AMD Trinity APUs Stack Up Well To Intel's Core 3 223
Barence writes "AMD's APUs combine processor and graphics core in the same chip. Its latest Trinity chips are more powerful than ever, thanks to current-generation Radeon graphics and the same processing cores as AMD's full-fat FX processors. They're designed to take down Intel's Core i3 chips, and the first application and gaming benchmarks are out. With a slight improvement in applications and much more so in games, they're a genuine alternative to the Core i3."
MojoKid writes with Hot Hardware's review, which also says the new AMD systems "[look] solid in gaming and multimedia benchmarks, writing "the CPU cores clock in at 3.8GHz / 4.2GHz for the A10-5800K and 3.6GHz / 3.9GHz for A8-5600K, taking into account base and maximum turbo speeds, while the graphics cores scale up to 800MHz for the top A10 chip."
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
AMD is finally competitive with Intel's lowest end offerings again!
Yay!
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The advantage of AMD chips recently has been avoiding intel integrated graphics. I know you CAN get most intel chips without it, but it was a real anti-selling point for me.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You know you can just not use it right?
Why bother looking for a chip without it?
Heck, these days it is even usable and has good open drivers.
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I game on my linux box, I don't however select motherboards with video out. Solves that problem quite nicely.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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I still think the system used by PowerVR was the best. You have your desktop graphics and the 3D is overlayed on top of it. The video card has no external connector. It makes your 3D card cheaper and to some extent it frees you from buggy drivers (your desktop graphics are unaffected if the 3D card crashes). You could save power by turning it off when not needed. You can even pull the 3D card out if it dies and still be able to use the machine.
I think we'd all be better off these days if that sort of arrang
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Weird, my current laptop has a processor with integrated graphics, but to my knowledge it was never used. Even when I was reinstalling and had no drivers for either my integrated or discrete graphics, it seemed to use the default VGA drivers on the NVidia card.
I'd accuse you of being an AMD shill, but you sound more like you just honestly don't know how things work.
PS: When I finally get around to installing Linux on this thing (any day now, I swear!), I'm actually planning to just use the Intel drivers, fo
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Because its adding heat for a part you're not using
Personally I doubt a graphics core that is turned off draws any significant power, particually compared to the massive gulf in performance per watt between intel and AMD at the moment. You could buy a xeon chip where the graphics core is lasered off rather than merely disabling it in software but I doubt it's worth the extra cost to do so.
and sucking up die space?
Meh, what does that matter to me as the user. Yes a slightly smaller die is perhaps a little cheaper to make but we all know price is only loosely tied to cost anyway and it's not like a smaller die means a smaller total area taken up by the processor. The package and heatsink already many times bigger than the die.
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Is this a troll account?
Again we get ignorance from you.
Win 8 is not the only OS with that fix, linux works fine.
The heat and die space you are talking about are negligible.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic statement, since the main selling point of the chip being reviewed here is its integrated graphics.
Which I find just silly really. These are fine chips to build a PC for your little cousin who surfs the web and maybe plays world of warcraft. for any real build, integrated graphics, for all their advancements, still read like:
Intel: "Our new HD4000 graphics are nearly as fast as a mainstream card from 8 years ago!"
AMD: "HAH, our new chip's graphics cores are as fast as a mainstream card from 6 years ago! we're two years of obsolecense better!"
even a $100 modern dedicated card will whallop either of these chips solutions.
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For 90% of folks either of these is good enough.
I have played portal 2 on my macbook air using the Sandy Bridge graphics. It was fine.
Very few folks care about dedicated graphics cards these days.
I have 1 machine that has one, it cost a $100 and that is it. I might buy another if Steam for Linux ever launches.
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No one cares about dedicated graphics cards.... unless they play games.
I don't know what region you're from where all the gamers just use the onboard GPU that comes with their mobo.
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That is why I said 90%, the other 10% are the gamers.
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The games industry includes farmville and WoW, and lots more similar games that do not need a dedicated card.
How much of the games industry even needs a dedicated card? The video game industry includes consoles, smartphones and tablets as well.
Research (Score:2)
No one cares about dedicated graphics cards.... unless they play games.
Or do cuda-enabled research.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I think you can do OpenCL on Intel HD3xxx/4xxx chips these days. At least Apple seems to (on the retina MBP, they have a custom shader to handle the scaling from the double-size framebuffers to native panel size (if you're running at the higher-than-half size modes, e.g., 1920x1200) so that when you switch between GPUs, you don't notice it happening like you would if you wanted native.
As for why integrated graphics - easy - price. The customer sees $500 laptops, and they end up demanding cheap laptops. Think of all those /. arguments where "Apple is expensive! Their laptops start at $1000 when everyone elses is at $500!".
Hell, we call PCs (desktops and laptops) costing over $1000 "premium" nowadays. Expensive even, when we're constantly inundated with sub-$500 laptops and PCs.
It's why netbooks died quickly after the launch of the iPad (no manufacturer wanted to build no-profit PCs, and tablets at $500 were far more profitable), why you can get i7 laptops with integrated graphics and 1366x768 screens. Why "ultrabooks" costing $1000+ seem to be the ones everyone's dumping money into making product for (with high-res screens!), etc.
The race to the bottom has led manufacturers to focus on what everyone says they should look for in a PC - GHz (more is better), GB (more is better), GB (more is better) (one is RAM, other is HDD). Which means stuff like graphics and screen resolution (two of the most expensive parts) get ignored and skimped on because consumers don't care.
Hell, a retina MBP fully tricked out costs under $4000. Which only over a half-decade ago would've been considered normal for high-end PCs. These days it puts it basically at the top end "for 1%ers only" category.
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Well, I think you can do OpenCL on Intel HD3xxx/4xxx chips these days.
AFAIK, Intel HD3xxx is not OpenCL capable, and Intel HD4xxx is officially supported by Intel on Windows only (no Linux drivers). This is in sharp contrast with AMD, which has much better OpenCL support for everything they ship (CPUs, GPUs and APUs).
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, a retina MBP fully tricked out costs under $4000. Which only over a half-decade ago would've been considered normal for high-end PCs. These days it puts it basically at the top end "for 1%ers only" category.
Sorry, but $4000 wasn't anything like normal even for a high end PC in 2007, that'd be a "1%er" PC with a $999 Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU and dual $599 nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX with still plenty cash for the rest. I think you'd have to go back to the 90s and probably early rather than late 90s to find prices like that.
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For my HTPC, integrated graphics is nice. Less power consumed overall, less space, less noise from extra fans.
Truly there are places where integrated works great, like work machines, kiosks, and library/research terminals. Those aren't really a small portion of the market.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why would you need a copper heatsink?
Why is the stock one not good enough?
I can't wait to hear this.
So because I only have 1 video card I am not a gamer? The games I play on steam are not games?
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty much until the sandy bridge era, integrated graphics were completely unusable for gaming, and they are still years behind dedicated cards.
Your statement that "90% of folks either of these is good enough." is true, but misleading. It is true that the extent of desktop/laptop gaming that most people are interested in maxes out at farmville (or whatever the new facebook gaming trend is, I certainly don't pay attention), and they do their gaming on their phone, tablet or console.
These articles however are written towards the community that constructs their own PCs, or at the very least is quite picky about what is inside their machines. You don't read these articles unless you care about such things. From that perspective, for the majority of the target audience of TFA links, these graphics performance of either brand is hardly good enough for any sort of main machine build.
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By using Portal 2, you have demonstrated only how very well-coded and well-optimized Portal 2 is. It runs fine on just about anything that can make triangles. Recently I watched Portal 2 running at high resolution and high apparent quality on a GeForce 8600 GT. Those are ancient, and weren't good even when they were new.
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So what was good when they were new?
I had one and it seemed up to the task for every game that was new at that time.
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I have Sandy Bridge in my laptop and desktop, and an Ivy Bridge desktop for a project, and I'm not disputing that their graphics are quite good, particularly for an integrated chip.
I just meant that proclaiming Portal 2 performance wasn't going to get the traction you were looking for.
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Why not?
Portal is far more graphically intense than any game 90% of people are ever going to play on their PC. WoW and Farmville are more likely the targets for this and integrated covers that fine.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't doubt that it works. I have a previous version of integrated intel graphics (yes I am aware of the advancements of the HD2000/3000/4000 series in comparison) on this laptop, and -can- game with the settings turned down... way down.
that said, I think my (somewhat cynical) "we are as good as a 6 year old card!" comments are pretty appropriate. Tom's hardware [tomshardware.com] ranks the HD4000 roughly on par with the nvidia 6800 ultra (released in 2004) or the 8600GT (released in 2006).
the 8600gt was a fine midrange card, and can still run today's games, albiet at reduced resolution and details. if all you're looking for is the ability to run a game, period, these chips will work, but I can't really say they'd do much better than a console (the ps3 gpu is essentially an nvidia gtx 7800, and the 360 gpu is similar, only with unified shaders), and again they don't hold a candle to even modest dedicated cards today.
in a laptop, I might be interested. On the desktop, which is what the chips being reviewed are for, I can't see much use for these things when it comes to gaming (which, again, is their big selling point right now). if you're building a desktop machine you expect to do any gaming on, and the extra $100 for, say, a gts 450 or something like that is a budget breaker, maybe you should be saving up an extra month.
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The AMD Trinity in this review scored nearly double the HD4000.
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Considering the piss-poor quality of Intel based machines in the $500 and under range, and when AMD based machines do tend to have higher quality components in that range, you could compare buying an Intel based machine like putting a Ferrari engine into a Yugo. Yea, it may be faster, but the overall experience of owning it will be shorter and more prone to failure. Obviously, going to a higher end Intel machine would result in a better experience, but at the low end, Intel based machines have a much h
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How true is that really? Celeron, Atom and Core machines seem very reliable to me, Atoms in particular. I've seen many of them very badly abused and they hold up. I think it's just the uh, I always get this wrong, square-cube law? Ah yes, that's the one. The low-end machines are smaller and therefore less prone to damage from the same force, and at the same time, produce less force when dropped. I remember the Pentium III machines as being pretty durable too, but unfortunately many of them came with ATI Rag
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All I can say is that I've been burned by good specs that somehow manage to lack critical(to me) graphics functions, like supporting modern shader models.
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graphics blows intel away and what better faster c (Score:2)
graphics blows Intel away and what better faster cpu or slower cpu with much better video??
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Meth is a hell of a drug.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, more accurately, AMD's integrated video is better than Intel's integrated video (seriously, that's all they tested!).
And these AMD chips still double the system power consumption [hothardware.com] over their Intel counterparts.
So if you're part of the subset of gamers that morally object to dedicated video cards but still enjoy noisy fans and high electricity bills, AMD has a product just for you! Woo!
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You are actually bitching about less power than a light bulb used to use?
At worst case it looks like ~60 watts on the two higher end units. How low power is the monitor if that constitutes doubling the power? I am betting total system in this little test ignores the monitor.
Oh noes tens of dollars more per year in electricity! The HORRORS! How ever will I afford such an extravagance that costs per year almost what two drinks at the bar costs.
If they are within 100watts I would call it a wash and be far more interested in computing power per $ upfront cost. AMD has traditionally done very well in that test and only started failing it very recently.
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These are not laptop chips. The AMD laptop ones are actually lower power.
Yes, the linux drivers are much better. For built in that is what I go with for that reason.
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When you are talking about saving $30 over the course of the life of the machine you are never going to recoup that upfront cost.
The only machines I build are my faming machine, AMD CPUs are fine and I will be using an NVIDIA card no matter what CPU I get so drivers are covered.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
gaming, not faming. I am not making people famous via some computer method.
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gaming, not faming. I am not making people famous via some computer method.
That's good, because I have a patent pending for making people famous via some computer method.
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that none of the benchmarks actually cover CPU speed, because AMD have put all the reviewers under NDA until the chip is released. That rather suggests they haven't caught up, they're just showing off the better IGP, which no one playing games will use anyway, and that anyone not playing games won't give a shit about.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that none of the benchmarks actually cover CPU speed, because AMD have put all the reviewers under NDA until the chip is released. That rather suggests they haven't caught up, they're just showing off the better IGP, which no one playing games will use anyway, and that anyone not playing games won't give a shit about.
While I'm not hugely sanguine about AMD's prospects(unfortunately, it isn't going to be pretty if the world is divided between x86s priced like it's still 1995 and weedy ARM lockdown boxes, so it would be nice if AMD could survive and keep Intel in check); but there is one factor that makes IGPs much more of a big deal than they used to be:
Laptops. Back in the day, when laptops were actually expensive, the bog-standard 'family computer from best buy, chosen by idiots and sold by morons on commission' would be a desktop of some flavor. Unless the system was terminally cheap and nasty and entirely lacked an AGP/PCIe slot, it didn't matter what IGP it had, because if little Timmy or Suzy decided they wanted to do some gaming, they'd just buy a graphics card and pop it in.
Now, it's increasingly likely that the family computers will be laptops(or occasionally all-in-ones or other not mini towers) of equally unexciting quality but substantially lower upgradeability. If you want graphics, you either use what you bought or you buy a whole new computer(or just a console).
This makes the fact that some, but not all, IGPs can actually run reasonably contemporary games(especially at the shitty 1366x768 that a cheap laptop will almost certainly be displaying) much more important to some buyers and to the PC market generally.
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Why even compare to Sandy Bridge at all?
At least compare to Ivy Bridge if you are going to try to fight i3s.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would they not compare their new entry level CPU to their competitors entry level CPU?
These CPUs are designed to be priced against i3 of course they should be compared to i3.
You do realize that an NVIDIA card will work just fine in a computer with an AMD or intel CPU right?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I gave up on ATI's drivers too and bought a new laptop with an nVidia card. The state of the drivers is so pathetic that the laptop will not even boot nine times out of ten unless I disable the discrete card and use the integrated Intel GPU because otherwise the Optimus screws everything up. I will take occasionally buggy ATI over completely non-functional nVidia next time.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
My kingdom for a mod point or 10...
I tried Linux years ago on my Radeon 7500 and couldn't figure out why the hell everyone was bitching about the ATI drivers. I've had linux installed on pretty much every generation of ATI card since(save that I skipped the HD2xxx and HD3xxx series, plus the Xxxx series was an X600 all in wonder, which ran fantastic, actually better than on windows) and I still haven't had problems.
The only caveat is I usually upgrade a generation or close to a generation behind. By then linux driver support is in place. However on the same token I have 2 laptops here with nvidia mobile GFX in them that have the same damn problems as the above user described. I'll get the things working great for about 2 minutes and then another update will hit and fuck the whole thing again.
My plan was to leave my desktops on windows for gaming and run Linux on my HTPCs and laptops because I don't need those to run all the latest games. I was sorely mistaken >_ I do have an E350 laptop that beyond some sound issues(common to everything I've ever installed pretty much any linux distro on except that one X600 AIW that just for some crazy reason worked fantastic on TV out) works great.
Add on top of that I like my hardware to fail when it fails. Not throw random artifacts, bugs, the works, and make me spend 3-5 fucking hours till I finally figure out that the video card is overheating but instead of crashing the computer or rebooting itself its throwing the whole system for a loop.
People come to me with mysterious hardware-related computer problems I now start at whatever NVidia parts are installed to diagnose it. Its not always correct but its saved me enough time checking other shit that it is now my best practice to save time.
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Do you think it might have been an Atom chip they were benching against?
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I'm not really an AMD hater, well aside from their shitty GPUs (I do 3d programming and ATI/AMD GPUs are the bane of our existence).
I used to buy them back in the Athlon X2 days and I'd love to see them become competitive with Intel again.
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I used to buy them back in the Athlon X2 days
"back in the day?" Athlon X2? Wasn't that like a year or two ago?
My first AMD build was a K5 200mhz (OC'd to 225mhz!), and I was late to the party... my buddy had a 40mhz AMD i386 years beforehand.
Whippersnapper, get off my lawn!
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More like at least 5 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_64_X2 [wikipedia.org]
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I suppose it depends on which X2 processors you're refering to.
I have a "regor" based X2 that I purchased brand new in 2010.
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Just because you can buy a brand new Bach CD today doesn't mean it's still "back in the Bach days".
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Watch out Intel..... (Score:2, Funny)
One down.....two to go!
AMD has forbidden testers to write about cpuperfor (Score:5, Interesting)
AMD has apparently forbidden testers to write about cpuperformance.
In their NDA-contract it's specified
"In previewing x86 applications, without providing hard numbers until October [something], we are hoping that you will be able to convey what is most important to the end-user which is what the experience of using the system is like. As one of the foremost evaluators of technology, you are in a unique position to draw educated comparisons and conclusions based on real-world experience with the platform,"
and
"The topics which you must be held for the October [sometime], 2012 embargo lift are
- Overclocking
- Pricing
- Non game benchmarks"
So the reviews coming out are only from sources that has decided to go along with those "guidelines". In other words, not complete, I would say extremly biased.
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All prerelease info is like this, same with any reviewer who got the part for free.
What we really need is the consumer reports of computer hardware. Buy it only from normal vendors and don't advertise.
Unfair benchmark publishing from AMD (Score:5, Informative)
AMD allowed websites to publish a preview of the benchmarks before the estimated date if they only focused on graphics performance. This is an unfair move by AMD.
Read http://techreport.com/blog/23638/amd-attempts-to-shape-review-content-with-staged-release-of-info [techreport.com] for more details
(maybe in a couple of weeks you will find that AMD Trinity APUs have abysmal x86 performance compared to Intel CPUs)
Disclaimer: I own a laptop with an AMD cpu inside
Re:Unfair benchmark publishing from AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
In this day and age, CPU performance means less and overall performance is the thing people look for. A quad-core 1.5GHz is easily enough for your average home user for day to day, and at that point, GPU power for things like full-screen youtube or Netflix videos becomes a bit more of a concern. We WILL have to wait and see what the performance numbers come in at, but a 10% bump in CPU performance is expected over the last generation from AMD.
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i3s dont come with intel 4000 graphics
If you don't want to look stupid it pays to check before making blanket statements. Especially ones as trivial to check up on as this.
http://ark.intel.com/products/65692/Intel-Core-i3-3225-Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz [intel.com] -- desktop i3 with HD 4000 graphics
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I am a trifle surprised that AMD is trying to stage-manage the CPU performance benchmarking(since everybody who cares already has an informed guess based on the last model, and in absence of information pessimists are simply going to assume that the part is bloody dire, so actual benchmarks could hardly make things worse); but it is lovely how it is practically impossible to buy a non-netbook with a CPU too weak for general purposes.
The big killer seems to be disk I/O(well, that and the gigantic bottleneck
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This is what everyone does.
Any test with early parts or free parts is rigged, don't trust them. Either the test is rigged or very commonly the part is.
This is not limited to computer parts, car reviews are often of cars specially setup for the reviewers. Lambo brings two cars to every review one setup for going fast in a straight line and one for cornering work. If you dare mention this or use the cars in the way they are not setup and print it you will never review another Lambo without buying it or borrow
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Actually, that article says you have to focus on gaming performance, not graphics. So: bring on the Dwarf Fortress benchmarks!
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For casual games integrated video is now good enough, has been since at least sandy bridge.
Hard drive speeds are the biggest desktop bottle neck these days. Stick an SSD in any old desktop and watch what that does.
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Multiple applications open at once cover the multicore need quite nicely. At this point the clock on both is in the good enough territory, for me it would be just price.
Core 3? (Score:2)
Un-fucking-believable.
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Power numbers still not good (Score:2)
The reason I highlight power is that the integrated graphics power could be a huge advantage in a low-end laptop. As long as it doesn't kill battery life.
But does it run Linux worth a damn? (Score:5, Interesting)
But does it run linux worth a damn [phoronix.com]? Inquiring minds want to know. I got boned by buying an Athlon 64 L110/R690M machine for which proper Linux support was never forthcoming. Now I want to see power saving and the graphics driver work before I give AMD money for more empty promises about Linux support.
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I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 without incident on the the A8-3870 (previous Llano architecture) without incident. Ubuntu + XBMC in a small shoebox mini-ITX enclosure is working great for an inexpensive HTPC for my home.
Best,
Excellent question. (Score:3)
For the last few years I have only been buying Intel hardware because it just works out of the box with all Linux distros. Is this AMD thing going to work out of the box in Linux?
No, I'm not going to take time to download and install drivers. That crap is for M$ users. Yeah, yeah, I know Intel graphics are not the fastest thing out there. Save it for someone who cares. The Intel graphics are fast enough for the games that I write and play.
Time to come out and confess... (Score:5, Interesting)
My current gaming rig uses Zambezi 8-core AMD CPU, still adequate but it shows its age. I am disappointed AMD hasn't come up with an upgrade, but I can wait.
My last gaming rig lasted me over 4 years and going. I started with Athlon X2 end ended with Phenom II X4. It is still in use as a media PC, and still capable of gaming.
Maybe it is dumb luck, but every AMD chip I had was running cool, overclocked well and lasted. Every Intel chip I owned didn't overclock well and had problems staying cool.
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Maybe it is dumb luck, but every AMD chip I had was running cool, overclocked well and lasted. Every Intel chip I owned didn't overclock well and had problems staying cool.
I never had a chip that overclocked well until my Phenom II X3 720, which went from 2.8 to 3.2 on air, that was a nice free bump. Very reliable. But now I have a 2.7 GHz X6 (I don't play the latest games, but I do compile software and I do like to watch video at the same time) and it doesn't seem to have the same headroom.
I figure it's just luck for the most part, since everyone I knew had better luck overclocking their intel chips than I did. I got my first K6 up just one step, and my first P2, too.
How good are AMD's video drivers now? (Score:2)
I was just wondering if the quality of the video drivers has improved at all since ATI was rebranded to AMD.
ATI was notorious for how awful its video drivers were. My current laptop has a Mobility Radeon X1400. Whenever I play a video that uses Overlay, there is about a 2% chance that it will hard-freeze the system. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that on an Intel or Nvidia graphics product.
I also sometimes get system-stopping delays that are several seconds long when running 3D games, it seem
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I was just wondering if the quality of the video drivers has improved at all since ATI was rebranded to AMD.
No, ATI's drivers are still shit. But now, nVidia's drivers are also shit, so they look better by comparison. As it stands, Intel is the leader in working graphics.
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I don't have any personal experience but pretty much everyone else says that the latest greatest integrated intel graphics are tolerably credible. I've even heard them compared to my 240GT, and if that's true then frankly they're fantastic, if not the most powerful thing around. Not everyone needs SLI and greater than 1080p to be happy.
I3's arent for gaming... (Score:2)
I3's are meant for basic desktop and doing your homework, not a gaming rig. So they are saying, Hey, our new chip is just as crappy at games as the I3... Brilliant marketting.
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I3's are meant for basic desktop and doing your homework, not a gaming rig.
My laptop has a two year old i5 that, I believe, is basically just an i3 with turbo mode (i.e. it's a dual core with hyperthreading rather than a real quad, and the CPU benchmarks are almost identical to a similar clocked i3 since turbo mode is switched off under heavy load). It plays every game I've thrown at it so far on medium to high settings, limited by the GPU, not the CPU.
Dual core vs Quad core? (Score:2)
APU better than CPU+GPU for HPC (Score:2)
from the 2011 Symposium on Application Accelerators in High-Performance Computing (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2060321/)
"Depending on the benchmark, our results show that Fusion produces a 1.7 to 6.0-fold improvement in the data-transfer time, when compared to a discrete GPU. In turn, this improvement in data-transfer performance can significantly enhance application performance. For example, running a reduction benchmark on AMD Fusion with its mere 80 GPU cores improves performance by 3.5-fold over t