http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope And it looks like Piledriver isn't too bad.
But it looks like it isn't too good either. Did they learn nothing from the Pentium 4? Pushing for higher clockspeeds is a good way to ruin your per-clock performance. They should be pushing for ever lower clockspeeds while increasing overall performance at the same time. EDIT: I should add that I think Trinity will definitely have a place in low to mid range notebooks, but it all depends on how well the rest of the Ivy Bridge line fleshes out.
Well, they improved IPC, graphics performance and power consumption, so it's better in every way than Llano. And all of this was achieved while using the same 32nm process. Sure, the improvements are not huge, but they are there on every front.
Llano wasn't actually that bad. it's a wonderful all-in-one chip for media boxes and the like, simply because the igpu isn't pants. If the new version is even faster; I can see it doing well. The better IPC and power consumption definitely makes it attractive to me, i might build a little media server with one when I've got the money. Piledriver, on the other hand, had better be a good leap above Bulldozer. It'll still be gimped, though. The Northbridge on most 990FX motherboards simply doesn't run fast enough, so it bottlenecks the crap out of the memory. Plus Bulldozers memory controller wasn't that good anyway, so if you removed that bottleneck; you only got a percent or two better speeds out of it.
Just like Anand's conclusion says, if the price is right it's a winner. I'm disappointed that it didn't beat Intel's offerings overall, moves like this are what lets Intel get away with the crap they pulled with IB...
I keep saying this but... One of these days I'm gonna get around to making an Emulation/HTPC box, and when I do, I'll be putting an AMD APU in it.
The question is - why would you need APU for HTPC ? Even G530 handles all HD content without an issue. G530 on Asrock z68 itx board - 35W while idling on xbmc main screen, 36W while playing SD content, 38W while playing HD content, 39W while playing Samsung Oceanic HD content. The only place where i can really see Llano and Trinity as usefull alternatives are laptops or cheap gaming computers, where you need a bit of gaming performance but don't want to pay for a discrete graphics card.
Because there's always the possibility that I would want to do some low-end gaming with "real" games from the comfort of my bed/couch. AMD's APUs offer a cheap and easy path to have decent enough performance for when I'm feeling lazy.
built my HTPC for under the TV couple of months ago and funnily enough i put a APU in it. A6-3500 i think. No complaints it plays everything flawless and general browsing etc is sexy smooth.
That's a hell of a niche market though lol I too don't see much of a point for them in all honesty in a desktop / htcp situation. Not very powerful as a cpu and not really powerful enough for modern games.
I think the target is laptops. About 100 times ts market of htpc which will play some games. Low power consumption is the big issue with laptops, and integrated graphics means no dedicated chop. Meaning smaller package, less heat and in turn, less heatsink occupying space.
Intel and AMD are no longer in the same market so expecting them to compete with intels high end is expecting way too much amd said it themselves that they wont be pushing the high end market anymore
