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Sometimes I've been thinking about the AMD E-350 CPU + Mobo combos available today. Heading over to Tigerdirect.com I saw only one product and it costs $150. Now I suppose you can get something cheaper but probably not by much. The thing is, if I were to buy an E-350 I would obviously evaluate my other options as anyone else probably would. You can easily get an Athlon II X2 255 for $65 and a respectable AM3 board for something like $100, which puts the grand total to $165. For just $15 more, the Athlon II system will be much faster, be far more upgradeable (6-core anytime you feel like it), have more expansion options (adding a fast video card can later make sense if you buy a faster CPU, which is somewhat a waste of money with the E-350 with its low performance), have support for faster memory speeds (and probably with more DIMM sockets too), etc. To its credit, the E-350 system will probably have USB 3.0 ports and lower power consumption. I know the E-350 has found a home in many HTPC systems, but the E-350 board here is also a microATX model like many AM3 boards and would have as much trouble fitting inside smaller cases if aesthetics matter very much to you. Also, some may argue that you don't really need a fast processor and great graphics for HTPC systems, but the Athlon II does offer the possibility of gaming on that nice 42" LCD TV someday, or if you want, use that system for other purposes other than as an HTPC.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=7172

So will it be E-350? Or Athlon II X2? Low power consumption is good, but adding $15 more for the Athlon II and getting much better performance makes the E-350 look quite a bit less compelling even if sips less power and has USB 3.0 (does it matter so much with a system that is meant for light workloads anyway?). And remember, we're talking about the AMD alternative here. There are Intel alternatives as well which are perhaps more power efficient than the Athlon II X2.

I'd go for the X2 unless low power is more important than flexibility. To me right now the X2's are some of the best deals for HTPC's. The CPU is more than powerful enough to do a HTPC and you can game on it. Yet it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. And the money saved will allow you get a discrete that's more powerful than what would be in the E-350.

I say go for the AII. The E350 will probably struggle to some extent with any high rez video that can't be hardware accelerated. Power savings is not really a practical concern unless your electric rates are way high and your system is on nearly 24/7. An AII can be pretty low power if you go with an IGP board anyway.

The E-350 PCIe slot is also electrically an x4 slot and will inhibit video card performance.

That is not a good price for the E-350 board in question. At Newegg is is only $120. And you can get the microATX ASRock board with USB 3.0 for $110, albeit without the larger passive heatsink for the processor.

AnandTech did an article on the E-350 which has some testing against the Athlon II X2. In a nutshell, the Athlon is *much* faster. I have an E-350 running an always-on server for me. And it has plenty of power and very low power usage. It will pay for itself in electric bills over the next year or two compared to the older, slower system it replaced. But unless power is your concern, the Athlon II is the way to go -- if you are just comparing the two.

For extremely tight budget gaming, I'd go with an Athlon II X3 455 or Phenom II X4 840. You can get a very basic AM3+ motherboard like this one from MSI for $75AR. (And can even get that MB with a combo deal including a Phenom II X4 955 Black which has some overclocking capacity.) But you are talking about $195 for the combo...which is $75 or $85 more than the E-350 above. Of course, you'd need a graphics card with that motherboard.

On the Intel side, the i3-2100T might just be a dual core processor, but it compares favorably in many benchmarks to the quad-core Athlon II and Phenom II chips. And has lower power usable and serviceable graphics ability for an HTPC.

Mantis is correct.

The E-350 is a good board for an HTPC, where lower TDP is useful. It will do fine for Blu-Ray and video playback, as well as surfing on the big screen.

It's also good for a net-top system for a family member, who wants a small box that takes up little space, for basic tasks (surfing, word processing, etc.) as it has everything you'd need other than the RAM, storage, case, and power supply.

If you're gaming, the Athlon II X2 is a much better choice, though I'd probably say the Phenom II isn't that much more, and you get a bit more out of it. You'll need a basic graphics card for best results (an 890GX chipset mainboard would have onboard graphics, but not really up to gaming standards), but you would no matter what.

Unless your idea of games is running MAME, in which case an E-350 board would be great as a combination HTPC/basic console-game machine.