AMD Fusion products have been out for a little while now, but there have hardly been any reviews. I imagine that the problem is that the hardware companies haven't been sending any samples, but these products have been available for buying for a couple of weeks. Are there no web sites that actually go out and buy the products people buy and review them? Do they all count only on having review samples sent to them? I'm sure the bigger sites could afford to spend an occasional $500 to buy something for review.
Well, AMD has historically been really tight with samples. You can call them cheap, or stupid or just too poor, but the fact is not many websites (except for a chosen few) get AMD samples. As far as Tech ARP goes, we are still a hobby site. No way we make enough to buy samples. Those that we do buy will definitely get reviewed. But frankly speaking, I'm not big on AMD processors right now. It's not that I'm an Intel fan boy, but AMD hasn't delivered a decent desktop or mobile competitor against Intel since the Athlon 64 days.
Have you checked some tech blogs? I saw the one in Engadget about the Fusion. It's a pretty all-in-one system there.
I saw a few reports of performance on blogs and forums, but was really looking for in depth benchmarks, like Anandtech does. Adrian, I'm not complaining about Tech ARP, but I'm sure that sites like Anandtech or Tom's Hardware can spare the money for an independent review. As for AMD CPU's, I agree they haven't been very competitive. AMD prices them so that they're reasonably competitive for the price, but it hasn't had any CPU's in the high end for a while. Still, the new Fusion CPU's are competition in the netbook arena, which is why they're interesting.
A search of the AMD Fusion through Google gives only preliminary benchmarks on that system. I believe this netbook is the only review specimen there. Unfortunately, AMD isn't generous about their samples right now. We don't even know why.
Thanks for the link. Anandtech and KitGuru also reviewed some desktop E-350 systems, so at least there's some information about that. Bjorn3D reported getting a mini-ITX sample board, too, but it was defective. (And it's strange that Bjorn3D got one, since it is quite a small site). I'd love to see some benchmark of the C-50. I almost bought an Acer AO522 with this chip. (Only reason I didn't is that I tried to order it from a Canadian store and have a relative bring it, and the store didn't want to accept my non-Canadian credit card.)
No, I understand where you are coming from. I can't speak for the big boys, but it's possible that they may have all the samples they want that they may feel that there is no need to spend money to buy their own samples. Yes, that's all that they have been doing unfortunately. Pricing their processors cheaply and tacking on extra cores to make up for their subpar performance. AMD needs a paradigm shift in processor design, not just minor upgrades.
