Final thoughts and rating
Gigabyte has taken the encouraging step of using AMD's newest technology and brought it to bear on the desktop. The Brazos platform encompasses a low-power CPU and DX11-capable integrated graphics on one chip, brought together under the firm's Fusion APU initiative.
Strapping in the top-line E-350 Zacate CPU - two cores and a 1.6GHz clock speed - together with a Radeon HD 5450-like IGP clocked in at 500MHz, the recipe for low-power computing is made all the tastier by housing the chips on a mini-ITX board.
The Gigabyte E350N-USB, then, is a tiny desktop board whose constituent parts form the basis of a low-to-mid-range laptop. Sweetening the deal, the firm throws in USB3, Gigabit Ethernet and HD audio support for a retail price in the region of £125.
Performance falls pretty close to a dual-core, four-threaded Intel Atom CPU and NVIDIA ION 2 GPU combination, as found in leading nettop machines. Real-world use shows that the AMD's Fusion APU offers a basic computing experience that falls significantly short of a proper desktop chip and discrete graphics card's. Good enough for everyday tasks, yup, but don't go expecting full-on desktop performance; you'll have to wait for the upcoming Llano APU for that.
I like the fact that the Radeon IGP is genuinely derived from a previous generation discrete card, and pairing it up with the UVD3 video-processing block means it plays practically all local content without issue, though web-based playback is far more reliant on close support with Adobe.
Ultimately, I see AMD's Brazos platform, on which the Gigabyte E350N-USB3 is based, as an honest alternative to the Intel/NVIDIA combination doing the rounds in high-quality netbooks and nettop PCs, and that's a good thing for AMD and its partners. This also means the board is useful as a basic HTPC build and everyday machine, but do bear in mind build costs on top of the £125 outlay.
Gigabyte has taken a cutting-edge mobile AMD platform and shoehorned it into a full-featured mini-ITX motherboard in eminently sensible fashion. If you understand that it's not designed to replace the desktop PC, rather it's there to augment it, then the board provides a very solid base on which to build a low-power, quiet, and reasonably capable PC.
The Good
Brazos is a capable low-power platform
Thoughtful integration from Gigabyte - USB 3.0, Gbe LAN, etc.
Radeon HD 6310 plays and accelerates practically all video content
Comprehensive BIOS for a mini-ITX board
The Bad
Really, a mobile solution shoehorned into a desktop
£125 board price feels steep in light of current nettop pricing
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS Awards
HEXUS Where2Buy
The board is available from Scan.co.uk.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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