First Trinity Review.

[Olikan]

performance increase was meh!

but the power consuption is insanely low for 4.2 GHz

resonant clock mesh is indeed awesome

 

[pelov]

And 32nm Llano 9.7mm^2

I recall the die area savings to be pretty significant in BD, despite it being a bit too "loose" looking...

Bobcat: (40nm): 4.6mm^2
Llano: 9.69mm^2
Westmere: 17.2mm^2
Sandy Bridge: 18.4mm^2
Bulldozer Module: 19.42mm^2

Bobcat is the only 40nm (at TSMC) with the rest at 32nm, whether GloFo's HKMG or Intel's secret sauces. Die area excluding L2. A single module is roughly the size of an SB core. While those numbers for BD might look bad when compared to Llano, remember that the shared FPU is bigger than on Llano as well as other improvements within the core that required a larger size.

Here's the link on Lostcircuits

Module

The estimates weren't that far off.

So the space saving is certainly there, at least in comparison to Intel's big beefy wide cores, but the performance isn't. Really, it's just a case of not being big enough and the culprit is that big blocky L2 next to it. 1-to-2 ratio works pretty well, dunno why they needed to mess with it.

 

[Nelly]

Oh well, should serve the laptop market quite well if it's at a competitive price...?

 

[pelov]

Oh well, should serve the laptop market quite well if it's at a competitive price...?

It's a really good laptop chip, imo. Trinity will sip less power than most any Intel chip for most users. It's only when you're using it at full load for lengthy periods where it might slip behind. For the average person, in fact nearly everyone, Trinity will actually last you longer on a single charge than will any Intel SB/Ivy chip. Kinda shocking given all the issues around Bulldozer. It won't offer the same single-threaded performance (it's better than Llano here), but it's iGPU is very good, particularly for the 35W ceiling.

That FM2 timeline is what really irks me. I really didn't want to see them sticking to a single chipset and socket for 2 generations or 2 full years. To me that shows that they're not going to change anything significantly as far as layout and integration goes, and I fear that's what will likely hurt them on both CPU and GPU performance. Regardless of what they can muster up, they're going to be limited by socket/chipset constraints. Essentially, whatever Kaveri brings, while it might bring great performance bumps with the widening front end (and it certainly will), the APU designs will still suffer from the current onion&garlic bottlenecks and Haswell will trump it in power consumption.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Cool stuff. Love my Llano - Trinity looks even more awesome.

 

[alexruiz]

The CPU part was as hopeless as expected. No wonder AMD didnt want to talk about that.

So hopeless that it has been beating its intended competition in cpu tasks for months... but you already knew it, didn't you?
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34037961&postcount=251

Now into topic, this is a ~$120 mainstream CPU which was asked to fight above its weight class. This review was entertaining, but it lacked 2 key contenders: i3 and fx4100. The i3 as its direct competitor, the FX4100 as the more evenly matched architecturally to properly assess the PD over BD improvements. I know a fx4100 scores aprox 3300 in 3dmark11 physics, so the number scored by the A10 is quite remarkable, as both are 4C twin module designs.
Let's hope the upcoming reviews have better contenders selection so the proper perspective can be given. Trinity is not high end:

 

[CTho9305]

performance increase was meh!

but the power consuption is insanely low for 4.2 GHz

resonant clock mesh is indeed awesome

Is there a way to enable/disable it to compare the power consumption?

 

[The Alias]

Is there a way to enable/disable it to compare the power consumption?

no resonant clock mesh is baked into the processor architecture

 

[zebrax2]

The performance i would say is uninspiring. I just hope they could get steamroller out of the gates fast.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

xbit labs has released the CPU performance reviews:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-a10-5800k.html

 

[AtenRa]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a10_5800k_review_apu,1.html

 

[Hacp]

Pcper released its benchmarks. Looks like the A10 beats out its competition in most of the benchmarks. They were able to OC it to 4.4 ghz too.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Trinity-Review-A10-5800K-and-A8-5600K-Break-Cover

 

[blastingcap]

No ECC support = no revenue from me, try again AMD.

 

[zebrax2]

Looks like it at least beats the a8-3870 in majority of the benchmarks for ~30w less power.

 

[AtenRa]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6347/amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity-on-the-desktop-part-2

 

[Eeqmcsq]

After reading a few more desktop Trinity reviews as they have trickled out, the CPU performance was about what I expected: Usually an increase over Llano, but not always. I suppose that's pretty decent considering Trinity isn't a true quad core, but more like a 3.2-3.6 core.

But there is one thing that surprised me about the desktop Trinity reviews: idle power consumption. Man, are they low.

 

[Hacp]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6347/amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity-on-the-desktop-part-2

1) Can overclock to 4.4 ghz on the stock heatsink.
2) Is competitive with the i3 3220 at stock, should beat the i3 most of the time overclocked.
3) Has a far superior igp.

Its a great platform for your average gamer, someone who doesn't need top of the line hardware. OC the graphics a bit and enjoy games at 720p at playable framerates for the near future. When the igp starts lagging in games, switch it off, OC the CPU to 4.4+, and buy better graphics.

 

[RussianSensation]

No ECC support = no revenue from me, try again AMD.

I wasn't aware that people run critical applications on a $122 CPU + GPU combination setup aimed at budget consumers and HTPC market?

This actually looks like a pretty decent offering from AMD for budget gamers and/or HTPC users. GT640 is $90-100

This CPU is actually perfect for someone who plays Blizzard games and games like Minecraft. The CPU performance is not great vs. i3 3220 in the review but then you'd have to go out and buy some kind of discrete GPU for any light gaming, making the Intel alternative still more expensive even if you go with budget Pentiums unless you dip into the used discrete GPU market.

 

[AtenRa]

1) Can overclock to 4.4 ghz on the stock heatsink.
2) Is competitive with the i3 3220 at stock, should beat the i3 most of the time overclocked.
3) Has a far superior igp.

Its a great platform for your average gamer, someone who doesn't need top of the line hardware. OC the graphics a bit and enjoy games at 720p at playable framerates for the near future. When the igp starts lagging in games, switch it off, OC the CPU to 4.4+, and buy better graphics.

4) has lower Idle power even than 22nm Core i3
5) More features (AES, Up to 8x SATA-6 etc)
6) You get one more CPU generation upgrade with FM2 when Socket 1155 is at its end of its life.

 

[Greenlepricon]

I don't use a laptop for anything besides web browsing and word documents, spreadsheets, powerpoints, and other school stuff. I have a desktop for anything more intensive. To me this actually looks like a really good deal, assuming that the laptop price isn't more than $400-$500 for a low budget system. I like to play some light games on my laptop too so I may consider upgrading to one of these soon once I find out how they're fairing in the wild.

 

[AtenRa]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-trinity-efficiency,3315.html

 

[Centauri]

We’re power users, after all. We know how to cope with heat and noise; we can deal with a 100 W chip, even in an HTPC. But there’s no way to make the Core i3 look better unless you spring for an add-in card. AMD’s emphasis on balance makes the A10-5800K a better platform for more people than Intel’s closest competition.

/thread

 

[Centauri]

That said, can somebody help me decide between the 5800K and 5700? Same GPU, nearly identical clock speed... but massively lower TDP for the 5700, all things considered.

If I buy the locked 5700, what am I losing? Because I definitely intend to overclock, but I don't know by how much, and will be pairing things with 2133MHz+ memory; Will I still be able to play around via FSB overclocking? And, more importantly, will I still be able to overclock the GPU?

 

[inf64]

I don't think you can push the "fsb" clock so much on any AMD APU. It's connected to many stuff now and if you push it you may disrupt the operation of many components on board.

That being said,I'd buy 5800K. The Stilt from XS did some undervolting testing and you can shave up to 20W of power with simple undervolting.

 

[AtenRa]

That said, can somebody help me decide between the 5800K and 5700? Same GPU, nearly identical clock speed... but massively lower TDP for the 5700, all things considered.

If I buy the locked 5700, what am I losing? Because I definitely intend to overclock, but I don't know by how much, and will be pairing things with 2133MHz+ memory; Will I still be able to play around via FSB overclocking? And, more importantly, will I still be able to overclock the GPU?

I would go for the 5800K