Welcome to 2011 and the re-birth of DecryptedTech.com. It has been a few months since I have written anything for this site; but then again there has been a lot going on. Instead or rehashing the dram and details let’s just dive right back in and kick things off with a review. For our return to the “living” we thought we would take a look at something fairly new. For years now Intel has ruled the low power CPU market (at least in the x86 space). Sure Via has had the Nano and AMD has had their version (the name of which escapes me), but for the most part if you wanted low power and you wanted x86 you were getting an Atom. Well things might be turning around as we find a new system offering from AMD. This is the Fusion CPU that we have all heard some much about (and some of us have been waiting for). The Fusion is an idea that puts a CPU in combination with a GPU much like the new Sandy Bridge CPUs but at the entry level. AMD refers to the whole package as an APU (accelerated processing unit). As we said these combine the power of a CPU and a GPU to get the best of both worlds. One of the first boards to hit the market from this family is the Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3. This features the AMD E-350 APU. The E-250 is a Dual Core CPU running at 1.8GHz. It also features 80 Radeon Cores that run at 492MHz. This APU consumes only 18 Watts of power and still has room to support DX11. In all not a bad place to start for a new HTPC motherboard; so let’s dive in and see what else you get in our first preview of 2011.
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The Box and Goodies-
The box for the E350N-USB3 is very similar to what we have seen from Gigabyte before. They like their badges and logos. Here the real estate is slim but the look is still fairly clean.
One of the big items on the front is the DX11 logo this is letting you know you are getting that support with this board. Of course it remains to be seen just how good this support is, but still it is there.
The back of the box goes into some additional detail about the AMD APU (E-350 with the HD 6310 GPU). It also talks about the Dual BIOS, Auto Green, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 and the 3X USB power. These last three make up the 333 that Gigabyte talks about.
Once you get the box open you see the manual right on top obscuring your view of the E350N. This is easily resolved though and you can get a good look at what Gigabyte has included in the box. In keeping with the entry level push the included accessories are very basic. You get a pair of Blue SATA cables, an I/O plate, the drivers DVD, a pair of manuals and a single Dolby Sticker.
