tested used the IGP, because it was sufficient for H.264 decode. However, oddly enough the Optimus laptops never quite seem to get to the same battery life levels as the IGP-only systems. Okay, I only tested one of the latter (Dell Latitude E6410), but for a 14" chassis the relative battery life was much better than any other Arrandale laptop we tested.
Perhaps the real culprit is the batteries: they all come with Wh ratings, but I can tell you from personal experience that some 2500mAh NiMH Energizer AA rechargeables have got nothing on 2000mAh NiMH Eneloop AA rechargeables. But unfortunately, I don't know of a good way to independently rate a laptop battery to say exactly how good it is--not without some sophisticated equipment (and tearing the batteries apart, which would likely be frowned on). So I "hope" that these Lithium Ion batteries are more consistent than NiMH, even if they're not. Reply
strikeback03 - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkI have some 2500 mAh Energizer AA batteries that I bought 4-5 years ago that are absolute trash. Even when new they self-discharged so fast that their apparent capacity was much lower than the rating. Fully charge them using an intelligent charger then leave them in a drawer for a few weeks and they would be dead. Nevermind low-discharge batteries like the Eneloop, even compared to other standard NiMH batteries they are awful.
As far as Li-Ion batteries go it is relatively easy to test in a way that makes them look really good (third-party camera/phone batteries are infamous for this). I would hope that laptop batteries from well-known brands wouldn't follow the same pattern, but I suppose you never know. Reply
JarredWalton - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkI've noticed over the years that some laptop batteries will self-discharge at a faster rate than others. I've never really tried to determine how fast that rate is, but it would be interesting to fully charge every laptop battery I have, wait three weeks (with them unplugged), then check how much charge is remaining. Most laptop batteries seem to lose most of their charge within about three months, so they definitely wouldn't keep up with the Eneloop stuff. Reply
krumme - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkAn e350 is 74mm2 - the same as Atom - this is exact numbers.
The e350 is aprox 40usd (63usd list price - exact number) exactly the same as Atom d550 sans ion
The e350 have fewer pins -> cheaper to integrate for the OEM than Atom
How difficult is it to compare in the same segments?
As an owner of an Intel sb e2520m machine (dell e6420) and an Atom nettop, i can safely say this Article is the most lousy and biased article for years.
This leads to the most stupid buying decisions all over. Do you seriously think the e350 is a SB competitor?
What a shame Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkYou're simply not getting it: less than twice the cost, more than double (actually, quadruple CPU and double GPU) the performance. That's my point. If you want an inexpensive netbook, Brazos wins. If you want an all-around laptop, E-350 is better than Atom, but Atom was horrible. What exactly is stupid about telling people that Brazos isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread? It fills a niche, but for me Brazos is at best a secondary laptop.
Or to rephrase: do you seriously think everyone should buy Brazos and forget about better options that cost more? What a shame. Reply
krumme - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkWho would have imagined the brazos came to 15.6" right off?
Probably it will be all over even in desktops within the next year, when TSMC 40nm capacity expands big time.
The OEM knows their market so the consumers clearly have a different view of performance than you and I do.
Even with a ssd i cant tell the difference selecting max 50% perf., doing all the normal office stuff and hd video. The brazos is paired with normal hd, and its aparently just fast enough not to be noticed for the target group. And battery life is just okey. The target group would probably prefer more battery life if they could select themselves - if lower price was not possible.
I think a review and the conclusions - with its interpretation of facts - should reflect the needs and the perspective of the target group.
Sandy bridge is an excellent CPU with even better power management, but its like comparing a gtx570 to an 330m if you compare it to brazos. It doesnt make sense. Its different different segments, different purpose.
If some less informed buyers - lets say the ones that buy cheap stuff - reads this article they might get the impression the HP brazos is very slow, and will select an Intel brand instead. And it will be Atom something not an i3/i5 or Llano - whatever - for that matter. And Brazos is the best since sliced bread compared to an Atom.
Normal users dont use time installing programs or games, encode, whatever. And when they do they take a cup of coffee. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI spent almost half the conclusion talking about exactly this. I'm not sure what you want me to say more, other than you'd love for me to sing the praises of AMD and decry Intel has too expensive? Seriously:
$300 to $500: Brazos C-50 or E-350 are hard to beat. If you want more performance with less battery life, Athlon/Turion/Phenom II are also available. Or wait a month for Llano and see how that compares.
Above $600, right now there's no way I would recommend Brazos. There's also no way I would recommend a 15.6" Brazos laptop, just like I would laugh at a 15.6" Atom-based system. Brazos E-350 is about twice the CPU performance of Atom, but then CULV was already three times as fast as Atom. I bashed on Atom a lot, and I continue to do so; it's far too easy to beat Atom and thus the real target has to be Pentium and Celeron at the very least. I'm going to see if I can get an Arrandale Pentium or Celeron just to see how it compares, because I expect about 2x the performance of Brazos on the CPU with slightly slower graphics. Well, actually a lot slower, but Bobcat is the bottleneck.
If anyone has $600 to spend on a laptop, they really shouldn't be looking at Brazos. Heck, even $500 is probably too much these days, considering all the options in that price range, unless you want small size and good battery life. If you can stomach the keyboard, Acer has the 1430Z (Pentium U5600) and the 1830T (i3-380UM) that are certainly viable alternatives to E-350. Reply
krumme - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkWith a house full of Intel computers, i am not here to judge Intel as expensive and AMD as cheap. I think the consumers know what they should pay for the benefits if fthey get it presented in a balanced way. And i dont disagree with you recommandations personally.
My point is. People can decides for themselves what is good enough for them. They are experts on their own life. If they buy a brazos and dont complain afterwards its fine for me. I have seen so many people getting disapointed by Atom for reasons we all know - no hd youtube and slow surfing. When someone less informed reads this review - perhaps by chance using google - and look at the bottom of the charts - they migt get the impression brazos is the same stuff as Atom. And judged by their standards - their measurements intruments - brazos is very different from Atom. So it would be a wrong assessment from their view.
And yes - right now the oem is ripping of brazos customers because of limited suply, - and because they can. But it just shows how brilliant the product is mm2 vs profitability. And yes AMD positioning this like pentium/celeron perf. is not just bs, but plain stupid for their long time brand building, as is the low performance parts eroding the brandvalue. But this is just AMD marketing performance as usual. Reply
floersch - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkYour General Performance charts identify the CPU of the Apple MBP13 2011 as an i5-2415M but your Gaming charts identify it as an i5-2515M. Are these two different machines or does one set of charts incorrectly identify the CPU? Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkIt's the 2415M... I'll correct the charts that have the wrong model number. Reply
floersch - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkThanks, Jarred, for the quick reply and for all of your excellent work. I always look forward to your analyses. Reply
vol7ron - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI think it's coming pretty close to a decent price point for performance.
I'd like to see these laptops ship with a free HD extender/docker. It shouldn't cost the company much and when swapping out that big ol' 5400 for a SSD, it'd be nice to have the device immediately, to dedicate it to backups/storage.
What do you think? Reply
veri745 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkWhy drop the E-350 from the comparisons when you get to medium settings? I would expect it does a lot better relative to HD 3000 when you start bumping up the graphics settings. Reply
silverblue - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkNot really, because HD 3000 will have access to much more bandwidth than Brazos. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkBecause our medium settings typically run 25 to 50% slower than our low settings. Brazos manages to hit 30FPS in zero of the eight current games we're testing; do we need to show that it performs even worse at medium? Anyway, I actually did run MSI X370 at Medium settings. You can see the comparison (like many others) in Mobile Bench:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/348?vs=346 Reply
silverblue - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkThink about it... even if Brazos is supposed to be priced much lower than low-end Sandy Bridge laptops, it doesn't follow that it will always work out that way. You shouldn't ever be paying more than $500 for a Brazos machine unless it's a sufficiently high quality build but right now that doesn't seem to be the case all of the time.
Toms just made a comparison between three diffferent Brazos laptops ( http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gateway-nv51b0... ) and they came to the conclusion that chopping $50 off the price of a lot of these machines could really make Brazos stand out.
What AMD should be doing is advertising Brazos as the true Atom competitor that it should be, at the very most CULV Celerons, instead of falsely positioning it as a competitor to Pentium setups.
Just because such articles highlight overcharging and the advantage of spending not a huge amount more on something far more powerful, that doesn't make it an incorrect assessment. I expect that once there's more Brazos offerings on the market, manufacturers will have to lower prices in order to compete, and then there really will be a gulf in price between Brazos and Sandy Bridge, like there should be. Reply
Tasslehoff Burrfoot - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI'm a little surprised this laptop has such a long battery life.
If manufacturers put as good batteries to the fusion laptops as Asus put into this one they could last a looong, loong time. Reply
krumme - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI have 97 Wh on my 2520 machine, and it last 10-12 hr for office work. Its just a little bit short even for light gaming for my 2-3 years old games imho, but besides from that, it just delivers in spades. The fan is never on, and the laptop is not hot. Even decoding hd there is only very, very little heat and noise. Reply
silverblue - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI think comparing the following two ASUS models would make interesting reading:
The former is a Pentium with HD 5470 discrete graphics and carries a $100 price premium (and has recently been reduced $200).
Acer do a cheaper Brazos laptop, however it's much larger at 15.6":
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
789427 - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI don't know but I just may be getting old.
To me the notebooks are pretty much all fast enough unless you're going for a desktop replacement and quite frankly, I can't see myself without a desktop (I like my 23" monitor but would never carry it around)
My on the go machine is a compaq 311c with 7200rpm 500gb HDD - a netbook and I never find myself apologizing for it's slowness.
So I asked myself, what makes a notebook noteworthy...
1. The right screen for the form factor
2. Battery life
3. Capabilities: can it play Blu-ray? 720p?
4. Is it fast enough?
5. does the keyboard work - or is it a Sony (Sorry Sony - you produced the worst keyboard ever in your netbook - can't remember the model)
When I saw the AMD video of the new processors when a video was playing, excel calculating the hind legs off a donkey on Mars and switching between the lot, I realized that Benchmarks are extremely limited and don't have a relationship to the real-world .
Real world benchmark: Hours of blu-ray playback
Can I type emails, letters while watching a windowed movie?
Can I watch while running a photoshop batch conversion? Text recognition?
And for a gaming laptop - what games can I play...
Am I nuts? Probably but somehow I think AMD is on to something. Oh wait... Apple is already there. How else could they charge the prices they do for a last-gen Intel CPU? It's by focusing on the entire build - especially the screen and design.
cb Reply
Pirks - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkApple did the right thing getting rid of this legacy shit and I'm waiting for other molasses slow PC vendors to follow their lead. You don't need any stupid touchpad buttons when you have tap, multitap and multitouch on your touchpad, it's 2011 not 2001 for ducks sake, why use legacy tech now? I don't get it. I never ever touched touchpad buttons on my Asus UL80Vt since its touchpad has same left right middle click and scroll with multitouch, Apple-like and pretty nice and convenient to use.
Stop being such a retro man Jarred, let the museum stuff go, will ya? ;) Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkNo thank you... I hate the Apple touchpad where you actually have to physically "click" it. Anyway, my point was that I'm glad there's no silly rocker button (i.e. UL80Vt) this time. I also happen to do things like pushing the left button and then dragging over an area to select. Yes, you can double-tap-and-drag, but that sucks IMO. Anyway, you know what they say about opinions and a-holes. :) Reply
DanNeely - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkI have to agree with Jarred. Tap to click == fail. Reply
ProDigit - Friday, April 08, 2011 - linkI wonder when the first manufacturer is going to create a HTPC, booksized pc, or mini pc, with a mobile Corei7 chipset, together with a powerful mobile graphics card, or a very energy efficient desktop graphics card!
I think there'd be a lot of interest in a 64 or 128GB SSD, 2 or 4 x 4GB 1800Mhz DDR3 memory, the corei7 2820-QM processor, an ATI Radeon HD 5000 or 6000 series graphics card that is not the best of the best, but offers highest quality dx11 gaming for 1080p screens, or fluid dx9 gaming on 3 screens, together with IR sensor and remote control, and uses very little power in standby.
I see plenty of sub $100 variants with too slow processors to play back 1080p video on a tv. Reply
drajitsh - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkposting after nearly 10 years.
Well having followed Anandtech continuously for 11 years I do know a little bit about computers. therefore I get a pretty fair idea of the performance from the specs online and most vendors will give pics of their systems so any glaring ergonomic defects will be visible.
Since sandybridge I just read the initial review for the platform, the for the subsequent reviews I go directly to the screen review. If, as is usually the case, the screen is pathetic I go back to my Galaxy Tab.
I am a surgeon, so my tablet and my old core 2 duo more than take care of the bulk of my needs -- mainly web surfing, having memorised the keyboard shortcuts I find the ribbon interface clunky and obsteperous and even office 97 would probably do all the work I need.n hence open office and google docs.
I am making do with my core 2 duo -- nice keyboard ( with real keys and not a chiclet monster) a 16:10 screen ( I have other options if I want to see movies and I like to see more of the webpages or documents). the one thing I cannot indulge is my hobby of photography. Probably will continue doing so till they come out with something with a better screen with a Adobe RGB gamut and taller than 16: 10.
I guess I will be waiting for sometime still. Reply
ProDigit - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkquote:
"There's little (well, nothing really) to recommend an Atom netbook over a Brazos alternative at the $300 to $350 price bracket"
You forget battery life, which is important for many!
Atom netbooks have very low latency in audio applications, and have a long battery life.
I rather pay $300 for a netbook that does basic computing for 10 hours, than pay $400 for a neo that can do basic gaming, but only lasts 4 hours on battery! Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkBrazos C-50 starts at $325, so it's within spitting distance of the Atom N550 (dual-core), and it still has a substantially better IGP -- though it's mostly useful for video as opposed to gaming on the C-50. C-50 is also a lower power and better battery life option, though it may not match the best Atom netbooks. Still, I'm not sure most people need more than 10 hours of battery life, which is what we're talking about at this point.
AMD's E-350 is better/faster, but it's also more expensive. I'd be quite surprised if Atom netbooks offered better audio latency. Only thing really missing is a good ASUS equivalent of the 1001P, only with C-50. Right now, the only 10.1" C-50 (or Brazos) netbook comes from Acer, who doesn't have the best reputation. If you're interested, though, the Acer Aspire One 522 is on sale for $300 at Micro Center right now. Reply
krumme - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - linkHave you ever tried an Atom? - if i would say you are a very patient man :)
There is absolutely none in my family, with very patient female computer users i tell you, who havnt complained about the speed for basic task like surfing and office use.
In my entire life i have met one person who didnt complain - all other - who thought all computers were the same - have complained. Atom just showed them - who did forget about the old age and windows 95 on 8Mb ram, that computer actually can be different.
What i am pretty comfident about is, that all those user would have been pretty sattisfied with an e350, and stayed in their beliewe there was no difference.
I think it just underlines that Intel and AMD have trouble for the future. The cpu/gpu is just fine as they is now. Then there is just the fight for cost, and it means lower earnings on the traditional markets. Reply
strikeback03 - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkI was perfectly happy with the one Atom system I have used extensively - the carputer I built in my last car was based around an Atom 330. with 1GB RAM and a 200GB 7200 RPM HDD the only time there was ever any delay running the Centrafuse front-end interface was when a module was first loading after a restart. So for limited uses Atom is fine, so long as the software and experience are designed for that level of performance. Reply
krumme - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkYeaa, and my atom stream audio fine, and does not feel slow as long as i do not touch it.
Atom was not build for anything but tv boxes, competing with arm. And therefore it does not work when anandtech, promotes sb at the expense of bobcat, because it indirectly leads the consumers to tv box computer power. And that is the unintended effect of theese articles. Reply
JarredWalton - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkSo Atom running a custom OS will be much better, obviously. Heck, even Atom chips (by PC standards) are going to be twice as fast as the best smartphone chips -- not on the GPU side, though, but that's a different story. But if you were to go out and buy a laptop for use as a Windows PC, there's still a big gap between $400 laptops and $700 laptops -- more than a 2X increase in performance for less than double the price.
My experience is that given the choice (i.e. money not a consideration), no one would want less performance from their laptop. SNB dual-core should be good enough to fit in 13.3" laptops that weigh around 4 lbs., and priced at around $800 (or less) that's a great portable PC. Bobcat will go into smaller devices and offer slightly better battery life, but it's still slower (too slow) on some tasks -- e.g. video transcoding, Flash browser games, and anything else that's computationally intensive will be much better on SNB. So again, Brazos is basically for those who value price more than most other areas.
On a related note, I'd be shocked if any major business tried to replace current generation Arrandale laptops with Brazos laptops. Heck, they wouldn't even replace Core 2 Duo laptops with Brazos. Businesses want a balanced laptop, generally speaking, and right now Intel gives you more performance with good battery life for a reasonable price. AMD competes on the desktop and laptop with lower prices, but when productivity is money, why would you save $150 only to have your employees waste hours of time over the next year? (Well, they'll waste time regardless, but they'll waste even *more* time waiting for a slow computer.)
Long-term, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Windows 8. Windows 7 can run on Atom, but it's clearly a different experience than Win7 on even something like CULV or Brazos. ARM-based SoCs are sort of Brazos, except they're even slower on the CPU side of the fence (and slower on GPU as well). Win8 will need some major changes relative to Win7 to make it viable on tablet and laptop devices running such SoCs. Reply
krumme - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - linkIT is not a strategic subject for top management anymore.
A few years back, they would spend time talking TCO, cost outsourcing, but today is different.
They just dont want to hear about it, and spend valuable time on it. For good reason.
SAP is running for everyone and his brother, the oursourcing is in place. Who cares if its a Dell or HP machine except in IT.
And the IT director, who ofen is an economis, hardly knows what a CPU is. It matters so little no one cares just a few stop up the chain.
The replacement of computers is just done regulary say every 3 years, and what Dell/HP chooses to put in their computers is their business.
If something is interesting about the computers today its screen, keyboard, battery and foremost quality.
The cost differences for a brazos compared to a sb is so slim, it doesnt matter. But lets say the next brazos 28nm q4?, have nearly double the batterylife and a solid turbo, then i think there is a chance we will se a lot of ultra portable business laptops with them.
Except for 10% of the business users i think we are waiting for the HD not the cpu. Therefore i think we will se more cheap ssd and even more noise and battery friendly cpu/gpu in the next generation - standard roll out - business leasing deals.
But as said, for the professional side its just mostly TCO today, and for the consumer side its just more and more cost, cost, cost. Perhaps they are saving for an IPAD3 ? :) Reply
tomycs2007 - Monday, April 11, 2011 - link"15.6" WLED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768)
(AU Optronics B156XW02 v6)" Reply
TegiriNenashi - Monday, April 11, 2011 - linkAs long as its display has puny vertical 768 pixels resolution. Please bring back 16:10 aspect ratio! Reply


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AMD's Trinity : An HTPC Perspectiveby Ganesh T S on 9/27/2012 11:00 AM EST
49 Comments
Back to Article
Marlin1975 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkLater, when you hace access, can you do the same test with the lower end dual core 65watt Trinity?
I think that would be the best HTPC Trinity if it also keeps up.
But looks good for a HTPC/Light gaming rig. Reply
coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkgotta agree. The A10 would not be my choice of processor for an HTPC. I would go with something lower cost and lower wattage... but maybe other people enjoy transcoding videos on their HTPCs. Reply
ddrum2000 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI partially disagree (personal preference). I'd like to the 65W A10-5700 reviewed as opposed to the A10-5800K since a 65W part makes much more sense for an HTPC then a 100W part. By extention, the A8-5500 would be interesting as well though I'm curious how much of a difference the number of Radeon cores makes in terms of HTPC usage. Reply
coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkthat's what we said. how do you disagree? Reply
Silent Rage - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkYou said, "The A10 would not be my choice of processor for an HTPC."
He said, "I'd like to the 65W A10-5700 reviewed as opposed to the A10-5800K since a 65W part makes much more sense for an HTPC then a 100W", hence the partial disagreement. Reply
MonkeyPaw - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI transcode on my HTPC, but I just use Quicksync on my i3 with HD 3000 graphics. I use Arcsoft media converter 7 and rip HD TV recordings down to a manageable size to play on my Iconia tablet. Considering the fact that it only takes 20-30 minutes to take a 1080p show down to 720p at 1/6 the original file size, I can't complain about the results. Intel offers an HD 4000 i3, and that would be my HTPC CPU of choice if I had to buy today. Reply
Arbie - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkThe features you are testing are never obvious from a spec sheet, so a targeted hands-on review like this is very important. At least it is to me, because my next laptop choice will be based on its capabilities for media viewing and gaming. And battery life, followed by weight.
Thanks! Reply
coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkthis was a desktop review. The Trinity mobile reviews happened months ago.. Reply
stimudent - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - linkI'm glad that Anandtech has explained to us that this is a staged released and has offered its review based around that by looking to past performance. This is better reporting. Not the immature biased reporting being done by Tech Report.
If Intel did this, it's almost a sure thing TechReport.com would not have said a thing about a staged release and gone ahead with its review the same way Anantech did here. Reply
ChronoReverse - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkIsn't giving you 23.977 what you'd actually want over 23Hz? I can't think of when you'd want 23Hz (whereas 24Hz, 25Hz and 30Hz are all useful) whereas 23.976 is what you'd want from telecined material. Reply
ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkHmmm.. all vendors tag 23.976 Hz as 23 Hz in the monitor / GPU control panel settings. So, when I set the panel to 23 Hz, I am actually expecting 23.976 Hz. However, this platform gives me 23.977 Hz which is a departure from the usually accurate AMD cards that I have seen so far. Reply
ChronoReverse - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link23.977 and 23.976 are so close that it's basically the same (the error in measuring tools would be as large as the difference). I'd only be concerned if it were 23.970.
In any case, from looking at the screenshots in the gallery, the only frequency looking rather off is 60Hz (although my AMD card has always given similar lower than 60Hz results anyway). Reply
ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkNote that these are in Hz, not MHz. So, the margin for error is quite large. In fact, madVR statistics deliver accurate refresh rates up to 6 decimal digits (as the screenshots show).
To read more on why the 0.001 Hz difference matters for SOME people, look this up: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-g...
In short, with the 0.001 Hz difference, the renderer might need to repeat a frame every ~17 minutes. I am NOT saying that this is a serious issue for everyone, but there are some readers who do care about this (as evidenced by the range of opinions expressed in this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1333324/lets-set-this-st... Reply
ChronoReverse - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkThat thread on avsforum is talking about 24FPS playback where if you got 23.97x instead, it's a stutter about every 42 seconds which is terrible and clearly not acceptable (to my eye anyway).
Still, I do admit that even a single stutter every 17 minutes is noticeable.
Also, I had misread that part of the review a bit since for some reason I had the impression it was saying the performance of AMD has diminished when it's still about the same +/- 0.002Hz Reply
jeremyshaw - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkWasn't AMD's first APU Brazos, not Llano? Or was it too small to really count!? Reply
ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkTechnically correct, but it didn't compete in the same level as the Clarkdales / Arrandales / Sandy Bridge lineup :) Reply
jamawass - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link"The video industry is pushing 4K and it makes more sense to a lot of people compared to the 3D push. 4K will see a much faster rate of adoption compared to 3D, but Trinity seems to have missed the boat here. AMD's Southern Islands as well as NVIDIA's Kepler GPUs support 4K output over HDMI, but Trinity doesn't have 4K video decode acceleration or 4K display output over HDMI."
Although this statement is technically correct it has no real world relevance. At this time people who can afford 4k TVs ( if there any commercially available ones at this time) won't be messing around with cheap htpcs. It's an inconsequential statement made just to detract from AMD's overall superiority with this product in the htpc market.
If I was in AMD's shoes why would I dedicate resources to a nonexistent market ? Has anyone actually tested Nvidia or Intel's 4K output over HDMI to see whether they actually work? In the early days of HDCP all the video card manufacturers were claiming compliance but real world compatibility was a different matter.
' Reply
ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI had the same caveat in the Ivy Bridge HTPC review. Surprised you didn't notice that, but you notice this :) Ivy Bridge doesn't support 4K over HDMI yet.
Anyways, yes, we have test 4K output from both NV and AMD. When AMD 7750 was released, we didn't have access to a 4K display, but things changed when the GT 640 was released:
I don't have a sample image ready for the 7750, but I can assure you that it works as well as NVIDIA's and I have personally tested it. In fact, AMD was the first to 4K output over HDMI. Reply
JNo - Saturday, September 29, 2012 - linkMore importantly do you have any 4K films to watch? No. Will you in the immediate future? No. Even then, when will *most* new films coming out be available in 4K? Probably in 5 years time when you'd build a new HTPC anyway.
The 4K thing is absolutely irrelevant at this point (unlike 3D I'd argue because you can go into plenty of shops and buy actual 3D media).
After Hi Def came out hardware (TVs) were available quickly but it took a *long* time before there was plenty of 1080p material anyway (note use of the word, 'plenty'). Hell, most people I know are still watching stuff in SD. Laughably, 4K isn't even close to being out yet, let alone the content.
The whole thing's a red herring right now and for a long while. Reply
Cotita - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI'm not sure I'd go for an A10.
Even a A4 3420 would do pretty much the same.
Heck, If I don't care about HD flash or silverlight even a E-350 is enough Reply
Beenthere - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkThere is an appropriate CPU/APU model for every budget these days. Virtually any current model APU/CPU will perform just fine for 98% of consumers. Most consumers buy what fits their needs and budget, not the over priced, over hyped top-of-the-line models.
AMDs new Trinity APUs and Vishera desktop FX processors offer more performance for less, which is good for consumers. Reply
silverblue - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkWe don't know about Vishera, not yet anyway. We don't know what the improvements over Bulldozer will yield as a whole, only what a couple of benchmarks showed in a brief Toms comparison between Trinity and Zambezi. There are plenty of scenarios to consider. Reply
Beenthere - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkYes some of us do know the results... Comparing Trintiy to Vishera is incorrect. Vishera is to be compared to Zambezi.
AMD has hit their projected 10-15% gains for Vishera compared to Zambezi. Some people already know the results but the NDA doesn't expire for a few weeks so they can't print them yet. Most folks will be happy with Vishera except the haters. Reply
silverblue - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI'd find it hard to believe you were personally under NDA (please prove me wrong). I also believe the gains were per clock, which should theoretically, given the assumption you stated, result in a slightly larger performance gap between the 8150 and the 8350 as the latter has a higher base clock and is more likely to hit max turbo speed.
Like I said though, two benchmarks in the public domain aren't gospel, regardless of whether we're comparing Vishera OR Trinity to Zambezi. Remember that L3 cache doesn't always help, but when it does, the gains can be significant, meaning the A10-5800K could occasionally be outperformed by a similarly clocked 41x0 CPU, but the flip side is that it could occasionally perform on par with a similarly clocked 43x0 CPU. Reply
Death666Angel - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link"AMD was a little late in getting to the CPU - GPU party. Their first endeavour, the Llano APU"
Aren't Zacate and Ontario APUs? They were released in 01/2011, half a year before Llano. Or aren't you counting low power APUs? :)
Thanks for the article! Reply
Death666Angel - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkMea culpa, didn't read the comments before posting my own. :) Disregard. Reply
EnzoFX - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkWhat's the big deal with 4k at THIS moment? There are no 4k tv's out are there? By the time they're out, or by the time they're actually affordable by a decent amount of consumers, we would have several generations of new apu's. Reply
Denithor - Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - linkhttp://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-84LM9600-led-tv Reply
Allio - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkThese HTPC-perspective articles are consistently some of the most useful and interesting content that AT puts up. As far as I can tell, there really aren't any other tech sites that delve this deep into this kind of functionality - most reviews settle for playing a 1080p Bluray and posting a screenshot of the CPU usage in task manager. While it may only be a relatively small audience for who this stuff is relevant, we are a very interested audience, and I personally appreciate every detail and statistic included. Thanks Ganesh! Reply
wharris1 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkAt this point, it seems 4k is more marketing hype. I'll link this article: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57491766-221/...
For the typical anandtech readers (probably much more technically gifted than me) I also recall reading a similar article/post on avsforums explaining that for any display size <~100 inches, the 4k standard is hard to justify. Also, while I know that future proofing is sound, there is very little content or ability to play back said content at that resolution. As a previous poster mentioned, by the time 4k becomes a standard, the current platforms will seem antiquated. Anyway, Anandtech is the best tech site around by far; read it every morning. Reply
Denithor - Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - linkWhich explains 1600p on 30" monitors, right?
Granted, most of us don't sit 3-4' from our TV but I know even on my 50" 1080p barely cuts it (text is hard to read sometimes, fuzzy if I zoom in enough to read easily). Reply
OCedHrt - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkMeaning, setting it to 16-235 means to discard 0-15 and 236-255 and expand the remainder to full RGB.
Obviously I don't have a Trinity setup so I'm just speculating, but on my HD6400 there is a different parameter on the display configuration section to tweak screen output range - which I set to RGB full range. Reply
ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkI think you are referring to the pixel format output which is YCbCr 4:4:4 / YCbCr 4:2:2 / RGB Limited / RGB Full
The dynamic range aspect is orthogonal to the pixel format output over HDMI.
The screenshot posted is that of a video playing in the background. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I am not sure about AMD's terminology here, but any user setting the dynamic range to 16-235 would expect NOT to see values 0 - 15 and 236 - 255. Reply
OCedHrt - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkYes I was referring to pixel format output. I use RGB Full. I was under the impression that YCbCr cannot display the ranges 0-15 and 236-255 but I think I might be wrong on this one. It is YV12 / YUY2 colorspaces that lack these ranges.
And what you're saying about dynamic range is exactly what I'm saying is happening. If you select 16-235, 0-15 and 236-255 from the video is filtered out and the remaining is expanded back to 0-255. Thus a video decoded to YV12 / YUY2 space played on a full range display would have a greyish black or white without selecing 16-235 range. Meaning, the wording on AMD's UI is correct, just the whole idea behind it is confusing. Reply
superccs - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkHave all of our expectations of their new hardware dropped considerably? I am an AMD fan as much as the rest of you, but it just seems like we are trying so hard to find their stuff useful. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - linkGood deal, another fanboy zombied out for years by the marketing hatred and hype useful idiots collective has shown a glimmer of light, hope that the slave mind can break free from the dirty chains.
The new test is this: Would you put up with this crap from any other company or vendor ?
Hardcore69 - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link- HTPC box: No point. A G540 + GTX 650 if you really want MadVR and 23.976.
- Office box: No point. A G540 is enough for a basic everyday system
- Gaming box: No point. A dedicated card is still the answer for 1080p High/Ultra gaming i.e. real PC gaming.
Well? APU's are rather pointless. All this accelerated media crap, HD 1000 can do that too. Reply
Medallish - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link- HTPC Box: that's passively cooled: An A10-5700 would work great in there and be a nice upgrade!
- Office/Workstation Box: GPU acceleration can make a lot of difference, not to mention people have different needs.
- Gaming Box: For someone who wants to game but don't want to shell out the money needed to get 1080p Ultra graphics, or as I see it, a gaming starter kit.
Well? APU's have plenty of point if you're not an out of touch Intel fanatic. Also did you even read the review? There was encoding and decoding that the APU did really well.
btw. I have a passively cooled HTPC, and a Laptop I use for office work, both based on APU's(Currently Llano, the HTPC is getting a Trinity upgrade though.) and I wouldn't want them any other way. Reply
ssj3gohan - Monday, October 01, 2012 - linkPassively cooling a 130W box? Really?
I'd like to see AMD trying a bit harder to keep their power consumption down, because in the end the reason for me to choose an i5-3570K was that like AMD it offered 'enough' GPU power, but at a much lower max power. My computer runs at well under 10W idle and about 75W max (OCCT+Furmark), more like 45W in normal use. I wouldn't be able to get near that kind of power consumption with equally-featured Trinity parts (aside from the lower CPU performance, which isn't really a big deal tbh).
(by the way, my 5.9W core i5-computer: http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/8217/fluffy2-... Reply
Medallish - Friday, October 05, 2012 - linkYup, I've been working on my own little HTPC project(Although not as cool as yours :D). The Streacom FC5-OD is surprisingly good at cooling down even a 100W APU, right now I'm using a 3870k, I'm planning on getting the A10-5700 asap, and the final touch I plan on adding is the 6670, connect it to the opposite cooling ribs, however right now I'm running into a PSU limit, that I plan on countering by getting a slightly better PSU(250W CarPC PSU instead of a 150W picoPSU)
But yeah despite the slightly higher load, the fact is on idle, and most likely average, AMD have really brought down power consumption with Trinity. But I like your setup, and will probably borrow a few ideas from there. Reply
Oxford Guy - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link4K strikes me as being completely unnecessary. 1080p is enough resolution. Reply
brookheather - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkIs this a typo? "Intel and NVIDIA offer 50 Hz, 59 Hz and 60 Hz settings which are exactly double of the above settings" - 59 is not double 29 - did you mean 58? Reply
ganeshts - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkNope :) 29 Hz is 'control panel speak' for 29.97 Hz and 59 Hz is 'control panel speak' for 59.94 Hz. So, if you have a file at 29.97 fps, it can be played back without any dropped or unsymmetrical repetition at 59.94 Hz since each frame has to be just 'painted' twice at that refresh rate. Reply
cjs150 - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkThis is exact the standard of article I read AT for.
I remain complete bewildered that chip manufacturers cannot get the frame rates right. It may be an odd frame rate but it is a standard rate that has remained the same forever.
However, the problem for AMD remains the TDP of the processors. Heat requires to be dealt with, usually by fans and that means noise. An HTPC needs to be as close to silent as possible.
TDP of 65W is simply too high. You can (as I have) buy a ridiculously over powered i7-3770T which has a TDP of 45W. AMD need to reduce the TDP to no more than 35-45W. At that point there are various HTPC cases which can cool that completely passively.
Overall this is yet another step forward in the ideal HTPC but we are still short of the promised land Reply
wwwcd - Saturday, September 29, 2012 - linki7-3770T too expensive against Trynity models and have a double weakness video. For poor peoples it not be choice. Reply
cjs150 - Saturday, September 29, 2012 - linkI agree that the i7-3770T is too expensive at the moment compared to AMD alternatives but it does not have video weaknesses check out the review on Anandtech.
The refresh rate is close to the correct rate but close is not good enough it should be spot on.
There is still a lot of work to be done to get to an ideal HTPC CPU. Both AMD and intel are close. If anything AMD has slightly better video but, as I said, TDP is too high.
Of course the other option is something like the Raspberry pi, unfortunately whilst hardware is promising the software still needs a lot of work Reply
Burticus - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkPut one of these on a mini-itx board and cram it into something the size of the Shuttle HX61 that I just got and I am interested. I am so spoiled by having a small, silent, cool HTPC I will never go back to anything louder or bigger than a 360. Reply
LuckyKnight - Saturday, September 29, 2012 - linkAMD are missing a market here, working 23.976Hz with a 35W TDP for a passive cooled case. That would be my choice, if it existed.
Shame Intel can't get 23.976 to work properly, despite their alleged promise! Reply
Esskay02 - Saturday, September 29, 2012 - link"Intel started the trend of integrating a GPU along with the CPU in the processor package with Clarkdale / Arrandale. The GPU moved to the die itself in Sandy Bridge. Despite having a much more powerful GPUs at its disposal (from the ATI acquisition), AMD was a little late in getting to the CPU - GPU party."
According to my readings, it was AMD not Intel, first to talk and initiated APU(cpu+gpu). Intel found the threat used it manpower and resources , came out release cpu+Gpu chip. Reply


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by BF'ngC July 10, 2013
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text:
USB 3.0 Flash Drive Roundupby Zach Throckmorton on 7/29/2011 11:15 AM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
- Kingston
- Patriot
- Gadgets
- Super Talent
- Flash Drive
- Mushkin
42 Comments
Back to Article
webmastir - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkgreat write up, thanks! Reply
Kelemvor - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkAbsolutely. Hit on all the topics. Thanks. And they really aren't all that much more expensive. Reply
sbrown23 - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkIt was good, but I would like to have seen a testing of Linux distro running from the flash drive to get an idea of performance in that type of scenario. Load each up with a Linux distribution, boot each one and run a couple of benchmarks (heck even include boottime, etc.) Reply
pvdw - Thursday, December 01, 2011 - linkDefinitely. The biggest use I get out of flash drives is for tech support, so I find random reads and writes sorely lacking. :( Reply
xygot - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkThis is a nice article for USB 3.0 using flash drive. However, I'm more interested in benchmark between USB 3.0 and eSata using external hard drive. Is there a benchmark on the way?
This is what holding me for now if I need to upgrade to USB 3.0 or stay on eSata. Reply
Zenthar - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI would like to see that as well. Given the $/GB of those thumbdrives, I would also be curious to see external USB 3.0 SSDs. Different needs will warrant different solutions.
For backups for example (mostly sequential read/write), it would probably be more cost/efficient to get an external 2.5 HDD. If you want something to install and run applications from, then perhaps you will get better performance out of an external SSD.
The extra size of external HDD/SSD could be a bit annoying, but this usually translates to lower possibility of losing or washing the drive. Reply
Gigantopithecus - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkHi xygot - I don't plan on adding a USB 3.0 vs eSATA performance comparison to the article. However, I can report that using a USB 3.0 HDD dock with a Western Digital WD20EARS on both ends of the transfer, for MP3 files, I get sustained writes of ~30MB/s and sustained reads of 50MB/s. Hope that helps! Reply
ckryan - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkIf you want to use a mechanical HDD, just stick with eSata. You won't be limited in any aspect of the HDD's performance. But I think there are some newer eSata and USB3 docks on the way, or possibly already on the market. Why not both?
In my eSata II testing, I've found that a 7200rpm desktop drive has almost identical performance in an enclosure as it does with the Sata ports on the MB. As for USB3.0, I have two motherboards that support it, but no usb 3.0 devices. So I can't really speak to 3.0's performance except to say it's not like your HDD will run faster in a USB3 enclosure than it does in your computer.
As for the few USB3 external HDD, it's always been my preference to roll my own with an enclosure and my own HDD. Reply
Sweeo - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkWell for me I would go for USB 3,how many comps/other divices got eSata ?
USB 3 backword compatable
The thing is "other devises" Reply
doylecc - Monday, August 01, 2011 - linkAdding eSATA is easy if you have a desktop. The adapter is inexpensive; this one costs less than $5 and provides two eSATA ports:
The eSata adapter socket mounts on an expansion card bracket that installs in any unused expansion card opening in the back of your computer.
Performance-wise, eSATA will allow you to extract the full performance from any mechanical hard drive. The faster SSDs need SATA III (6GB/sec) or USB 3 bandwidth for full performance.
Of course, if you have a laptop, you're limited to the built-in ports. Reply
rickcain2320 - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI really wished firewire had gained more traction in the market. I've had nothing but trouble with USB over the years, with quirky connection behavior to buggy driver sets to slow transfer speeds. Reply
Rick83 - Friday, July 29, 2011 - link20 GB was not huge.
In fact, in 1998/1999 I had a 30 GB disk in a relatively cheap off-the-shelf computer.
So by 2002, 60/80 GB would have been 'huge', but 20 was becoming pretty much standard for new machines. Reply
ckryan - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkMy average system drive size never really increased all that much over the years. In 1998/1999 I had a 20GB system. When I built a new Pentium 4 system in 2003 I put an original 36GB 10K Raptor in it. I used it for quite some time. All of my laptops from the last decade always had around 40GB of very slow HDD. Then in the last two years I put small SSDs in all of my systems, until recently, when I bought and Intel 510 120GB for my main system. In many ways not having a ton of space taught me to optimize what I would put on my drive and how to make the most of it, helping me into the early days of SSDs where space is at a premium, especially in a mobile system where you only have access to one drive.
Though now that I think about it, what the hell were people doing with all that space (besides games)? I'll have to find my old late 90's vintage system and see. My first computer was a 386sx 16, a packard bell, with a 40megabyte hdd. I could install windows 3.1 OR Ultima 7, but not both. So in twenty years I went from a 40MB HDD and 1.44MB "High Density" floppies to 3TB HDD, super fast SSDs, and enormous flash drives. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I seem to be waxing nostalgic a lot recently about the "Good old days" that never really were. Reply
randinspace - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkAround that same time period I got into some pretty dubious translation "scenes" ("they're are for educational purposes") and had to go from a DELL with a 20gb HDD to a custom build packing a 60 GB drive within a mere year, but between prices being what they were and eventually abandoning my desktop for a laptop it made a lot more sense to me to rely upon DVDs for long term storage until just a couple of years ago. Now my netbook has a bigger HDD than my first external HDD did but the idea of losing so much data/material at once completely terrifies me since everybody else's projects got derailed left and right back then due to HDD failures... Actually, I wonder how often hardware failure was just an excuse by lazy/greedy translators/editors? More than health problems anyway.
That said, video encoding techniques have somehow advanced at a rate that makes it possible to have not only better resolutions but lower file sizes than we did back then (not accounting for the likes of .flv and morons that decide to distribute .ts files and bloated Blu-Ray .isos) as long as you have a decent CPU, but instead of taking the gains and running this has somehow inspired most people to ratchet up the space taken up by the audio side for all that the last thing that makes a difference in one's experience of something in a language they can't understand (that might be subtitled in a language they only barely understand) is the difference between AAC and FLAC.
Even in certain games the largest part of the install might be the audio, and by the same token since CDs are still hanging in there but people now have TB of storage instead of MB (sticking a CD in the drive or having your stereo nearby to listen to it) or GB (I'm glad that .rmf is far behind me but .ogg and .mp3 are still valid for most setups) there isn't a lot of incentive for most people to "limit themselves" to either highly compressed or even variable bitrate files instead of WAV (LOL, though some make an argument for the time saved encoding) and FLAC and APE and what have you (my personal favorite of the bunch is TTA but too many people fail at it for some reason).
OK I put too much text in parentheses there, but since I wasn't using my disk space on games the short answer to your question of what people were using the space for aside from them is hoarding AV... In fact there's a really apt quote that shows up on DailyTech from somebody (either a seagate or WD executive, I think) commenting that by providing consumers with storage capacity they were just helping them watch porn or something like that. Reply
Stahn Aileron - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI'm pretty sure he meant relatively to portable storage solutions, not internal to a computer.
Actually, when exactly did portable HDD's come into the mainstream? Reply
hurrakan - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkThanks.
I have a 32GB Kingston Data Traveller Ultimate 3 but it's annoying because it needs an attachment to use USB2. And as very few computers have USB3, I always have to carry the attachment.
I wish the "Kingston HyperX MAX USB3" had been included - I would have liked to see how it compares.
Also, it would be awesome if Anandtech conducted a benchmark of microSD cards (different brands and classes). Reply
randinspace - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI was thinking the same thing since I've been wondering a lot about the performance of SD/micro~/SDHC/micro~ considering the fact that just about any device with USB input will also have a card reader but the opposite isn't necessarily true, tablets and smart phones for example. Hell, even my netbook has an SD card slot. Reply
HangFire - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkNice review.
Now, I'd like to see Motherboards on Bench, with SATA 2/3, USB 2/3, Gb Ethernet, and memory bandwidth benchmarks. Reply
blowfish - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkof course the principal benefit of USB over eSATA is the ability to hot swap a USB connected device. If that's not important to you, then eSATA is very cost effective. I expect to see eSATA/USB 3.0 hard drive enclosures appear before too long though, which would allow the best of both worlds. I think many USB problems relate to power - some older motherboards can't handle all the USB ports being filled and can give erratic results. Reply
mino - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkYou hot-swap eSATA just the same. And the main reason is performance - USB3 could not EVER reach eSATA performance levels, basically because of the protocol overhead even if everything was equal. Reply
coyote2 - Saturday, August 06, 2011 - linkAre you talking about 6GB/s eSATA III?
USB3 is so much faster than the last eSATA, I'd be surprised to hear it's "protocol overhead" could make it perform slower. Reply
theangryintern - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI have the ADATA S102, got it a few months ago. So far I've been very happy with it. At home where I have a USB 3.0 controller card and an SSD boot drive, copies to and from the ADATA are screaming fast. At work, even on USB 2.0 it's still pretty fast Reply
PotablePots - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkI was actually hoping that this article would look at portable application performance. I use a ton of portable application software and finding a flash drive that will give the best performance when running applications is something I could use AT's help on. Most of my portable software comes from PortableApps.com. I use mostly Portable Chrome and OpenOffice but also GIMP and Blender on occasion. Reply
Aikouka - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkZach, is it possible that you can list some value to help identify how much data you're transferring to these devices in the real world tests? For example, while I may copy PDFs to my thumb drives at times, I don't necessarily copy over hundreds of megabytes worth. I normally spend the most time waiting when I'm copying really large files to a thumb drive such as a movie I shot on my HD camcorder. Reply
Gigantopithecus - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkHi Aikouka - The details of the real world scenario tests are on the second page. For the PDFs, the test copied 3,364 PDFs totaling 3.20GB. As I said, there are as many real-world usage scenarios as there are flash drive users! I personally, on a near daily basis, will copy hundreds, if not thousands, of PDFs onto a flash drive to perform a dump on a colleague's computer (hmm, that doesn't sound good - but you know what I mean, ha). That is if someone asks me about topics x, y, and z, I'll simply say read these, and give them a bunch of articles. I addressed your interest in large file transfers with the 100MB Iometer benchmark numbers and the real-world DVD ISO file read/write performance times. Those should give you a clear picture of which drives read and write bigger files, like those shot on your HD cam, the fastest. Reply
justcommenting - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkHey,
I don't mean any offense, but I thought the writing style with this post was below normal Anandtech standards. The introduction skips details on what USB 1.1 changed that saw the widespread adoption and jumps around between discussing USB flash devices and USB hard disk devices without distinction between the two.
I appreciate the various graphs, but I don't think the author did a very good job of explaining why certain drives pulled ahead in various scenarios, why that might matter, etc. Instead, graphs felt tossed into pages with little more than a description of the picture underneath.
Like the pages before it, the conclusion is also a tough read due to general poor sentence / paragraph structure. I love Anandtech articles because of the highly technical content and the well-phrased, well-researched, and well-backed opinions put forth. I'd pay for it if I could, but preferably with stronger articles than this one. :) Reply
Pozz - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkindeed and less exclamation marks would be a start :)
still, very interesting article Reply
MaximillianSterling - Friday, July 29, 2011 - linkNice random U-M reference.
Ah, the VERY long nights spent there. Although I preferred the Media Union. Reply
Gigantopithecus - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - linkI hoped someone would catch that. ;) Lotta really long nights there, brother! Reply
Goi - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - linkI would've liked to see what controllers and NAND flash chips were being used in the different flash drives. I know some are using USB 3.0<->NAND flash bridge controllers, while others are using SSD controllers with a separate SATA<->NAND flash bridge, or perhaps using a NAND device with a SATA interface. It would be interesting to find out how these design decisions affect performance. Reply
BadThad - Monday, August 01, 2011 - linkGood job, nice little test!
For my purposes a simple 4 or 8MB USB 2.0 drive is fine. Most of the files I need to move around are small and it's only a couple of seconds for read/write ops. As often as I lose these or they just outright die, I can't see spending more than $10 or so on a flash drive. Reply
7Enigma - Monday, August 01, 2011 - linkI assume you mean GB? :) And I'm with you there. I have an 8GB and only occasionally wish I had a 16 or 32 and most of the time it's because I'm too lazy to remove unneeded data. Reply
casteve - Monday, August 01, 2011 - linkThanks for the review. I use thumb drives for archiving data. Create a ZIP or RAR file and place it into a truecrypt folder. With USB 2.0, it's faster to compress using the internal drive and then transfer onto the external drive's truecrypt folder. With 3.0 thumb drives, maybe the transfer rate is fast enough just compress on the fly. It'd be nice to see this proved out. Reply
epobirs - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI've got a Corsair Flash Voyager 16 GB USB 3.0 unit. They've been down around $20 or less AR recently. It's definitely faster (and about 33% longer physically) than its USB 2.0 equivalent but I wonder it would have fallen in this lineup.
I carry a bunch of drives for my job and have been retiring 8 GB and smaller units and replacing them with 16 GB models now that the cost per gigabyte is the same, around $1, in promo specials. The Corsair is enough faster that I'll now buy only USB 3.0 drives as good deals appear, preferably 32 GB models.
I might be satisfied when I have a dozen terabytes in my cargo pants pocket but I won't know until I get there. My definition of a decent software and video library to take with me everywhere keeps growing and the cloud does not strike me as a reliable substitute yet or possibly ever. Reply
jagaimo - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - linkUSB 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 480Mbits/s, or 60MBytes/s. On a good number of these benchmarks, even the USB 3.0 parts don't hit that speed.
e.g., 100MB Sequential Write Performance - Native Interface. The Adata S102 32GB USB3.0 unit only hits 38MB/s. It's still short of the USB 2.0 speed limit.
I guess my point is this... The 480Mb/s bandwidth of USB 2.0 isn't the limiting factor. It seems like it's something else. Is there a reason why we don't see 60MB/s transfers on the 2.0 devices? Reply
MGSsancho - Tuesday, September 06, 2011 - linkThat's 640mbs total in both directions. It is really 320mbs in each direction.
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ see the specs Reply
jonathan1683 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI would have liked to see 32 GB ones in the mix, but they might be in another article. I have a 16gb flash voyager and it always takes forever reading it initially. Sometimes a couple minutes just to initiate a directory listing. Does anyone know if this is common or maybe I have a defective unit? I notice I don't have this issue on windows XP it's only on win7. Reply
tkafafi - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - linkI think the writeup did a great job of providing the experimental data. I'm just wondering what is the explanation for the results seen on the mixed usb2/usb3 systesm, as they were surprising for sure.
Thanks Reply
j7n - Friday, September 20, 2013 - linkEarly USB flash memory wasn't "agonizingly slow" in comparison to floppies and rewritable CDs, especially if you account for the time needed to verify the recording on those discs because they were so unreliable. A USB 1.1 port could practically do around 600-700 kB/s, which is at least fifteen times that of a floppy. Reply
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http://goo.gl/a3O6V7 Reply
peterpan783 - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - linkVery informative, but I would have preferred to see the performance indicated in megabytes per second, and not in time. I can see whatever drive took whatever seconds more or less, but that doesn't tell me anything about the actual speed. USB flash drive performance is measured in MB/s. Reply
XmppTextingBloodsport - Saturday, March 19, 2016 - linkIn the future I hope you will employ better cross platform considerations like FS:
And seek an official manuafacturer answer for
* ideal Block Size (or Allocation Unit)
** for 2 or 3 primary use cases
** large media files
** mix of text and media files
** single large file
* ideal [re]formatting method (_not_ requiring a microsoft license)
** to partition or not to partition
** entire drive VeryCrypt (the new incarnation of TrueCrypt)
* how much [cheating] cache the drive has
* manufacturer's tools availability beyond windows
** turning off feckless led Reply


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Against Evil Eye Wide "America" Weaved Bracelet on LeatherA beautiful "America" knitted bracelet on leather for Protection from the Evil Eye, decorated with silver plated gourmet and beads. Learn More$110.00
Wide "America" Weaved Bracelet with Peace Sign and Red CoralsA beautiful Hippie style "America" knitted bracelet decorated with red Coral stones, Peace sign charm and gourmet links necklace. Learn More$110.00
Wrapping Woven Wax Bracelet with Silver CharmsThis Dark Grey eye catching 60" woven wax wire bracelet includes a variety of Sterling Silver charms and Swarovski turquoise accents. Bracelet includes a Hamsa Hand for protection, Star of David for good luck and harmony, and a Heart charm for joy and love. It's a stunning arrangement by Israeli jewelry artist MIZZE - Made for Luck. The wrapping bracelets are available in a variety of wonderful colors including dark grey, black, red, turquoise, olive green, silver and brown. Some charms are optional, please let us know if you want a different selection of charms. Learn More$119.00


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