MSI Wind AE2050

MSI Wind AE2050

Hot on the heels of the Wind Top AE2220 comes the MSI Wind Top AE2050, a budget all-in-one PC 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 Brazos platform (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 Wind Top AE2220 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.