computerwoche.de

Archiv

MSI Wind Top AE2050: Low-Cost All-in-One

27.04.2011
Hot on the heels of the Wind Top AE2220 comes the MSI Wind Top AE2050, a that's all about compromise. For this model, MSI shed a few hundred bucks off the asking price ($680 as of April 26, 2011), but also gone are the AE220's Blu-ray drive, speed, 1080p resolution, and connections. What's left is a low-power alternative that's less expensive but challenged by tough competition.

The Wind Top AE2050 runs the lower-cost AMD Fusion E-350, a 1.6GHz CPU that's part of the new (AMD's equivalent to Intel's Atom). To AMD's credit, Fusion chips produce better graphics and achieve faster video-decoding speeds than their rivals do. Still, the E-350 CPU is the Achilles' heel of the AE2050: Although the processor reduces power consumption, general performance suffers dramatically.

Jumping from the all-in-one's Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 platform to AMD's Brazos is kind of like going from a motorcycle to a moped, and the benchmarks for the AE2050's 1.6GHz CPU (alongside 4GB of DDR3-667 memory) tell the tale. General performance on this all-in-one desktop is nearly half that of its predecessor, dropping to a score of 53 on our WorldBench 6 suite of tests from the AE220's mark of 90. Competing systems at similar price points, such as the , managed a score of 104 on our test suite.

The graphics integrated into the system's E-350 CPU--AMD's Radeon HD 6310--failed to run our gaming benchmarks on the PC's default 1600-by-900-pixel resolution. In our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark, the AE2050 couldn't get off the ground regardless of whether we ran the test on a high or medium graphical setting. We were able to achieve play time only by dropping the game down to a resolution of 1024 by 768, and we'd hardly call the PC's 23 frames per second on medium quality settings to be all that "playable." This is par for the course for the all-in-one category, but keep it in mind when you're considering your PC entertainment options.

As far as the display goes, we were pleased with the AE2050's saturation, which brought more of a lifelike quality to movies and images than competing systems such as the did. The AE2050's grayscales are a little murkier; we would have liked to see a crisper and brighter full white instead of the darker, duller levels presented. A bit of glare from the glossy panel can be an annoyance in darker scenes, too, depending on the lighting setup of your environment.

Video playback performance is the AMD E-350 CPU's strong point, and it showed in our tests--high-definition (720p) media was stutter-free. The Blu-ray combo drive on the MSI AE2220 has been replaced here by a DVD burner, befitting the loss of native 1080p resolution. The AE2050's two speakers offer a less-than-stellar movie experience, delivering laptop-quality sound that's driven from the center of the rig.