An Introduction to AMD's Second-Gen Fusion Processors: Brazos 2.0

In this lovely month of June, AMD rolled out the successor to Zacate, Brazos 2.0. Not much is new in this release, merely higher speeds. The E1-1200 is meant to replace the E-300, bumping up the CPU speed by 100 MHz and the GPU by 12 MHz. For some reason AMD downgraded the memory controller in the E1-1200 to DDR3-1066 instead of DDR3-1333, like the E-300 had. The E-450 has been upgraded by the E2-1800, with a 50 MHz increase in the CPU clock. The GPU has been pushed up to 523 MHz without boost and 680 MHz with boost. These are 3 and 13% gains, respectively. AMD chose to keep the DDR3-1333 memory controller here. Overall, Brazos 2.0 is not much of an improvement, but if cost is not a factor, there's no reason to buy an older Zacate machine.

An Introduction to AMD's Fusion CPU's: Zacate

Along with Ontario, AMD released a more powerful line of mobile Fusion processors codenamed Zacate. These are designed for bigger netbooks and small laptops. There are 4 flavors of Zacate to choose from, 3 of which are dual-core. The only single-core, the E-240, is clocked at 1.5 GHz with a Radeon HD 6310 running at 500 MHz. Keep in mind that the Radeon HD 63x0 series is nothing more than a faster version of the HD 62x0 series. Moving on to the dual-cores, the E-300 runs at 1.3 GHz with its GPU at 488 MHz. The E-350 works at 1.6 GHz, and the GPU goes 4 MHz faster. Finally, the E-450's CPU is a tad faster at 1.65 GHz. Unlike the Ontario C-60, the E-450 does not get a CPU speed boost under load; however, the GPU does, clocking between 508 and 600 MHz. Zacate processors are the best of all mentioned so far for gaming, although the chassis housing them is almost guaranteed to be bigger than 10.1".

An Introduction to AMD's Fusion CPU's: Ontario

Not wanting Intel to monopolize the netbook market, AMD unveiled the Fusion processors in early January of 2011. The lower-end of them, the Ontario series, consists of one single-core C-30 (1.2 GHz) and two dual-core C-50 and C-60, both at 1 GHz. All of them have a TDP of 9 W. The C-60 is a special processor in that it can boost the speed of the CPU (by 33%) and GPU under load. All Ontario processors have a Radeon HD 62x0 GPU at 276 MHz standard clock, with the C-60 adding 45% on demand. This puts its capabilities at about half of the Radeon HD 6350, more or less. Ontario-powered netbooks tend to cost a bit more than Cedar Trail ones, and rightly so. The amount of games playable on Fusion is far greater than any Intel netbook, so if you're not extremely tight on cash, go for a Fusion netbook.