AMD's Fusion Trinity chip

[sm625]

Yep, had a beauty of an ultra-lightweight notebook (DELL X200) that cost me over $2k, darn thing died and stopped being my primary web-use laptop only because the charging plug on the laptop died.

I even took it apart and attempted to hard-wire (solder) the charger to the mobo where the charge plugs went and I couldn't do it because I suck at soldering Was such a nice laptop too.

lol I have an HP notebook with an athlon mobile XP that I took apart and soldered wires on to the broken power socket. I also melted the plastic so as to seal the wires onto the side of the chassis for strain relief. It still works as a decent movie player. But the kids ripped all the keys out and it dont got wifi so it isnt very useful all in all.

 

[sm625]

Rather than go after triple channel memory, I dont see why they dont at least offer the option to use GDDR5 by making their memory controller fully GDDR5 compatible. There is no spec for GDDR5 DIMMS but I'm sure there are some companies who would solder 4GB of GDDR5 to the mobo.

 

[Vesku]

For desktop I could see it getting there, I was focusing on mobile chips.

Then that would be almost identical to an A8-3850 running 6550D graphics on 1866mhz DDR3. I owned an HD 6570 with my A6-3650 and there wasn't much of a performance difference between the 2 running them separately. (I wish I still had the card to prove it but I got rid of it due to the abysmal dual graphics capability)

I believe Trinity will be identical to at least a Radeon 6670 with Gddr3.

 

[Phynaz]

Considering how many Llano desktops I've built and Llano laptops I've recommended, I'd say pretty damn well. Not a home run like Zacate, but at least a triple. Which considering Bulldozer, is great for AMD.

Of course I'm speculating, and it's clearly a best-case speculation. Llano is already a winner in the mobile space and is carving a nice niche for itself in the desktop market. AMD's Athlon II line is really showing its age compared to the newer low-end SB-based CPUs, so it's great to see that Trinity will return AMD to a position of real competition with the G-series Celerons and Pentiums, and probably even the i3s. ...Or do you think Intel lowered the price on i3-2100s to $110 so they could sell more $150 i3-2130s?

Way to miss the point.

The point is hype about GPU capabilities. Heck I think at one time people were saying Llano would have 5750 graphics capabilities.

 

[Phynaz]

Llano turned out OK. Not a home run, but OK.

I haven't seen anyone mention a "75w GPU on the same chip as a 125w or 95w CPU".

If people are expecting 6670 levels of performance, that the approximate power that will be needed.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Way to miss the point.

The point is hype about GPU capabilities. Heck I think at one time people were saying Llano would have 5750 graphics capabilities.

Do you not understand what the words "if" and "might" mean? We can only speculate at this point as to where Trinity will land performance-wise. Who cares what people said about Llano? Anyone making definitive statements about the details of an unreleased processor - like its power draw - isn't worth listening to.

 

[MrTeal]

I don't see the point of using Trinity on the desktop in anything other than mITX, even in the remarkable case where they can match a HD6670 in performance. You could go to Newegg today and buy a 880G MB, HD6670, 4GB of DDR3-1600 and a 3.2GHz X3 for $234 + $45 of MIRs. An A8-3850 system with 4GB of 1866 would set you back ~$240, so unless the top of the line Trinity is less expensive than the A8 Llano, you'll still be paying more and getting less than just buying a cheap discrete card.

 

[Khato]

For those that either didn't watch the Hot Hardware video of the Trinity demo or didn't pay very close attention... Take a closer look at the zoom-in of Media Converter 7. Here's a hint, having a window open that's not doing anything isn't very taxing on a system last time I checked.

Still, it was at least playing both an 720p media stream (stated in the other article linked in the initial post) at the same time as playing Dirt 3. While that gives pretty much zero indication about performance, it at least implies pretty good silicon health.

 

[formulav8]

Wow, all this sounds just like all the way overboard speculation that happened with Llano. How did that turn out?

Quite well actually

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

If people are expecting 6670 levels of performance, that the approximate power that will be needed.

From what I've been able to quickly find, a 6670 on 40nm process has a TDP of 66W. It seems to me that on a smaller (32nm) process, it is possible to get close to 6670-level performance with Trinity.

 

[formulav8]

Rather than go after triple channel memory, I dont see why they dont at least offer the option to use GDDR5 by making their memory controller fully GDDR5 compatible. There is no spec for GDDR5 DIMMS but I'm sure there are some companies who would solder 4GB of GDDR5 to the mobo.

Definitely would be nice to have a sideport option with super fast, low latency cache ram. Low Latency plays a big part in the igp performance as well. 256MB 128Bit DDR5 cache could help feed the APU quite well and possibly be bottlenecked by how much the shaders can pump out. :thumbsup:

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

I don't see the point of using Trinity on the desktop in anything other than mITX, even in the remarkable case where they can match a HD6670 in performance. You could go to Newegg today and buy a 880G MB, HD6670, 4GB of DDR3-1600 and a 3.2GHz X3 for $234 + $45 of MIRs. An A8-3850 system with 4GB of 1866 would set you back ~$240, so unless the top of the line Trinity is less expensive than the A8 Llano, you'll still be paying more and getting less than just buying a cheap discrete card.

I think X3's are discontinued.

There is a value in simplicity for OEM's. From assembly to support, it would make more financial sense for HP, as an example, to spend a couple dollars more for Llano/Trinity than Athlon + video card.

 

[Vesku]

I think we are seeing the setting of the sun on budget enthusiast builds. Highly integrated chips like Llano are designed with OEMs in mind. Even Intel's K series has transistors dedicated to the integrated graphics.

 

[Rvenger]

For desktop I could see it getting there, I was focusing on mobile chips.

Gotcha For a mobile perspective I would have to agree with you since the 5670 is 1 tier down from the 6670.

 

[Qianglong]

http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Fus...00M-Mobile-GPUs-and-Lightning-Bolt-In-Action/

Here is an actual photo of the chip and a system running off the trinity. The CHIP LOOKS HHUGE!!!

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would say I am "hopeful" regarding Trinity, but still quite skeptical considering it is a BD derivative. And I am only interested in the laptop area. For the desktop, I would still go Intel with a discrete card.

But I am still considering a Llano laptop, and if Trinity could bring improvement in both CPU and GPU, it would be a nice package. I am more skeptical that they will improve CPU performance than GPU.

 

[Arkadrel]

The trinty is on the same node as Llano right?
Its gonna be fun to see how much more performance/watt, they can acheive via design alone.
(stars->piledriver, VLIW5?->4)


also saw this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/158534/New-Windows-7-Bulldozer-Patches-Available..html

bulldozer finally got that patch, which should make it ~10% faster or so.
(which is still slow, compaired to a Intel sandy bridge, but.. should make it look better than the phenom II's atleast)

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

The trinty is on the same node as Llano right?
Its gonna be fun to see how much more performance/watt, they can acheive via design alone.
(stars->piledriver, VLIW5?->4)


also saw this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/158534/New-Windows-7-Bulldozer-Patches-Available..html

bulldozer finally got that patch, which should make it ~10% faster or so.
(which is still slow, compaired to a Intel sandy bridge, but.. should make it look better than the phenom II's atleast)

Probably still not better than PhII, though, which in many benchies had at least a 10% clock-for-clock advantage.

I wonder if these affect the hyperthreaded Intel chips, too, like when the patch was inadvertently (and temporarily) released last month.

 

[georgec84]

The lack of media coverage for Trinity is disappointing.

 

[Xpage]

@17W I'll replace my Zacate E-350, if they have ITX motherboards and the price is right for the chip.

AMD bungled the refresh for Zacate, real sad.

 

[Vesku]

Given new AMD CEO Rory Read's statements about being aggressive and connecting that with the 7970 launch:

Hey Rory,

Launch a premium Trinity SKU NOW, and I mean ASAP. Partner with someone perhaps one of your GPU vendors to get your own ultrabook out there. Make it snazzy and EXPENSIVE, APPLE-ize it. Make Intel actually have to consider moving up IB's launch date because your product is getting so much press.

Signed,

Armchair CEO/Marketing Guru/Engineer/Knight Errant

 

[Joseph F]

Rather than go after triple channel memory, I dont see why they dont at least offer the option to use GDDR5 by making their memory controller fully GDDR5 compatible. There is no spec for GDDR5 DIMMS but I'm sure there are some companies who would solder 4GB of GDDR5 to the mobo.

Because that is hella expensive. They would be far better-off using separate memory controllers for the GPU and CPU portions of the die. 384-512MB of GDDR5 framebuffer on a 64-96 bit bus, anyone?

 

[sandorski]

If those numbers are true, it's going to be one hell of a chip.

 

[Vesku]

Because that is hella expensive. They would be far better-off using separate memory controllers for the GPU and CPU portions of the die. 384-512MB of GDDR5 framebuffer on a 64-96 bit bus, anyone?

Or waiting until DDR4 arrives...

 

[Khato]

Out of curiosity - couldn't a Llano laptop do the exact same demo? Last I checked a Llano laptop with VGA and HDMI connectors could drive two external monitors in addition to the laptop monitor. Playing a game while watching a 720p media stream has been trivial for awhile (edit: for anyone except Intel, whose current offerings can't play games very well with nothing else happening.) The fact that it can transcode video via CPU in the background doesn't really mean much without an indication of how fast it did so... which we don't have since the Hot Hardware video was done after it had finished transcoding everything that was queued. It did still at least show that simply playing the game + 720p media stream had the CPU at ~60% utilization.

Also, one notable absence from AMD's demonstration compared to many of their prior ones - where's the power meter? Given what the truth to their many claims with respect to Bulldozer were, I'll believe that it's a 17 watt TDP part when they prove it.