News Gigabyte leak points to Trinity-based Athlon X4 chips

But...why? The only advantage Athlon has over similar price i3 and Pentium parts is the graphics.

 

Main question would be; "why not?".

Why scrap perfectly usable CPU's just because they have a defetive GPU, when instead you can sell them and still make some money?

A Trinity based 3.4Ghz quad core Athlon will still be perfectly adequete for a large range of tasks as long as it is priced correctly.

 

If you have otherwise functional dies that have borked graphics, you have two options:
1) Dump them in the bin,
2) Package them up and flog them cheaply.
Method one basically flushes the money AMD spent on R&D, development and production of the flawed die down the toilet, but method two allows AMD to recover some of the money spent.

You can't say it will be unattractive compared to the similarly priced i3/Pentium, because no price for the Athlon is mentioned. Until there is a price we can't gauge how attractive a product it is, and the market will determine how it is priced. If it is too high compared to the i3, it won't sell and the product will flop. If it is priced well then people will buy it.
As to who would buy it, make it cheap enough and it will attract someone. Of more concern would be the requirement for a discrete graphics card on top of the CPU/MB.
There are two types of customers who might be attracted to the GPU-less APU:
1) OEM PC manufacturers who could bundle graphics cards with their systems,
2) Those who are unnaturally attracted to AMD CPU/Nvidia GPU combinations.

 

Im attracted to AMD CPU/Nvidia GPU combinations. My Phenom II x4 and 680gtx get allong very well and if the Athlon APU without a GPU is cheap why not

 

But are you unnaturally so? <Inquisitive raised eyebrows>

My thoughts were more along the lines of the lower end of Nvidia discrete cards that are rather pointless in the face of AMD and Intel CPUs-with-GPUs. And there are always those who pine for AMD APUs with Nvidia graphics onboard.

 

There is something unnatural about having AMD with NVIDIA but i like being the odd one out. I have always had AMD CPUs, I think about 5 of them and always had Nvidia GPUs apart from last year when i had 2 6790s in crossfire and didnt like them so went back to the green team

 

I have an Intel GPU with an AMD GPU on an nvidia mobo xD

 

Ugh, that's just sick.

 

I have a amd cpu with a nvidia graphics card.. feels good man.

 

Nice move, as long as the pricing is correct!

 

Word.

Still, I don't think these are aimed at us. Unless maybe some of you that have spawned are maybe going to build a cheap gamer's box for your larva(e), a lot of these will end up in cheap Dells along with whatever "not defective enough to throw it out" GPUs Dell can get a good price on.

I like that they finally managed a quad-core in 65W in a mainstream proc. I don't like that there's no mention of L3 cache.

Funny to think that the "on-board graphics" of yore are nearly dead (I think there are still a handful of old-skool AM2 and/or Atom boards on Newegg with chipset graphics.)

 

The Trinity cores don't have any L3, so if you want/need L3 on AMD then you are going to have to step up to the upcoming Vishera FX range.

AMD thinks that L3 at this price point is currently* a waste of power and silicon, and to be frank I agree. For the vast majority of workloads done by the vast majority of users, L3 adds very little while costing money, transistors and milliwatts.

I say "currently" because that may change, with later iterations of AMD HSA APUs using it to aid GPGPU tasks.

 

Well, if someone wants middle class discrete graphics, with a cheap cpu with mostly unlimited features (unlike pentium), for gaming.

Tle IGP is dead weight, next to a 7770/gtx460, until the the heterogeneous computing will be common. The Cape Verde-s own power save capabilities makes the IGP's advantages non existing.

 

Considering that the GPU part is non functional I find the 65W TDP a bit on the high side.