Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 APU Mainboard Review

Testing:

To test the Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 APU Mainboard I will be running a series of synthetic and video based benchmarks designed to push the limits of the hardware. I will then be placing the scores up against two other mini ITX boards one with an Atom dual core CPU and one with an Intel Celeron SU2300 to see how the APU stacks up against current comparison offerings. To keep all tests fair, all hardware will be run at their stock speeds, latencies, voltages, etc. This way, there is no outside interference messing with the scores and comparisons.

Testing Setup:

• Processor: AMD Dual Core E350 APU
• Motherboard: Sapphire PURE Fusion Mini E350
• Memory: 2x 2GB Mushkin DDR3 1066MHz SODIMM
• Video Card: Integrated AMD Radeon HD 6130 Graphics Processor
• Power Supply: Mushkin XP-800AP 800w PSU
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 750GB SATA
• Optical Drive: LG DVD+/-RW
• Case: In Win Dragon Slayer mATX Case
• OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Comparison:

• Comparison Board #1: Zotac IONITX-P-E Motherboard
• Comparison Board #2: ASUS AT3IONT-I Deluxe

Overclocking:

Overclocked Settings:

The Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 did not have any overclocking abilities in the BIOS and none of the utilities that I tried would work to overclock this particular board. While not a downfall, this will eliminate the overclocking section from this review.

Benchmarks:

• Scientific & Data:

1. Apophysis
2. WinRAR
3. Geekbench
4. Office 2007
5. POV Ray 3.7
6. PCMark Vantage Professional
7. Sandra XII
8. ScienceMark 2.02
9. Cinebench 10
10. Cinebench 11.5
11. HD Tune 4.60

• Video:

1. Far Cry 2
2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
3. Batman Arkham Asylum
4. 3DMark 06 Professional
5. 3DMark Vantage