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New AMD Trinity APU information emerges

by Navin Maini on 25 October 2011, 14:58

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa7sp

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Further details concerning the successor to AMD's A-Series Llano APUs - Trinity - have emerged, courtesy of the slide below.

 

 

While we know that Trinity APUs will be crafted for AMD's FM2 socket, it seems that the current A75 chipset will be compatible with the next-gen offerings. AMD's also talking-up a 20 per cent performance increase, compared to its current Llano APUs. On the graphics front, there's also a claimed performance boost of up to 30 per cent.

What Trinity is also set to bring to the table, is support for RAM speeds up to DDR3-2,133MHz - at voltage levels ranging from 1.25V up to 1.5V.

Based on the chip manufacturer's Piledriver architecture, Trinity is said to serve-up third-gen Turbo Core technology, AMD Eyefinity, and DisplayPort 1.2 support.

Image Source: DonanimHaber

HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Posted by scaryjim - Tue 25 Oct 2011 15:14
hmmmm… suspicious footnotes - 20% CPU performance increase over Llano is “Based on AMD projections using digital media workload”… being that specific suggests that the general CPU performance boost over Llano is going to be very small - which will comes as little surprise gvein the relative performance of the 2 module FX-4100 (I assume that quad core here means 2 modules). Looks like AMD have decided that mainstream CPU performance simply doesn't need improving for the next few generations - which means they'll fall even further behind Intel in CPU terms, which Intel is then bound to use for marketing purposes.

I'm not disagreeing with AMD mind you - for the vast majority of modern day-to-day workloads a 2GHzish dual core is adequate - but AMD are already behind in the marketing stakes and they could do without giving Intel any more ammunition…
Posted by kalniel - Tue 25 Oct 2011 15:16
scaryjim
I'm not disagreeing with AMD mind you - for the vast majority of modern day-to-day workloads a 2GHzish dual core is adequate - but AMD are already behind in the marketing stakes and they could do without giving Intel any more ammunition…

That's where they've got ghz numbers on their side. Intel will try and sell more performance than you need, AMD will try and sell more ghz than you need. Take joe public and he's more likely to go for the 4Ghz!!!!!!!!1!!One!!!!wow chip than the 2.9ghz but beats AMD in the following benchmarks…
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Tue 25 Oct 2011 15:28
scaryjim
hmmmm… suspicious footnotes - 20% CPU performance increase over Llano is “Based on AMD projections using digital media workload”… being that specific suggests that the general CPU performance boost over Llano is going to be very small - which will comes as little surprise gvein the relative performance of the 2 module FX-4100 (I assume that quad core here means 2 modules). Looks like AMD have decided that mainstream CPU performance simply doesn't need improving for the next few generations - which means they'll fall even further behind Intel in CPU terms, which Intel is then bound to use for marketing purposes.

I'm not disagreeing with AMD mind you - for the vast majority of modern day-to-day workloads a 2GHzish dual core is adequate - but AMD are already behind in the marketing stakes and they could do without giving Intel any more ammunition…

Look at the second link in the OP:

http://forums.hexus.net/cpus/212854-amd-trinity-cpu-section-up-20-faster-than-llano.html

Under Linux a 2.5GHZ Trinity CPU compares quite well to a 2.9GHZ A8-3850 under Linux.

The FX4100 for example is not really that much faster than an A8-3850 in multi-threaded applications such as video encoding:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx-8150–8120-6100-and-4100-performance-review/5

A 20% increase would put the CPU section on par with a Phenom II X4 970BE or 975BE in multi-threaded applications. This means it will be much faster than a Core i3 2100 or even a Core i3 2120 in many applications such as video encoding.

It also indicates single core performance has improved over the A8-3850 and FX4100 as CMT scales more poorly than normal cores.

On top of this the GPU is meant to be 30% faster too. This is all done on the same 32NM process and I suspect the maximum TDP will not exceed 100W as the CPUs need to work in FM1 motherboards.
Posted by Noxvayl - Tue 25 Oct 2011 16:03
Looks very interesting but what I'd love to see is information about using a discrete graphics card with one of these, what support does AMD have for that? I have looked at the Virtu software Intel promotes for their Sandy Bridge CPU's which was interesting even though it didn't do enough to encourage me to try it.

It might be worth using one of these for gaming because you can offload some less important calculations to the integrated GPU which might give decent performance gains mitigating the slower CPU performance. That way you don't get a worthless GPU doing nothing like you have with Intel's Sandy Bridge. It would not be as “balanced” as AMD's marketing is banging on about but having a considerable benefit for gaming could be a good selling point when general applications are not a worry.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Tue 25 Oct 2011 16:21
I suspect the 30% improvement in GPU performance is in 3DMark Vantage or 3DMark2011.

If AMD have used 3DMark2011 it means the GPU is probably going to be around HD5570 or GT440 level performance:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/A8-3850_Fusion_GPU_Performance/11.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_6450_Passive/23.html

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