Zacate showing up more on Newegg

[charged3800z24]

Newegg is starting to see more AMD APU's
Here is the ASRock board/e-350 APU
Only $109.00. getting closer to the 100 dollar selling Price AMD was suggesting.

ASRock E350M Mini ITX

Edit: It is now out of stock. That was fast!

Edit again: Here is the current line up on newegg

Zacate

[Manicdan]

OMG its AM3+ compatible!!

kidding

but its nice to see that this one only needs a 20 pin power connector, so i think its a great option for those super small cases.

[WhiteFireDragon]

i actually bought one this morning. there are mixed reviews whether this platform consumes more or less power than atom + iono. i'll compare it to my atom D252 when i receive mine. does the lack of the 4pin power connector mean less stable power to the board?

[charged3800z24]

i actually bought one this morning. there are mixed reviews whether this platform consumes more or less power than atom + iono. i'll compare it to my atom D252 when i receive mine. does the lack of the 4pin power connector mean less stable power to the board?

The APU is low enough power the 4pin shouldn't matter, it does have the 24pin connector for the system.

[BeepBeep2]

Hmm, it carries DVI/VGA and HDMI...I think I'm in on Zacate at a $110 price range.

$50 HEC mini itx case and a 1TB caviar green, this motherboard, 2GB DDR3-1066 and Win 7 Pro is $390 shipped XD

[stangracin3]

i actually bought one this morning. there are mixed reviews whether this platform consumes more or less power than atom + iono. i'll compare it to my atom D252 when i receive mine. does the lack of the 4pin power connector mean less stable power to the board?

this should wipe the floor with atom...

[crazydiamond]

could they ever start making these with a connection for a power brick like a laptop uses so we can ditch the psu? i know it would then need to supply power to odd/hdd etc. so it may need to be redesigned, but would be great for a very small pc

[WhiteFireDragon]

could they ever start making these with a connection for a power brick like a laptop uses so we can ditch the psu? i know it would then need to supply power to odd/hdd etc. so it may need to be redesigned, but would be great for a very small pc

look into some picoPSU. they use power bricks, and starting to gain popularity with SFF machines

[Glow9]

Thats cool I hope this pays off for AMD cause I can't figure out what f'ing direction they are taking right now.

[Johnny87au]

Hope this hits aus soon ! Need a htpc as I'm selling my pc so I'm either getting a as rock h55m pro or waiting for this dam product!

[richierich]

nice can't wait for amazon to get these

[Darakian]

If anyone gets one of the mini itx boards could you do a quick temperature test at load with the cpu fan removed? I'd like to see how hot these things get running passive.

[charged3800z24]

The Asus model is Passive, not ITX, but still

[WhiteFireDragon]

i'm using this new asrock zacate board as i type. it seems a little more sluggish in my WHS box than the atom D525 with ion2 setup. maybe because the atom had higher clock speed (1.8ghz atom vs 1.6ghz zacate) and atom had 4 threads vs 2 threads? youtube videos were definitely worst on the zacate than the atom. since this is just a WHS box, it doesn't matter much, but maybe for daily usage or HTPC, this is unacceptable for youtube videos. there's so much stuttering it's unwatchable in 1080p full screen. anyone else with this experience? i seriously thought this zacate platform would blow atom away, but this is not the case. the atom D525 board was only $80

[Johnny87au]

i'm using this new asrock zacate board as i type. it seems a little more sluggish in my WHS box than the atom D525 with ion2 setup. maybe because the atom had higher clock speed (1.8ghz atom vs 1.6ghz zacate) and atom had 4 threads vs 2 threads? youtube videos were definitely worst on the zacate than the atom. since this is just a WHS box, it doesn't matter much, but maybe for daily usage or HTPC, this is unacceptable for youtube videos. there's so much stuttering it's unwatchable in 1080p full screen. anyone else with this experience? i seriously thought this zacate platform would blow atom away, but this is not the case. the atom D525 board was only $80

exactly what i've been getting at this past 2 months.. How's dvd playback @ 1080p??

[Manicdan]

i just did some testing,
one video used about 5% of my gpu and 0% of my cpu
and the other uses none of my gpu, and about 10% of my cpu, so i set affinity to once cpu, and it was about 60% of 3.8ghz, but that was when viewing "original"

most videos should be stressing the gpu and not the cpu, so im thinking a few driver issues?
you can use AOD to check the gpu usage, while using the performance monitor (its under the task manager) to see the cpu usage
im curious which is being maxed out. and what movie examples did you use?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ5U8suTUw0
^ dark knight trailer was the one that would use gpu at 1080p, and cpu at original (2560p)
and you can even right click the video and see the info and it tells you weather its software rendering or hardware accelerated rendering.

[charged3800z24]

i'm using this new asrock zacate board as i type. it seems a little more sluggish in my WHS box than the atom D525 with ion2 setup. maybe because the atom had higher clock speed (1.8ghz atom vs 1.6ghz zacate) and atom had 4 threads vs 2 threads? youtube videos were definitely worst on the zacate than the atom. since this is just a WHS box, it doesn't matter much, but maybe for daily usage or HTPC, this is unacceptable for youtube videos. there's so much stuttering it's unwatchable in 1080p full screen. anyone else with this experience? i seriously thought this zacate platform would blow atom away, but this is not the case. the atom D525 board was only $80

I don't think it is clock speed. What version of Flash you running? Driver maturity may also take care of some issues also. The only review I have read so far showed Zacate doing rather well.

[Roman2K]

About YouTube videos stuttering, AnandTech touched on the subject in their review of the E-350 (page 4, last paragraphs) and have got good news from Adobe:

I took my concerns to AMD and was told that this was a known issue with Brazos and Flash 10.1 and that 10.2 should alleviate the issue. AMD then supplied me with an unreleased version of Flash 10.2 to allow me to verify its claims. While 1080p playback improved with AMD’s 10.2 beta, it wasn’t perfect (although it was very close). AMD wouldn’t tell me the cause of the problem but it’s currently working on it with Adobe. At the end of the day I don’t believe it’s a dealbreaker, but early Brazos adapters should expect some stuttering when playing back 1080p YouTube videos. Note that 720p and lower resolution videos were perfectly smooth on Brazos.

In order to visualize CPU and GPU activity in a more convenient way, AMD recently released a new utility: AMD System Monitor.

[Manicdan]

About YouTube videos stuttering, AnandTech touched on the subject in their review of the E-350 (page 4, last paragraphs) and have got good news from Adobe:


In order to visualize CPU and GPU activity in a more convenient way, AMD recently released a new utility: AMD System Monitor.

cool thanks, using it now, and i just wish it had more options for like how long the history is

[Darakian]

This might be an odd request, but can you do a quick check to see if snes9x runs (your totally legit copy of) donkey kong country? :p

[EniGmA1987]

You have to remember, there were lots of performance slides and stuff showing Zacate having much better GPU power than an atom + ion setup, but the cpu power was less than atom.

[cdawall]

first point is just a small but annoying thing. the power LED pins do not work when connected, so i have no idea when the computer is powered on. i'm not sure if i got just this one defective mobo, or if all of them are like that. other is the biggest issue i have: some youtube videos are not watchable with these new APU. in non HD, it might be ok, but 1080p and some 720p full screen has extreme stuttering. although overall, zacate is faster than atoms and better has a HTPC, my atom does not stutter as bad on youtube. this one downfall of not being able to play all youtube videos probably ruins it for me

hmmm not to hot of a newegg review but its also a newegg review...

[chew*]

I was just going to say I've been dying to play with mine and i just got an email notification for shipping info woot.

[demonkevy666]

hhhmmm will this be faster then a sempron 140 and a 790 GX board ?

[Johnny87au]

hhhmmm will this be faster then a sempron 140 and a 790 GX board ?

Well it falls bit short of a Athlon II