Asus E35M1-M Pro Review: a look at AMD's Fusion platform

Market segments netbooks and nettops have greatly increased in recent years and with it a whole new wave of computing platforms compact and energy efficient. Although this may seem like a relatively new idea, it really isn't.

VIA Technologies that you will remember as one of the leading producers of motherboard chipset from yesteryear started pushing the concept long ago, the development of Mini-ITX standard in the process. It has now been a decade since they have released the first draft for a motherboard ITX promote C3 processor low power purchased from Centaur Technology.

The first VIA EPIA boards were sold in 2002 with the Eden processor. Although the VIA EPIA boards were very efficient in terms of space, many have claimed that they were too expensive for the computing power that have provided.

VIA has struggled with the technology for six years, until June 2008, when Intel started to notice the emerging market of low power. The chip giant has introduced a line of Mini-ITX motherboards using their Atom processor, taking a huge leap forward from VIA C3 and C7 offers. In addition, the atom was the key to making the form factor that is valid for use in personal computers.

It is true that the Atom processors were still rather slow from desktop standard controlled by quad-core CPU time, but have allowed manufacturers like Asus to build highly successful line of Eee netbooks and dozens if not hundreds of systems of low power, low cost which followed behind. The initial "diamondville, Wyoming" atom architecture suffered from some shortcomings, as it was based on 945 G elderly for most of its features, including the graphics engine.

Intel released at the end of the architecture "pineview" late last year, which has moved the memory controller and the GMA 3150 graphics engine on the processor. Still, both the Atom CPU and GMA 3150 lacked power and consequently producers like Asrock who wanted to build more powerful HTPC dedicated systems rely on Nvidia Ion add-on for graphics.

Historically, AMD has been known to offer the best integrated graphics in the business, yet they've just dabbled in low-power netbook and nettop arenas. Now about three years after the release of the Intel Atom, AMD is taking the shot in this exciting market segment.

AMD Fusion is the marketing name for a series of APUs (accelerated processing unit) that are supposedly in development since 2006. The final design is the result of the merger of AMD with ATI, combining General processor execution and processing of 3D geometry and other features of modern GPUS in a single chips.

Ultrathin AMD platform, code-named "Brazos" was introduced on January 5, 2011 as the company's fourth mobile platform, targeting the ultraportable notebook market. Features of 40nm AMD Ontario APU, a 9-watt chips for netbooks and small form factor desktop and Zacate, APU 18-watt for ultrathin, mainstream and value notebook and desktop.

Both versions of low power APU carry two Bobcat x 86 Core System-on-chip, support for DirectX, DirectCompute 11 (Microsoft programming interface for GPU computing) and OpenCL (cross-platform programming interface standard for multi-core x 86 and GPU-accelerated computing). Both also include dedicated UVD hardware acceleration for HD video, including 1080p resolutions.

Motherboard Asus E35M1-M Pro that we're testing today is, of course, an implementation of the platform AMD Fusion/Brazos that packs a processor AMD dual core Zacate 18W (formally known as the APU and-350), graphical support for these standards along with SATA and USB 3.0 6 Gb/s, making for a relatively inexpensive at $ 140. Read on ...