News AMD details 'Hondo' Z-60 APU

What's the difference between this and the C-50 and C-60 you find in some cheap netbooks?

 

Best I can tell is the C-50/60 are higher voltage and/or higher leakage parts. I believe their TDPs are more in the 7-8w range. I don't believe there is much difference other than that.

It basically sounds like somewhat better graphics than Clover trail (DX11 support among other things), but at the expense of probably slower compute (Bobcat cores are clock for clock only a little faster than atom right now, but Clover trail can run its two cores at something like 1.5Ghz compared to 1Ghz, which should be more than enough to stay ahead of the Z-60). Also a lot higher power draw. That 4.5w TDP doesn't take in to account the extra .2-.5w of the FCH, which Clovertrail doesn't have to deal with as it is a true SoC, which Hondo isn't.

So yeah, it sounds like in typical use you'll probably see roughly 30-50% less battery life. Not so good. Also having to pay for a two chip solution means it probably isn't going to be much cheaper than a Clovertrail solution, especially since Intel sounds like they are going pretty cut price on it to get tablet market share from ARM. I can't imagine too many manufacturers are going to be itching to save $5 or MAYBE $10 off the BOM of their laptop...and have to suffer significantly less battery life, more heat AND more space (again, 2 chip solution).

If you want to recoup the battery life, it requires a fairly substantially larger battery, which makes a bigger heavier laptop and probably increases the BOM at least a much as just having gone with a Clovertrail solution to begin with.

I don't like Clovertrail, but the Z-60 just doesn't sound like it has anything particularly interesting to bring to the table other than maybe the lowest of the lowest end Windows 8 x86 tablets.

 

Z c e amd cpus are junk (or any bobcat type cpus) they hate .net framework (takes 10-20x longer to update then an p4 celeron cpu) and can get hung up on other tasks as well (mouse stuttering) I never though you could make an cpu so badly (as fast as an VIA cpu)

Sorry if that was an little rant just the 10 bobcat type. normal laptops all of them are unfit for use (an second hand pc that's 5-7 years old is faster ok power saving is not there thought)

 

I've got a fiver that says you've never even SEEN a system running a Bobcat-based CPU, let alone used one.

 

I've got tablet running on an AMD Z-01 (using that to write this), I can assure you I never have such problems, the cpu is actually very good (for a tablet).

 

Having worked with other low power chips from VIA and Intel I can say that these chips take a massive **** all over them.

The girlfriend has a E-450 in a laptop.
I own an E-350 based mATX board which I use for media and music.
I've just ordered a C-60 based itx board for the same purpose.

For the applications I use them for they cannot be faulted.

 

Doesn't matter if AMD CPUs do well in a few areas and for a few specific use cases (like HTPC). They don't do well in the high-end and therefore fail at marketing.
They better start making some decent high-end chips again if they want the AMD name to mean something.

All over the internet I see tech press lamenting the AMD chips and saying Intel is better.

 

I've currently got an E350 sitting on my desk in a media server, and it's just fine - in low-usage scenarios, the total draw is only something like 18W for the entire board, while I it doesn't choke on normal, everyday things like browsing, as Atom does (Atom-Atom, not Clover Trail...and why for the love of god did Intel curse an apparently competent platform with the Atom name?)

I'm also in the midst of building a car PC on a second E350, since it's proved itself capable of handling the typical sorts of things you'd want a car PC to handle.

AMD just seems a little behind the curve, though - E350 was perfect for the netbook market that was already half-dead by the time the platform was released. Hondo is coming out at the right time...but is behind the tech curve, not being a true SOC....feels bad, man. I just want AMD competitive again

 

they are all very nice, but i want to see the 28nm Jaguar based replacement sporting GCN shaders.

now that will make an excellent tablet/laptop hybrid!

 

2-3 hours to do all the windows updates on an win7 sp1 laptop, most of its time is spent on .net rebuilding after update

On the laptops mostly E type (some C as well) I have used, I have been fixing pcs for 15 years and I have never come across an cpu that is this bad (ok VIA), single core atom was not grate but they was still usable, duel core atom was fine

If your doing any thing gpu side or on the cpu side that's not .net type of load they are fine but the mouse pausing due to the cpu getting stuck on an thread is bad (duel core as well), unless they have fixed the issue on the Z type cpus I expect it to be worse then the E C cpus as the Z is slower (I edit once I have compared them again)