AMD launches first Piledriver-based APU's, significant performance increase - Polidicks

[QUOTE] [table="width: 500"] [tr] [td][IMG]http://www.abload.de/img/screen20shot202012-05t4jli.png[/IMG][/td] [td][video=youtube;4Afyy55HcYE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Afyy55HcYE[/video][/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]AMD is back, and the company isn’t willing to take a back seat to Intel any longer. Trinity, AMD’s second-generation APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) is official, and it’s the mainstream platform the company expects to challenge Intel’s Ivy Bridge in everything from ultrabook-rivaling ultrathins, though notebooks and into desktops and all-in-ones. SlashGear caught up with AMD earlier this month to find out what makes Trinity so special. APUs debuted with AMD’s first-generation Llano platform, combining the best of CPU and GPU technology onto a single die, and harnessing the logic power of the CPU and the creative power of the GPU to deliver performance the company argues is far better suited to today’s typical computing use-cases. Today’s users, AMD points out, are far more likely to be gaming, processing multimedia or watching high-definition video than editing spreadsheets or doing other solely-CPU dependent tasks. Meanwhile, AMD says, the standard abilities of Intel-powered PCs aren’t keeping up with those uses. 60-percent of laptops ship with integrated graphics only, AMD’s head of desktop and software product marketing Sasa Marinkovic, told us, and that despite 3rd Gen Core chips having their own onboard GPU, they’re still not quite up to scratch. “30fps at 1080p is not something [Intel] can do easily with Ivy Bridge” Marinkovic says, but Trinity can. rinity uses the same chip size as Llano, but squeezes 1.303bn transistors onto the die rather than 1.178bn. More importantly, AMD has introduced a new, lower power version, meaning Trinity APUs now start at 17W rather than 35W. The claim is twice the performance per Watt – in fact, AMD says users will see the same performance from a 17W Trinity ultrathin as they did from a 35W Llano notebook, or indeed 50-percent more performance from a 35W Trinity notebook as they did in its Llano predecessor. There’s a new dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, a unified Northbridge and a new Northern Islands Radeon GPU along with an HD Media Accelerator. Up to four “Piledriver” cores with 2MB L2 cache are the other half of the chip, flanked with HDMI, DisplayPort 1.2 and DVI controllers, along with 24-lane PCI Express I/O. There’s support for DirectX 11, USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gb/S, AMD Eyefinity and HDMI 1.4a, and AMD quotes up to 736 Gflops and up to P1361 in 3DMark11. Despite the performance increases, AMD also expects markedly improved battery life for Trinity-based notebooks. Up to 8.5hrs browsing is on the cards, or 4.7hrs of local video playback or 4hrs of YouTube streaming, from the average portable. AMD has a cavalcade of APU-accelerated applications from dozens of developers, with Google Chrome, Adobe Flash Player, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Photoshop CS6, Microsoft PowerPoint, Handbrake and GIMP being notable stand-outs. In CS6, for instance, there are over thirty GPU-accelerated features, including Liquify, Transform and Warping, while OpenCL is now used to accelerate Blur rendering. Handbrake will be updated in June to support Trinity, while video finessing app vReveal has already been upgraded to support the AMD Accelerated Video Converter to reduce encoding times and deliver faster-than-realtime fixes for lighting, color, white balance and shake. The Trinity range will span four feature points, from the Vision A4, though the A6 and A8, and up to the A10. AMD’s top-spe$379c model will remain the Vision FX, offering eight-core CPUs and still based on discrete x86 technology. A4 systems will kick off at $379, A6 systems from $449, A8 systems from $549 and A10 systems from $699. Meanwhie, there will also be a new Brazos 2.0 entry-level range of APUs, sold under the Vision E2 line and featuring Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics and 1.4GHz or 1.7GHz CPU clocks. Also including integrated USB 3.0 and SD card reader support, SATA 6Gbps and the same Steady Video and Quick Stream technologies as Trinity, Brazos 2.0 promises up to 11hrs of battery life, roughly 30 minutes longer standby than the previous generation. AMD expects E1 netbook systems to begin at under $349 and E2 budget notebooks at around the $349 point. It’s Trinity-based ultrathins that will undoubtedly catch the most attention, though, going up directly against Intel’s pet ultrabook project. AMD showed us a Compal ultrathin reference design, as thin as its ultrabook rivals, though certainly not yet ready for primetime with its chassis flex and plasticky build. Nonetheless, it was capable of outputting 1080p Full HD video to two separate external displays while simultaneously running its own LCD. AMD expects the first commercial Trinity systems to show up from June 3, with components hitting the market later in 2012. “All the leading manufacturers” are planning Trinity-based models – either ultrathins, notebooks, desktops or all-in-ones, or some combination – Marinkovic told us, including Toshiba, HP and Samsung. [URL="http://www.slashgear.com/amd-trinity-official-hands-on-14228174/"]Source[/URL] [/td] [td][IMG]http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2012-05-13/trinitydie.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/amd_trinity_battery.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/amd_trinity_gaming.jpg[/IMG][/td] [/tr] [/table] [/QUOTE] Okay so.. basically Piledriver is SIGNIFICANTLY more efficent and has less leakage then bulldozer. This translates into a theoretical 500-600Mhz overclocking headroom gain.. but we will have to wait for October to see if AMD has improved even further as this is "first generation Piledriver". The actual APU itself is great for what it offers and its pricepoint, sure Intel holds X86 performance crown but AMD now holds power efficiency and onchip graphics crown by a significant amount, AMD will probably see a huge marketshare increase in the consumer mobile market because of the massive gaming performance while lasting alot longer then Intel's below-performing chips when it comes to media/gaming. Gentlemen you can run Crysis for hours on end with Ultrabook.

The CPU part itself is still a downer: [QUOTE]AMD Trinity laptop review roundup: beats Ivy Bridge on gaming, but CPU lets the herd down[/QUOTE] [URL="http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/15/amd-trinity-a10-4600m-review-roundup/"]Source, which links to further sources.[/URL]

[QUOTE=Van-man;35964970]The CPU part itself is still a downer: [URL="http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/15/amd-trinity-a10-4600m-review-roundup/"]Source, which links to further sources.[/URL][/QUOTE] Not true at all. Piledriver is way more power efficient and has less leakage due to GloFlo enhancing their 32nm process and AMD making their arch more efficient. With these improvements I can't wait to get my hands on a Vishera, I'm hoping for 5.5Ghz on Air, men can dream. At the end of the day: If you want to do media and game on your Ultrabook go AMD. If you want to benchmark go Intel, Van-Man as the die shot indicates you're only looking at a little under half of the computing potential. What does this mean? AMD will have a massively competitive market share because of todays consumer market, [IMG]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/amd_trinity_gaming.jpg[/IMG] ^^ That while using less power.

Doesn't change the fact that you'll get better performance and battery life with an i5 and an Optimus solution. Not saying this isn't a nice step forward, but they'll really have to compete on price rather than performance. I'm very happy to see the performance increases in Piledriver, though. It isn't groundbreaking, but it isn't [I]as[/I] lacking as Bulldozer was. Throw some extra clock speed and cores on there (with a good price), and you've got something that could compete with Intel on even the mid-high end gaming segment.

Are these performance gains more valuable for a new laptop rather than a desktop upgrade? I need to overhaul my PC, and I'm still torn between an i5 and waiting for Piledriver. After Bulldozer, I was planning on the i5.

[QUOTE=smace;35964990]Not true at all. Piledriver is way more power efficient and has less leakage due to GloFlo enhancing their 32nm process and AMD making their arch more efficient. With these improvements I can't wait to get my hands on a Vishera, I'm hoping for 5.5Ghz on Air, men can dream. At the end of the day: If you want to do media and game on your Ultrabook go AMD. If you want to benchmark go Intel, Van-Man as the die shot indicates you're only looking at a little under half of the computing potential. What does this mean? AMD will have a massively competitive market share because of todays consumer market, [IMG]http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/amd_trinity_gaming.jpg[/IMG] ^^ That while using less power.[/QUOTE] That graph is so misleading. By starting from 80% on the x axis they skew the relative difference of the two to look much bigger. StarCraft looks almost 300% improved when in reality 55%. Common marketing ploy but annoying because any stats teacher would dock points for that kind of crap. Still a very decent improvement though.

And bam. Intel have proper competition again after all these years. Good to see they learned from Bulldozer, and the inclusion of a full GPU on die is great. I kinda wish I had the money to drop on a laptop that would use one of these when they launch. This i3-2310m kinda hurts for anything outside of doing my coursework :v:

[QUOTE=Arachnidus;35965450]Are these performance gains more valuable for a new laptop rather than a desktop upgrade? I need to overhaul my PC, and I'm still torn between an i5 and waiting for Piledriver. After Bulldozer, I was planning on the i5.[/QUOTE] Really, just stay with the i5. I doubt we're gonna see improvements that beats Ivy Bridge, and as such it's not really worth waiting.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35965497]Really, just stay with the i5. I doubt we're gonna see improvements that beats Ivy Bridge, and as such it's not really worth waiting.[/QUOTE] Depends, they improved IPC by 10-15%, fixed leakage issues with 32nm over at AMD's main Fabs, included Resonant Clock Mesh which essentially recycles power. Really.. Bulldozer can do up to 4.9Ghz stable on most chips without water, all these improvements and the fact that AMD specifically said they were trying to increase chip frequency.. 5.5Ghz+ Stable, and all FX-Series CPU's are unlocked at no extra cost.. all for ~$200? Least to say I'm really excited and I'm somewhat glad I bought a AM3+ board.

Even thought they have improved single core performance by 10-15%, it's still not enough to get near beating Ivy Bridge. Single core performance is sadly still the way to decide on real-world performance.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35965655]Even thought they have improved single core performance by 10-15%, it's still not enough to get near beating Ivy Bridge. Single core performance is sadly still the way to decide on real-world performance.[/QUOTE] Of coarse they won't beat Ivy, but they will compete with it on their Vishera platform. Ivy is having its own heat difficulties at the moment and I know quite a few who have been holding off from it in favour of Sandy Bridge. My main point is, FX-8350 is going to be AMD's competition in the enthusiast market because not only have they decreased overall power usage and leakage by a factor they have also enhanced IPC which means high overclocking potential and in turn competition for Intel. They're all Black Edition processors, they're meant to be overclocked.

[QUOTE=smace;35965695]Of coarse they won't beat Ivy, but they will compete with it on their Vishera platform. Ivy is having its own heat difficulties at the moment and I know quite a few who have been holding off from it in favour of Sandy Bridge.[/QUOTE] Ivy Bridge has problems regarding getting rid of the heat (due to the extremely small die size), not heat in it self. In the laptop segment it won't do a big difference, as all you're generally looking at is perfomance and power consumption.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35965713]Ivy Bridge has problems regarding getting rid of the heat (due to the extremely small die size), not heat in it self. In the laptop segment it won't do a big difference, as all you're generally looking at is perfomance and power consumption.[/QUOTE] Its not just 22nm issues. Its Intels decision to cheap out on the tin solder between the die and the IHS which also resulted in a 8C difference. It really makes me wonder if Intel is greedy or making a marginal profit off of 22nm.

[QUOTE=smace;35965727]Its not just 22nm issues. Its Intels decision to cheap out on the tin solder between the die and the IHS which also resulted in a 8C difference. It really makes me wonder if Intel is greedy or making a marginal profit off of 22nm.[/QUOTE] Of course Intel's a greedy bitch, every company needs to be somewhat greedy. The prices Intel is issuing is by no means evil or too high, though. I imagine the 22nm process cost them a good deal, and as such the chwaping out in some stuff is understandable. The 8c decrease you're talking about was (as far as I'm concerned) compared to some of the best aftermarket stuff you can get. If they used a somewhat more expensive compound, they could maybe lower it a degree or two (though I've never been much into the cooling paste business), but at clock speed, it wouldn't make a big difference. Therefore I understand the choice, while I may not endorse it. Still the heat issues are not really that big a problem, as it's still a swell over locker, and doesn't need a high clock speed to beat piledriver.

AMD launches Piledriver... It's super effective!

Good. Supporting AMD right now, rocking card and CPU. Always good to have competition

this is just their mobile stuff? i'll wait for desktop cpus and might actually switch from intel... this is also apu stuff though which i dont terribly care about

[QUOTE=thrawn2787;35968016]this is just their mobile stuff? i'll wait for desktop cpus and might actually switch from intel... this is also apu stuff though which i dont terribly care about[/QUOTE] Cool. If you read the article (or any of the many posts before this one for that matter) you'd know that this [i]is[/i] only their mobile stuff. And if you're on an i5 (really, any quad core model i5 even the 750), i wouldn't recommend buying AMD (or upgrading at all).

Intel Q8200 with a 6950, I probably am bottlenecked by the processor. Was thinking of getting a 3750K but if Piledriver does as well in the desktop CPU market (and just the CPU side, not the gpu / apu side) then it might be worth it to go AMD. Might as wait anyways as it could cause intel to drop some prices.

Obviously their next projects will be called Crane and Dump Truck.

[QUOTE=Coffee;35969022]Obviously their next projects will be called Crane and Dump Truck.[/QUOTE] Apparently there will be a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion#2013:_Steamroller"]Steamroller[/URL] :v:

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35968884]Cool. If you read the article (or any of the many posts before this one for that matter) you'd know that this [i]is[/i] only their mobile stuff. And if you're on an i5 (really, any quad core model i5 even the 750), i wouldn't recommend buying AMD (or upgrading at all).[/QUOTE] If you render HD, do extensive multitasking or run heavily threaded software AMD is the way to go as of today, more and more games are supporting more cores though, giving AMD a advantage in some games. Next generation will be different and offer lots. Can't wait to get my hands on a FX-8320 to do some overclocking.. then again I'm biased to AMD. But if you compare AMD's price to Intels equally priced CPU's AMD out performs them by a margin.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/rjYff.png[/img] Graph debullshitified for your convenience.

Bulldozer is actually really good if you multi-task a ton and like the idea of playing a game while you render a movie, or do workstation tasks without having to buy a workstation/server-class processor It's just a clear loser when it comes to single threaded stuff. Which most people tend to use computers in that way - there's not a lot of people out there who run 10-15 programs and have BG number crunching out the ass going on. I've got a friend who does that and he really benefits from Bulldozer vs. intel because of this

[QUOTE=smace;35971324]If you render HD, do extensive multitasking or run heavily threaded software AMD is the way to go as of today, more and more games are supporting more cores though, giving AMD a advantage in some games. Next generation will be different and offer lots. Can't wait to get my hands on a FX-8320 to do some overclocking.. then again I'm biased to AMD. But if you compare AMD's price to Intels equally priced CPU's AMD out performs them by a margin.[/QUOTE] ...Another problem is that they aren't "real" cores, every module shares the FPU and cache. Look this [url=http://www.channelpro.co.uk/reviews/6503/amd-fx-8150-review]review[/url] up (or any other for that matter), and quote in here the benchmarks that doesn't show the i5 2500K as worth the 20$ more.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35975050]...Another problem is that they aren't "real" cores, every module shares the FPU and cache. Look this [url=http://www.channelpro.co.uk/reviews/6503/amd-fx-8150-review]review[/url] up (or any other for that matter), and quote in here the benchmarks that doesn't show the i5 2500K as worth the 20$ more.[/QUOTE] The 8120 costs $164, substantially less then the i5-2500K. They are real cores, they share certain parts. Piledriver seems to have improved FPU performance and decreased cache latency.

[QUOTE=smace;35975143]The 8120 costs $164, substantially less then the i5-2500K. They are real cores, they share certain parts. Piledriver seems to have improved FPU performance and decreased cache latency.[/QUOTE] In your past post you mentioned that if you are into video editing and such, AMD "is the way to go" - this is, from the benchmarks, obviously not the case. At that price point, bulldozer is somewhat competitive and I can't really check motherboard prices until I get home, so I can't factor in those. I'll say, though, that paying 50$ more for the i5 isn't outrageous, it's cooler, faster and draws (much) less power. As said, I'll check prices on motherboards when I get home, but until then suffice to say that it also makes a difference (for the worse or the better).

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35975842]In your past post you mentioned that if you are into video editing and such, AMD "is the way to go" - this is, from the benchmarks, obviously not the case. At that price point, bulldozer is somewhat competitive and I can't really check motherboard prices until I get home, so I can't factor in those. I'll say, though, that paying 50$ more for the i5 isn't outrageous, it's cooler, faster and draws (much) less power. As said, I'll check prices on motherboards when I get home, but until then suffice to say that it also makes a difference (for the worse or the better).[/QUOTE] AMD is loose when it comes to manufacturers, there are AM3 motherboards for like $45

Its nothing new really. The Llano could beat the sandy bridge too in the same manner ie : the Llano's inbuilt GPU was way way better than the HD2000/HD3000 on the i3/i5

[QUOTE=C47;35977534]Its nothing new really. The Llano could beat the sandy bridge too in the same manner ie : the Llano's inbuilt GPU was way way better than the HD2000/HD3000 on the i3/i5[/QUOTE] Llano's desktop IGP was also able to beat the Ivy Bridge's HD 4000 in every benchmark too.