Category of small cheap notebooks became very popular and there is no wonder why most of big brands want a piece of cake for themselves. But Asus got all of them off-guard. Because of that we’ve been waiting rather long for Eee’s true rival . We’ve already mentioned MSI’s agility which allowed them again to be first with new product on market. Their trump card wears name Wind and model that InsideHW had tested is MSI Wind U100.
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The long waited AMD platform for notebooks under the name PUMA is finally introduced and InsideHW had a chance to test notebook based on this platform. To all users that have been waiting cheap integrated graphics with good performances, time has come. Intel Centrino was so far “untouchable” in field of portable computers but AMD Puma, by all appearance, got a necessary quality to fight for highest position.
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USB hard disks lately become very popular. This especially goes for 2.5’’models. The reasons for that can be found in their usefulness and practicality. Yet, we are living in times when it is necessary to transfer huge amounts of data from place to place. At first, manufacturers on market fought with larger and larger capacity of these devices. Lately, when capacity stopped being key factor, manufacturers turned to HDD case design. On that field, Prestigio went step ahead of its competitors and launched Prestigio data Safe II Fashion Edition.
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At the end of June, in Spain, we were introduced to a new series of 48xx graphics cards from ATI. We saw then only RV770PRO (4850) but at this moment 4870 (RV770XT) is also available. Even though our sources from AMD didn’t unveil why 4870 wasn’t shown on launching, we assume that some problems with quantities of available GDDR5 memory occurred. Considering that 4850 uses GDDR3 memory, it is no surprise that many retailers had them on stock. ATI 4870 will be sold, in beginning, exclusively with GDDR5 memory (this is the first graphics card that uses this memory) but AMD leaves a possibility that some innovative partner might launch later version that uses GDDR3 memory.
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It’s rare occasion to have on test, on the same month, new generation products from two big rivals (nVIDIA and ATI). This is really good news because ATI had some serious delays with R600 and that is one of reasons why it was so indifferently received on market. ATI realized that now must roll up its sleeves to catch up nVIDIA, because at that point seemed that nVIDIA unreachably moved away.
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After presenting the new 690G chipset, it was logical to assume that AMD was to present some new CPUs as well that would fit in well with the new motherboards. As 690G-based motherboards are basically tiny multimedia devices on which everything is integrated, from LAN controllers and sound subsystem to graphics outputs (VGA, DVI and HDMI), it's certain that computers based on these are rather small power-consumers. To fulfil the expectations, AMD released a new processor series, which is even more rational and efficient as far as power consumption is concerned.
X2 processors consumed 89 W up to now, but this was decreased by 30% with the new series, down to a value of 65 W. The new model name, Athlon X2 BE-2350, is a bit odd, because AMD has never marked its processors with "performance rating" numbers not rounded up to 100. The new processors can be recognized by their serial numbers, where the last two letters must be "DD", e.g. "ADH2350IAA5DD", as with our test sample.
Once we finished mounting the processor, upon entering the BIOS, we certainly had something to see - as the processor is based on Brisbane core, the voltage that it needed in order to work was only 1.15 V. This is truly great, because, if AMD already cannot compete with the opposing team in terms of performance in the lowest segment, it's nice to see them trying to at least beat them in terms of power consumption. The processor is clocked at 2.1 GHz, which is great, bearing the voltage in mind. An Athlon X2 3800+ with the Windsor core needed 0.1 V more to work at a 100 MHz lower clock.
As far as L2 cache memory is concerned, there is 2x512 KB of it, which is more than enough for the tasks intended for this Athlon. The L1 cache is an already standard 256 KB. As this CPU is probably going to be working in computers of less-demanding users, we didn't opt for "hardcore" overclocking this time. Instead, we decided to reach the maximum possible stable clock while sticking to the default voltage. The results are quite nice - 2.5 GHz with 1.15 V. That is a most satisfactory clock, and we are sure that the more advanced users are going to provide higher voltages in order to get an additional 200-300 MHz. The multiplier of this processor is 10.5, which is equal to the multiplier of Athlon X2 4000+.
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AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350
Sandra 2007
CPU
15.291 / 12.935
Multimedia
39.660 / 43.242
Memory
4.831 / 4.821
Latency
89 ns
3DMark03 CPU Score
799
3DMark05 CPU Score
4.950
CineBench
576
DivX
85.9 fps
Nuclearus
4.852
WinRAR
944 KB/s
Testbed: Biostar 7050, 2x1GB TwinMOS DDR800, Win XP
This makes us believe that models BE-2300 and BE-2350 are something of a "low-power" replacement for models X2 3600+ and X2 4000+. Performance is quite OK, almost equal to the old models they should replace. There is some difference, though, as the 100 MHz difference in clock compared to its predecessor still brings the new CPU a tiny advantage. This, of course, isn't enough to beat the competition, but AMD seems to be well-aware of that, so this processor's target market isn't overclockers, but office and home users, to whom CPU performance is hardly on the list of priorities.
It must never be neglected that consumption is the main characteristic of this CPU. Also, since the CPU works @ 2.5 GHz with only 1.15 V, it can be assumed that, with better cooling and a voltage of around 1.4 V, this piece can work @ ~3 GHz, which many owners on the Internet confirm. Even if this information isn't correct, we rest sure that this processor will find its way to buyers that want a tiny, silent and power-saving computer.
Processors 
