AMD Zacate E-350 Processor Performance Preview

Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our Brazos test systems consumed using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power the base platform configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the processors alone.

Also, we should note the AMD Brazos reference platform system we tested was equipped with a USB3 IO chip from NEC, as well as a few other bells and whistles that drive power requirements up by a couple of Watts or so.  In reality, if anything, these numbers are on the high side for the Zacate/Brazos test setup.

If there is one test that best frames the other performance metrics we've assembled for AMD's new low power chip, it's this one.  We've illustrated in the previous pages, across a number of different test scenarios, just how Zacate and Brazos stack up in terms of performance.  Now if we couple that data with the conservative power consumption data  you see here, things become even more impressive for AMD's new chip and platform.  Also, we decided to throw in a few more reference systems here that we had in our database just to give you a bit more resolution.  In all cases the display was not factored into the power draw and we turned off the panel of the Acer Aspire 1551 Turion II powered notebook.  In short, AMD's Brazos platform and their Zacate processor consume significantly less power than a dual core Atom/Ion2 solution at idle and under load.  In addition, at idle, Zacate even consumes a lot less power than a standard single core Atom design. 

In notebooks and netbooks this equates to one thing; extended battery life.  We'd also offer that again, the power consumption measurements here are very conservative, comparatively for Zacate.  The reference board we tested definitely wasn't optimized for power consumption.  Without a doubt, Brazo and AMD's Zacate E-350 processor offer excellent performance-per-watt efficiencies that will likely have Intel on its toes in a big way moving forward.