AMD Fusion benchmarks emerge

Benchmarks have begun to emerge which point to the performance of AMD’s low-end Fusion ‘Brazos’ APUs sitting between the first and second generation Nvidia ION offerings.

French website blogeee.net benchmarked a variety of common netbooks based on technology from Intel’s previous generation Intel Atoms with integrated graphics and Atom with Nvidia ION first and second generation as well as the AMD Zacate E-350 and Brazos C-30 and C-50 APUs.

Using 3D Mark 2006, the site’s results show an expected gulf in performance with the Intel Atom CPU + integrated GMA graphics failing to hit even 200 Marks while the Atom N330 + Nvdia ION managed 1,555 Marks.

The two Brazos based cores outperformed the first-generation Nvidia ION slightly with the Zacate E-350 pulling considerably ahead to 2,251 Marks.

However the Intel Atom D525 + ION 2 as benchmarked in an Asus 1215N netbook, managed 2,480 Marks. While the failure to outperform the older Nvidia ION 2 was surprising, the site did say that battery performance of the AMD APU range may be the ace in the hole.

If AMD Fusion APU-equipped netbooks can at least manage 3D games and still offer 6+ hours of battery life then that’s a considerable selling point.