Performance
The Toshiba Satellite C655 review was our first look at AMD’s Fusion processors, but that laptop was powered by the E-240, a single-core variant with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz. The CPU performance was somewhat better than Intel’s Atom, which was disappointing. The integrated graphics were reasonably quick, but they can’t do everything on their own. This resulted in a generally sluggish feel and choppy playback of high-resolution Youtube videos.
While the E-350 in the Sony Vaio Y is an architecturally similar beast, it ups the ante by including two cores instead of one and cranking the clock speed up to 1.6 GHz. The integrated graphics are essentially identical to those found on the E-240, but that’s no complaint. I’m hoping that the combination of a dual-core processor with the already powerful graphics will provide a better-rounded package. Let’s find out.
There aren’t any surprises to be found here. The performance of the dual-core E-350 is about twice that of the single-core E-240 in nearly every category on every benchmark with the exception of Memory Bandwidth, where we see just a slight improvement.
The real match-up to watch here isn’t the E-240 powered Toshiba Satellite C655, but rather the ASUS Eee PC 1201N. That netbook, reviewed by PC Perspective nearly a year ago, carried a dual-core Atom 330 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. The Sony Vaio Y essentially tied the older ASUS across the board. That’s a bit disappointing. Remember, AMD was claiming that these APUs were going to provide “90 of mainstream performance” in a very tight power envelope. They’ve achieved the tight power envelop, but the processor performance seems little better than Atom, a processor introduced three years ago that has had only minor performance revisions since.
Perhaps the performance picture is better in our general synthetic and application benchmarks.
Unfortunately, we no longer have the Atom powered ASUS Eee PC 1201N as a point of comparison, as it pre-dates our usage of these benchmarks in laptop reviews. Our best point of comparison is the Lenovo U260, a recent ultraportable powered by a first-generation Intel Core i3 CULV processor – and the Toshiba Satellite C655, of course.
As you can see, the additional core and slight clock speed increase substantially improves performance across the board. The E-350 proved a great boon to the 7-Zip benchmark, in which the Sony Vaio Y doubled the score of the Toshiba. The E-350 also enjoyed smaller but still significant victories in Peacekeeper, PCMark Vantage and Truecrypt.
However, there is also a large gap between the performance of the Sony Vaio Y and the other laptops available for comparison. The Lenovo U260’s 1.33 GHz Core i3 processor trounces the Sony Vaio Y across the board. This simply reaffirms what the SiSoft Sandra benchmarks told us; this is not mainstream processor performance, even by ultraportable standards.
Now is the E-350’s time to shine, however; we’re moving on the gaming benchmarks.
Normally I’d expect two laptops with identical graphics processors to offer very similar graphics performance. The only other component that might have a significant impact on performance is the processor. While the performance the Radeon graphics integrated into the Toshiba Satellite C655 was impressive, I suspected they were being held back by the single-core processor. As you can see from the benchmarks above, this was the case.
The extra processing core we good for an extra 300 points in 3DMark 06, and a few extra frames in both Just Cause 2 and Defense Grid: The Awakening. Far Cry 2 saw the biggest improvement, with the E-350 in the Sony Vaio Y nearly doubling the E-240. Of all the gaming benchmarks, Far Cry 2 is the most demanding on processor performance, so it’s little surprise that its performance would be much improved.
Still, these results are a bit short of what is required to play modern 3D games. The Sony Vaio Y is perfectly adequate for older titles like Defense Grid: The Awakening, but games like Far Cry 2 are only going to be playable if you knock the resolution far below the display’s native capability and set most of the details to low. Although the fact that this would even be playable represents as significant improvement over what netbook hardware used to be capable of, it’s hard to be excited.
In the Toshiba Satellite C655 review I took the unusual step of looking at the laptop’s high-definition Youtube video performance. While HD flash video playback isn’t much of a problem for most modern laptops, it’s still something netbooks struggle with, and that included the Toshiba. Does the additional core put the Sony Vaio Y over the top?
As you can see, these results are much better than what we received from the E-240. The extra core gets rid of the occasional frame stuttering that was evident when playing 720p video on the single-core Fusion variant. 1080p video is still unpleasant, but at least playable.
Let’s wrap things up by looking at boot and resume times.
Sony stuffs several pieces of bloatware on the Sony Vaio Y, including an annoying dock that appears at the top of the display and a trial version of Norton antivirus that’s eager to remind you about the dangers of going without a security suite. Despite this, the laptop booted in 38 seconds – nearly 20 seconds quicker than the Toshiba Satellite C655. In fact, the Sony Vaio Y boots quicker than the Core i3 CULV powered Lenovo U260. Resume times weren’t as impressive, however; the Sony Vaio Y’s average resume time of 30 seconds is slower than any other laptop we’ve recently reviewed.
This (and all other) articles
This (and all other) articles are not rendering properly on Firefox 4. I am using Ubuntu btw so not sure about FF4 on Windows.
Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/3ZBju
As you can see, everything is aligned WAY to the right.
Not for me sir. FF4 displays
Not for me sir. FF4 displays correctly: I’ll show my add-ons because I bet that’s whats causing your issue.
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/9476/unledto.jpg
Do me a favor and try hitting
Do me a favor and try hitting Ctrl+0 and see what happens.
I tried hitting Ctrl+0 but
I tried hitting Ctrl+0 but nothing changed.
I can confirm that things are broken for me (as shown in screenshot above) on FF4 + Ubuntu but are working on FF4 + Windows. I also tried disabling all the extensions but that did not fix it.
For now, I am viewing articles using Chrome which shows everything correctly.
Okay, I haven’t tested under
Okay, I haven’t tested under Linux, thanks.
Am I the only one who thinks
Am I the only one who thinks that the pathetic HDD score might represent a non-cosmetic design issue of Sony’s.
Not necessarily a design error or anything – I mean, it’s not like the drive suddenly failed mid test – but (very) generally speaking, HDD performance normally increases with density.
Here however, the faster machine’s 500GB HDD score much lower than even comparatively hobbled C655D’s 320GB drive.
Bottleneck by design? Sub-par HDD? Was there just THAT much bloatware?
Interesting question; I’ll
Interesting question; I’ll have Matt post a reply.
I’d love to have a definitive
I’d love to have a definitive answer for this, but I don’t. It isn’t something I looking further into during my time with the machine, and that time is now over.
I do not believe it to be a bloatware problem. Bloatware still hurts boot times, but generally doesn’t heard performance once booted. Although I suppose a bloatware antivirus could kick in at the wrong time and skew a benchmark.
FF 4 seems to have issues in
FF 4 seems to have issues in general.
I’ve got a Thinkpad X120e, I
I’ve got a Thinkpad X120e, I ordered it with an E-350, 2Gb RAM, a 320Gb 7200RPM drive, plus the extended battery, in one of those Gottadeal specials for $349. I added 2Gb, and a 128Gb SSD from one of the Newegg deals, and got out for $529 total.
Performance is actually quite good, most day to day things are really drive IO limited, at least for perception. 720p works fine, the little trackpoint nubbin actually is really nice on something this small, to the point I wish they’d just not have the trackpad. Battery life is a solid 5 hours when on power optimized mode. The keyboard is very good, not “for a notbook”, just good, better than most island keyboards.
Quibbles, backlighted keyboard, it’s not the only one, I just think it should be standard. The plastic isn’t as solid as a Tseries, the Google CR48 coating is fantastic, it’s trackpad is better too, but overall its a slow POS, terrible OS, but those two thinks would be nice to steal. HiCap batter sticks out the back, and it’s a bit thick, really that’s about it. I really like it.
I’ve got a 2008 MBP that I still use as a main laptop, the trackpad just works, that’s the killer app for me, and the Thinkpad isn’t noticeably slower than the 2.6ghz C2D, mostly because apple used a SATA I connector, so getting faster than a 7200 drive doesn’t make that much difference, I still may throw an old 64Gb SSD in it for kicks. My wife has a 11″ macbook air, and the thinkpad and it run neck and neck. Sexiness isn’t a comparison, but for actually use and travel it’s fundamentally just as portable and performs the same. For a full time ultraportable I’d probably go X220, or just bite the bullet on a 15″ MBP. I new white macbook with a core i3 mobile, would be compelling too, only add a pound, bigger screen and stay at $999. But overall it kicks the crap out of any Atom system.
The Sony version is not bad either, neighbor has one, but loading a fresh copy of windows on an SSD is key, and the trackpad is awful, but only apple and oddly Google have gotten that right at this point. I’d like to see one with a non customer replaceable battery, a la macs, just go get it slim and sexy, while keeping the price under $700, that might be pretty killer. But then you get into the price of something like a Thinkpad E220, so pay more get more.
I own sony vaio and i just
I own sony vaio and i just love it……
I think it would be second most loved brand after apple….
Sony BDP-N460
Am I the only one who
Am I the only one who *prefers* a smaller trackpad? The bigger they are, the easier they are to bump when typing. Just increase the sensitivity option, and it’s perfect (aside from the cheap noisy plastic buttons). The huge trackpad size (and lack of sensitivity) on my MacBook makes it unusable IMO.
One thing the Fusions have over the Atoms is the max. ram capacity – 8gb works fine in the Sony (aside from Windows being a 32-bit version).
AFAICT, the Vaio is the only readily-available E-350 processor-based netbook in Australia at this time. I couldn’t find anything with more grunt than this in a smaller and lighter form-factor available off-the-shelf.
Also not don’t see the problem you describe with the viewing angle. Must only be an issue under very bright natural light?
And 29fps on YouTube is “uncomfortable”? Aren’t most videos there 24fps or less? This review seems too harsh…
Cons:
– No shortcut/switch to control wireless/bluetooth.
– Not Bluetooth 3
– legacy VGA port instead of something more useful (eg. firewire/esata)
– slow HDD
– bad mouse buttons.
Pros: closest thing to meeting my requirements I could easily find in a store.
The hinge cover area at the
The hinge cover area at the back is very weak. The hinge cover on one side broke off as I put the laptop into my bag. It has exposed the circuit board for the on/off switch.
Also once you have one or two apps open it is glacially slow. I have gotten rid of all the Sony Bloatware and even close down the virus checker in standalone mode.
It takes FOREVER to open a folder with lots of contents, open a new application.
Can’t wait to get rid of it.
My old single core netbook outperformed this.
By the way … you can see
By the way … you can see the weak point in the hinge in the photo of the back that shows the green power on light in the review above. See how it is not quite aligned with the back of the body? That can catch on things and break the two little plastic pins that hold the two halves together and then it will rip off when you put the ‘puter in a bag.
Perhaps the flimsiness of these thin plastic pieces should have been discovered in the review. You can wobble them around with light finger pressure.
The hinge cover area at the
The hinge cover area at the back is very weak. The hinge cover on ones side broke off as I put the laptop into my bag. It has exposed the circuit board for the on/off switch. The plastic is thin, not well connected to the chassis and has two little plastic pins that work as a snap together.
Have a feel of the area around the hinges … it is really thin and fragile
Also once you have one or two apps open it is glacially slow. I have gotten rid of all the Sony Bloatware and even close down the virus checker in standalone mode.
It takes FOREVER to open a folder with lots of contents.
Can’t wait to get rid of it.
id like to know if this
id like to know if this laptop is good for games.For example games like diablo and minecraft.