Foxconn AMD Fusion NT-A3500 Nettop Review

1. Introduction2. Foxconn AMD Fusion NT-A3500 Nettop3. Testing Methodology and Bios4. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra5. Synthetic: PCMark Vantage6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: Aida 648. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Real World: BluRay Playback with Cyberlink PowerDVD10. Real World: Flash HD Performance11. Real World: File Copying with Kingston HyperX Max 3.012. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink Media Espresso13. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.014. Gaming: Left4Dead 2 720p15. Gaming: Resident Evil 516. Technical: Acoustics Performance17. Technical: Thermal Dynamics18. Technical: Power Consumption19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

We don't often review many Foxconn related products but today we are looking at their new mini PC which is based around AMD's successful Fusion platform. Foxconn are a massive manufacturing organisation who produce many goods for leading tech companies such as Apple.

Their NT-A3500 is based around an ultra slim form factor with Direct X 11 graphics support and 1080p high definition playback capabilities. Ideal for a media system in a bedroom? Read on to find out more.

Foxconn say that the A3500 is twice the speed of the previous NT-330i model it replaces and the current model also consumes 6 watts less power.

Stephen Ling The Managing Director for Foxconn, Western Europe said “Using the full capabilities of the AMD APU has allowed Foxconn to build a Nettop with twice the performance of its predecessor , reduce power consumption and keep it all within our extremely popular ultra-small form factor. The advances in technology are allowing people to benefit from using tiny computers in more and more applications.”

The Foxconn A3500 Nettop we received for review was a ‘bare bones' unit. This means it isn't supplied with a hard drive, memory or operating system. It is therefore up to the user to get the extra parts and to install their own operating system.

The bundle we received included a power adapter and cable, Software and driver disc. There was also a stand for the product, and some cable converters and magnetic ‘anti slip' feet.

The unit is protected inside bubble wrap.

Foxconn also supply a mounting bracket which is used to attach the product to the back of a screen.

Above left you can see the A3500 with the mounting bracket attached. The front panel offers a headphone and microphone jack, a media card slot, two high speed USB 3.0 ports and a reset and power button. There is also a small speaker included.

Above left, the mounting bracket attached, from the underside. The rear panel offers Wireless connectivity, 4 USB 2.0 ports, DVI and HDMI out, and a gigabit lan connector for networking demands. There is an audio out port at the right, next to the power connector.

With such a small chassis design, air flow is critical and both side panels are vented to ensure adequate cooling capabilities.

The finish is really very attractive, the piano black helps give the appearance of an expensive product. Sadly, it is also a fingerprint magnet and we had to clean the chassis everytime we touched it.

No, this is not a Photoshop edit. To give an indication of just how reflective and shiny the surface is, we forced our SLR to focus on the reflected surface (above).

If you don't want to mount the A3500 behind a screen, or vertically with the supplied stand, there are magnetic feet which attach to the underside. This prevents any slipping on smooth surfaces.

As we mentioned earlier, this is a barebones system, so we had to add a 2.5 inch hard drive and some memory to get the system fully operational. We used a 320GB Western Digital Scorpio (7,200rpm) hard drive and 2GB (SO-DIMM) 1333mhz DDR3.

The Foxconn NT-A3500 bios is a rather simple design and it doesn't offer much in the way of fine tuning. The Asus E35M1-I Deluxe Fusion board is by far the best when it comes to overclocking and tuning options.

To test the Fusion platform today, we are using a wide selection of real world and synthetic tests, clearly labeled. If you are only interested in video quality and hardware performance we advise you to shift forward in the review to the real world and image quality sections.

We also felt it would be interesting to compare some of our findings against the Intel Atom platform, in the shape of the 1.8GHz D525 processor. We have also included results from a previous generation AMD Turion 64 X2 L510 clocked at 1.6ghz.

Foxconn NT-A3500 System:
CPU/GPU: AMD Zacate APU – E350 (HD6310 graphics)
Memory: 2GB DDR3 1333mhz
Hard Drive: Western Digital 320GB Scorpio (7,200 rpm)

Supplemental Hardware:
Solid State: Kingston Hyper Max 3.0 x 2
Optical: Asus USB 2.0 BluRay Drive
Monitors: Sharp 50 inch 1080p Aquos LCD TV, LaCie 730 (IQ testing) and Dell U2410

Comparison processors:
Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
Turion X64 X2 L510 @ 1.6ghz

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit
Aida 64
SiSoft Sandra
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cyberlink Media Espresso
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra V10
PCMark Vantage
PCMark 7
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
Left4Dead
Resident Evil 5

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter

All results are gained from multiple test runs to ensure any abnormalities are removed before publication.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

A solid set of results for the Foxconn Fusion powered A3500 – generating the highest scores and significantly more than the Atom D525 system.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

The results are pretty much in line with previous Fusion system tests built around the same hardware configuration.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

PCMark 7 results are fairly positive, considering the low power Fusion platform design.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Performance is in line with what we have seen with prior Fusion system tests.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The Foxconn A3500 trails slightly behind the Turion X64 X2 L510 system thanks to the superior dual channel memory performance. The Atom D525 is firmly in last place in this test.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of TRON LEGACY.

The Foxconn system generally requires 5-6 percent less CPU time than the D525 when playing hardware accelerated BluRay content. It wouldn't really be that big a deal in the real world, but it does show the added efficiency thanks to the superior APU architecture. The Atom D525, with the highest clock speed delivers the worst overall result.

The CPU overhead is low enough to support multitasking when playing back high definition content.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

The recent driver and program updates have helped lower CPU demand when playing back demanding flash related content. Again the increases are only a few percent less overhead, but it still is beneficial, especially under specific multitasking circumstances.

We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and 2.0 speed, so we used the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB, which is an Toshiba based SSD product within a USB 3.0 capable enclosure. We used an OCZ 240gb Vertex 3 drive as the internal unit.

We copied a 3.9GB MKV file to and from the Kingston HyperX USB 3.0 drive.

USB 3.0 performance is fantastic, peaking around 180 MB/s when reading data from the USB 3.0 product.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are focusing on the CPU efficiency with this test. The latest version of this program has some optimisations for the newest hardware.

The latest version of Espresso has enhanced the results for the Fusion hardware, dropping the time to 1 hour and 3 minutes. In the past we have tested the same hardware, and it was closer to 1 hour and 10 minutes. The ATOM D525 trails in last place, around 8 minutes slower than the AMD APU.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evaluate motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on BluRay. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content, so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Foxconn A3500
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	3
Bridge Traffic	3
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	2
Ferris Wheel	3
Skin Tones	7
Total	179

This Foxconn system delivers high quality video output. This is a great indication that the Fusion platform is a wise choice for media playback.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

We are tesing at 720p with settings on high. AA is disabled. We selected some of the more intensive ingame sections to rate performance.

The game runs well at these settings. It is certainly no gaming powerhouse, but casual gaming at lower HD resolutions is possible, if the engine isn't demanding.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh instalment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best-selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Testing this game in Direct X 9 mode with AA disabled shows that it is playable at 720p. Decent results for such a low power solution.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Foxconn A3500 impresses us. In a quiet room it can barely be heard, unless it is close to the ear. It peaks at around 33 dBa when gaming. Due to the chassis design the fan noise is muted thanks to the positioning of the vents. This could be used in a bedroom without disturbing the occupants.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together. We included results from a diode which we placed beside the motherboard and the exhaust fan. Room ambient temperatures were 23c.

The Fusion products run very cool, and even in such a tiny, confined space, there are no problems even under extended load.

To test power consumption today we are using a Kill A Watt power meter. We loaded the system with some games and measured results at both full load and idle.

Foxconn claim that this system consumes around 28-30 watts when playing back HD content, which was close to our own test results. It is one of the most efficient little computers we have ever tested and peaks under 40 watts load. An incredible result and ideal for 24/7 use as a home server.

The Fusion platform has impressed us this year. The mixture of solid overall performance and miniscule power drain is a heady combination for a high definition media center or server. A system like this can be left on 24/7 and not add much to the overall electricity bill … always a major concern within today's delicate economic climate.

The Foxconn NT-A3500 Nettop is a pleasure to use and the design of the chassis is very appealing. The ‘bare bones' approach appeals to us, because you aren't being forced to pay extra cash for a slow, second grade hard drive. You can slot in your own large mechanical 2.5 inch drive, or super fast solid state drive, depending on your demands.

When compared to the Atom processor, AMD have clearly got the edge right now. Their systems are demanding less power and offering higher performance for a similar amount of money. We have reviewed many Fusion boards in recent months, but the Foxconn NT-A3500 is certainly a special product. Not only can you mount the complete system behind a screen or TV, but there is a dedicated ‘vertical' stand for it, or it can be used in a traditional horizontal configuration next to a bed, for minimal physical footprint.

Foxconn might not be well known as a ‘system maker', but they have many years experience building products for companies such as Apple, so their pedigree is really not in question. The only negative with this particular product is that the chassis is a magnet for fingerprints. We only had to touch it once, for dust and fingerprints to appear, so keep a polishing cloth at hand.

Pricing for the barebones unit will be £175 inc vat. Factor in a decent mechanical hard drive and some DDR3 memory and you are looking at £250-£300 inc vat total. We have been told that ‘pre-configured' units will be on sale shortly and we will append this page when we have confirmed pricing information.

Pros:

• Great performance for the price
• cool running
• Ideal for 1080p playback and 24/7 server duties
• Strong connectivity

Cons:

• chassis gets dirty really quickly

KitGuru says: Foxconn are onto a winner

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