Several have reviewers had a go at AMD's upcoming Brazos platform based on the Zacate APU core and the first results are promising, but not what we'd call spectacular.

On the graphics front Zacate succeeds in outpacing both previous AMD solutions and current Intel ones by a fair margin. The only system that came close was our Zotac nettop, which has an Nvidia ION integrated graphics chipset. The 1.6GHz part proved that it could easily beat Intel's dual-core Atoms and in terms of graphics performance it managed to pull ahead of previous AMD Danube and Nile mobile platforms in some tests.

CPU performance is not as great, as Zacate manages to beat the Atom, but not K8 or C2D based parts, even the entry level ones. Still, this is quite impressive for a 75mm2 die with an 18W TDP, as it's simply not in the same league as 25W or 35W parts.

Getting back to the graphics, it's worth noting that Zacate manages to outperform most available IGP solutions, although it does lose to the 890GX and even some Intel platforms in CPU intensive tests. It's roughly 30 percent slower than AMD's HD 5450 discrete  or Nvidia's 320M mobile core.

Although it manages to outperform Intel's mobile IGPs by a wide margin, the Zacate is still far behind entry level discrete parts. Of course, Intel isn't asleep at the switch. With such heated competition from its chief rival, perhaps it won't hesitate to whip up some Sandy Bridge-based CULV 2011 solutions, which could have considerably better graphics performance than current, CULV 2010 offerings.