AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Launched, Tested 182
MojoKid writes "AMD lifted the veil on their new Trinity A-Series mobile processor architecture today. Trinity has been reported as offering much-needed CPU performance enhancements in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) but also more of AMD's strength in gaming and multimedia horsepower, with an enhanced second generation integrated Radeon HD graphics engine. AMD's A10-4600M quad-core chip is comprised of 1.3B transistors with a CPU base core clock of 2.3GHz and Turbo Core speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The on-board Radeon HD 7660G graphics core is comprised of 384 Radeon Stream Processor cores clocked at 497MHz base and 686Mhz Turbo. In the benchmarks, AMD's new Trinity A10 chip outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gaming but can't hold a candle to it for standard compute workloads or video transcoding."
But will it stand up against Intel? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's really all that matters. I've always been and AMD fan but If they can't pull out the same performance for less or equal price, they're done.
Looks like Price/Performance win over Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen a lot of reviews of various laptops that have missed the most important metric in this competition - Price!
What's been common in all reviews is that the only the very top end Intel "integrated" (No separate, discreet GPU) solutions have been competitive to the new fusion products. We're talking mobile i7s. I don't know if you've priced laptops lately, but the i7's are only found in expensive, high end systems.
The fusion APUs are nowhere near that expensive. Price wise, they should be compared to i3s or "pentium" mobile cpus.. Where they will win quite handily!
It turns out that AMD's 'APU' solutions have been very popular with low end device makers and AMD sells them by the boat load. What's impressed me, however, is how much intel has improved their GPU in ivy bridge. It's always been garbage before, but now it's starting to be something you could call 'low end'.
Re:But will it stand up against Intel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But will it stand up against Intel? (Score:2, Insightful)
good luck cramming that into a tablet or 9" laptop.
people under 30 don't use towers. tablets and notebooks. small notebooks.
Re:AMD is done and gone... (Score:5, Insightful)
They used to be able to beat Intel in the Athlon days. Now they are hopelessly far behind and dumping huge hot graphics cores into their chips putting them further and further behind. Focus on cheap compute with unlocking cores AMD. Not stupid graphics cores which do nothing for the CPU. A 16 core phenom ii at $100 will sell much better than this insane graphics + cpu crap.
That is pretty much the exact opposite of a good plan for AMD(as much as I would like cheap compute...) Since Intel has a process advantage, and presently has a superior x86 compute core architecture, they can almost certainly beat AMD on production cost for chips of a given level of punch. Trying to compete on price with somebody kicking out chips a process node ahead of you just isn't a good plan. Unless they really fuck it up, or their yields tank horribly or similar, they'll be able to beat you on production cost every time. Intel has little to gain by cutting its own margins in order to chase AMD down a hole(since lower margins are bad, and killing AMD would mean becoming antitrust scrutiny case #1 for the indefinite future...); but there isn't any architectural barrier to their doing so.
Since Intel has comparatively worthless GPU designs, tacking GPUs onto CPU dice is a way for AMD to offer something that Intel cannot(and at a price lower than a discrete CPU + discrete GPU without totally cutting their own throat), and also happens to go well with today's enthusiasm for laptops and all-in-ones. They have a second niche, much more directly focused on price, in compute-light, memory-heavy server applications(since you can populate your sockets with AMD CPUs for less and the number of DIMMs you get is roughly proportional to the number of sockets you have active); but competing on price isn't good for your margins.
With an inferior process and a weaker x86 design, gunning directly for the compute performance crown would just be asking for a whupping from Intel.
Re:AMD is done and gone... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. These articles and benchmarks are a joke. The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value, that I can't help but feel embarrassed for AMD.
Without AMD you clueless retard would have to pay 5 times the price for an Intel CPU. You should thank them for providing competition instead of dissing their products.
Re:"outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gaming"? (Score:4, Insightful)
AMD's integrated GPU advantage is gone.
That's also compared to the more expensive i7 part. There was no i5 or i3 comparison.
Re:AMD is done and gone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Appreciating competition is not mutually exclusive with being critical of the competitions quality.
Re:AMD is done and gone... (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. These articles and benchmarks are a joke. The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value, that I can't help but feel embarrassed for AMD.
Yes... we should reward Intel's shady, unethical business dealings in nearly putting their only competition out of business so that we can finally pay massive premiums for a product from a company that has no competition. So much for rooting for the underdog... AMD should just close their doors so we can finally give all our money to Intel, and reduce their pressure to provide advanced chips at reasonable prices.
Re:AMD is done and gone... (Score:2, Insightful)
please realize that AMD and Intel TDPs can not be compared apples to apples. My understanding last time i looked was that Intel was a bit optimistic about how low their TDP was.