AMD Fusion E-350 APU Running HAWX 2 DX11 Linus Tech Tips

Linus Tech Tips investigates the AMD Fusion E-350 APU by running the DX11 title Hawx 2 to gauge its gaming viability on a compact ITX setup. The presenter starts with a low detail, 1024x600-ish resolution test, reporting about 20 to 30 frames per second, and notes aliasing and performance constraints typical of integrated graphics in 2011-era hardware. He observes that at these settings the game is barely playable, with single-player playability highly dependent on keeping the camera distance from terrain modest to avoid heavy pop-in and texture slowdown. Switching to a broader CPU-bottleneck hypothesis, he points to the simultaneous strain of aircraft effects and physics, suggesting the GPU is not the sole limiter. To quantify potential improvements, he runs a full-detail DirectX 11 benchmark at the lowest supported settings to establish a baseline, then experiments with a higher-end test: 1080p resolution, tessellation enabled, anti-aliasing disabled, and all other details maxed, to examine real DX11 capabilities on the E-350. The result is an average of 8 FPS at 1080p with heavy tessellation, which is far from playable, underscoring that high-end DX11 features are beyond reach for this integrated APU, even in a best-case scenario for a casual test. Across the video, Linus frames the results as an interesting, if impractical, demonstration of what an E-350 system can or cannot handle in modern DX11 titles, and closes by acknowledging the experiment as a curiosity rather than a recommendation for gaming on such hardware.

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