AMD Trinity: Going Mobile with a New APU (Comment Thread)
 

Ever since Llano was first introduced, people have been talking about Trinity. In this article, we take an in depth look at the latest generation of APUs which are part of AMD's ongoing Fusion initiative.

Read more here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...e-new-apu.html

I have to apologize in advance guys. This one was thrown together at the last minute with the bare minimum of details from AMD, who chose to finally brief us late last week after numerous requests. As such, it is still undergoing some minor revisions.

Then again, if I hadn't clued into something one of our non-AMD contacts said, I'm sure we wouldn't have been briefed at all. :ph34r:

Expect reviews of the mobile processors whenever we receive the systems from the usual suspects.

interesting.

but i don't understand how (after reading the article) this is going to translate into the destop market.

are they abandoning their, OC enthusiast support for APU solutions? i just don't see it being powerful enough for gamers, even with the addition of gpu's.

yes, i understand trinity's push in the mobile space...but it is unclear how they look to correct BD with PD and the icp issue. which at this moment makes me question the direction the company wants to head. hmm..

Looking forward to the full blown bench numbers. Specifically looking forward to seeing where the top-end A10 APU will place relative to the IvB mobile processors.

A question on the side, for future HWC reviews/articles. Do you care, for us to point out any article's grammatical errors/typos/omissions? i.e. "...night and [day] difference..." Or just let it slide?

Thanks for the intro Sky.

AMD seems to really have some promising products here to capitalize on their earlier success with APU.

Cant wait to see how they perform.

Not so much for games, but rather for their efficiencies compared with the upcoming Ivy Bridge ultrabooks.

Thanks for the architecture overview, SKY.
These APUs should make for some even better deals in the mobile market. Is there any scheme to the model numbers? It looks like it's based on Radeon cores, but still more than enough to confuse anyone just browsing laptops in a store without access to AMD's web site :blarg:

In any case, dump this chip on a Windows 8 tablet with a proper stylus and I'd pick it up.

Looks like I need to wait a bit before I buy my next laptop.

PM him......:thumb: (if that is ok SKY)

Yeah. PM me.

Typically, I go through an article a few times before posting it live but on this one, I didn't have that luxury.

As for the translation into the desktop market, AMD is not eliminating the K-series SKUs. However, I really don't think Trinity is geared towards enthusiasts. That's what Piledriver and the Volan platform are geared towards.

So I've been scouring a few of the benchmarks that have popped up so far, and the general consensus is:

"It's good, just not good enough"

Obviously Trinity spanks Intel when it comes to gaming with just integrated graphics, beating it out in nearly every game they face off with unless the game is heavily CPU bound, then Ivy Bridge takes the lead.

But when it comes to straight CPU to CPU comparison, the A10-4600M actually loses some fights to a dual core Sandy Bridge i5, and then gets obliterated by Ivy Bridge.

It definitely wins awards for being power conservative, but right now it all depends on the pricing whether or not it's worth taking over an IB laptop with discrete graphics.

For gamers in the desktop market AMD will still have their FX series of chips (currently Bulldozer, soon to be Piledriver). They're not completely abandoning the desktop market, but they are putting a lot of effort into the mobile APU market because that's the direction they see consumers going. Let's be honest here, the only people who use desktops anymore are serious gamers, enthusiasts, and professionals. Everyone else (?the majority?) is either doing all their computing on a tablet, notebook or netbook.

I think that will always be the case. When it comes to pure CPU performance, Intel will have the upper hand for the foreseeable future, even within their mobile division. They just have a much better architecture. Intel, however, is lagging behind on the integrated graphics solution. Which is understandable, considering they came to the party a couple of years late. Their new mobile Ivy Bridge processors may be much better than Sandy Bridge, but we'll see if Trinity leaps above them again (as a bit of an AMD fanboi, I hope they do...). I don't think it will hurt Intel though. They've made their name as the top computer component manufacturer, and even people who don't 'know' computers go 'ooh and ahh' whenever they see i5 or i7 on a laptops specifications.

Sounds good, I'll keep that in mind for the future articles/reviews. And thanks for addressing my question gentlemen.