AMD Fusion Info Thread

That makes perfect sense then why the Lenovo x120e has an estimated ship date of "more than 4 weeks"!

 

It seems like my best bet is the HP DM1z, but I'm looking for a notebook with those specs but a smaller chassis (smaller screen too) and a lighter weight.

Any suggestions?

Mr. Mysterious

 

If it's available where you live, there's the Acer Iconia Tab W500 that uses the C-50 APU.

 

It does. Well, the CPU can shut down cores when they are not in use when using the computer. The same principle as Intel used ever since Nehalem. The very reason why you get more thermal room to turbo boost two cores more than 4 cores.

You people speak like Llano is some Messiah to the hardware world when infact they come draging behind after Intel have already been there.

 

I bought the dv6z because it only cost me $700 with an AMD 5650, backlit keyboard, bluetooth and an N930 (later upgraded to an N970). An i5-460m version with the same specs would have cost $800-850.

The figures aren't exaggerated at all, either. That is the battery life I got. I admit I may be slightly bias towards AMD but I have owned Intel as well. My AMD notebooks have just been better for me, leading to me liking them better.

More than likely it didn't, however, because 6.5 hours with MobileMark2007 is average for a SB system.

I know how Turbo Boost works. And what I meant is that some of you make it seem like AMD's power gating only occurs when the entire APU is completely idle, not just two cores shut off so the other can run faster. If their power gating technology can shut down cores that aren't in use plus the IGP then I see no reason to believe that Llano can't get the same battery life as SB.

No one is acting like that but Llano is the perfect platform for a lot of people, as long as AMD comes even close to the claims they are making. Some of you are acting like Llano is crap and shouldn't even bother trying to compete with Intel. Llano wins in price, graphics performance and should be similar or better in battery life. Intel has better processor performance.

Look at it this way. Intel graphics are more than enough for the average consumer and Llano processor power is more than enough for the average consumer, battery life is the same and Llano is cheaper. Why would the average consumer buy Intel? If Llano processor performance is not enough for you then buy Intel.

 

And it'd have been a much faster and more efficient system. Quote from Anand:

Llano is nothing more than that chip plus clock gating and turbo + IGP at 32nm, and it won't be competitive in performance or power, only at idling at desktop.

You keep saying "but...but..MobileMark2007", but there isn't a single place on any of those slides where they state it's MobileMark 2007 or anything like that. Maybe they're comparing Intel's MobileMark score with their "idling" score. These are marketing slides, so the truth has no business being on there.

I can bet you anything that battery life will not be the same for anything except idling. Intel will be better. Why would the average consumer buy a 400 shader Llano? I'm sure an i3 or an i5 with the Intel IGP is better for the average consumer in terms of Windows responsiveness and heavy scripted/flash web page rendering, and battery life.

 

I am not denying the performance difference, but I did not need the speed so why pay extra for it, which is the whole point here. The P920 is also significantly slower than the N930/970 and the i5 dv6 was known for overheating while by AMD version never went over 76C.

And improved power gating features. No one is saying it will be close to SB in performance, I don't see why you keep bringing it up. But we have no reason to believe it won't be close in battery life.

AMD defines resting battery life, which they said in the slides, as the use of MobileMark2007. Don't you remember a couple of years ago when they tried to get manufacturers to have battery life estimates for active time as well ( link). You can even go look up older posts on AMD's blog in which they argue for more accurate battery life estimates. At least they are honest in the slides and say resting battery life. The slides also say to see the footnotes, which I am sure the journalists they were given to had access to. These are leaked slides, remember? AMD did not want these available yet.

We will see about the battery life, but the average consumer wants to save money. If Llano will do everything that the average consumer wants for cheaper than Intel the question would be why wouldn't they buy Llano.

 

will the c50 play starcraft 2 on low? at about 30-34 fps that's my only question and i'll be making a purchace in 3 weeks

other wise i'll just wait for the msi windpad 110w wich is rumored to run a 350

 

"If Llano will do everything that the average consumer wants for cheaper than Intel the question would be why wouldn't they buy Llano."

Pretty much why I'm an AMD fan; It gives me what I want for less. I went from a Pentium one to a K6-III+ way back when and have never looked back. Mind you right now Intel no doubt puts out a faster product, as you have said yourself over and over. But I can get what I want for less, so why pay more?

Plus it's always fun rooting for the underdog.

 

The problem is that Llano can`t shut down the IGP cores. If you use the IGP by doing low demanding stuff like surfing the internet, the cores of the IGP will run at the lowest frequency to use the least power.
And where did you get that a Llano computer is cheaper? You can find crappy Asus/HP/etc. laptops like this one for $679. Newegg.com - ASUS A53 Series A53E-XE2 Notebook Intel Core i5 2410M(2.30GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1333 640GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi Intel HD Graphics 3000
You can find laptops with discrete graphics that beat the IGP of Llano hands down for $800, which also have Optimus so you get almost the same battery life. I am not saying that Llano will have worse battery life than Sandy Bridge though. I just pointed out with my earlier post that what Intel already have accomplished, 7 W draw increase from the CPU idle to active, with the second fastest Quad core when watching a movie, is very hard to beat unless you have some serious revolutionary architecture. We don`t know about how good Llano will be in terms of battery life. Guess we will have to wait and see.

 

Isn't Liano meant to compete in the netbook department, and by extension Atom based cpu's from Intel?

Bulldozers are supposed to present a viable adversary for the SB series to my knowledge.

 

Yes we do, SB architecture is much more efficient than K10 in performance per watt. So at idle they may be able to compete, but the Intel will spend more of its time at idle or close to idle power states whereas the AMD will have to ramp up its speed much more often, resulting in reduced battery life.

No mention of it in the slides, so it's just your wishful assumptions. I say they stacked the deck to make SB look not as good and I'm just as correct as you.

If the average consumer doesn't need any CPU speed, why doesn't everyone just get a E-350 and be done with it? There is a need for more CPU power as it improves the overall responsiveness of the system, especially the typical OEM system that comes with a bunch of unnecessary services and programs installed and most people don't bother to remove them or reinstall windows.

 

Llano is aimed at the mainstream segment and will compete against i3 and i5. You're thinking about Zacate/Bobcat for netbooks.

 

Yes, but they're desktop and server only. The ones competitive with Sandy Bridge have 130W TDP so it's hard to see them coming to laptops anytime soon.

 

Even if it can't completely shut off the IGP cores, them running at their lowest frequency is going to consume very little power, comparable to what SB uses when not being stressed.

The cheapest Llano notebooks will be around $400. At the $750, or less, price range is the quad-cores, 6620G units with discrete graphics as well ( link).

Why will Llano have to ramp up its speed much more often?

It does say resting battery life in the slides and AMD defines that as idle battery life, or MobileMark2007. They may have done some stacking, like giving the Intel notebook a discrete GPU or raising its brightness, but it is doubtful because the people who saw this presentation more than likely had access to the footnotes the slides mention.

For one, the E-350 would be more than enough for the average consumer. That is not what we are talking about here, though. We are talking about Llano, which is way faster than Zacate. Llano offers enough power that you would be hard pressed to notice the difference in day-to-day tasks with SB. The only time there will be a major difference is when doing CPU intensive tasks, such as video encoding.

Llano 3dMark Vantage numbers are up, in case anyone is interested.

http://wccftech.com/2011/05/29/amd-llano-fusion-performance-exposed-3d-mark-vantage-2/

The lowest A-series APU, the dual-core A4-3300M with 240 SPs, beats Intel HD 3000 graphics while the highest is around the 5650, 2+ times faster than Intel's IGP

 

Don't know how the C-50 will handle Starcraft 2 but you might find your answers in one of these threads:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...cpu-6250-gpu-performance-acer-522-review.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...one-522-owners-lounge-amd-fusion-netbook.html

AMD Trinity will be Bulldozer based mobile APU and it's due out in 1H 2012. They may also use the new 4-way GPU arch on the IGP.

 

Trinity, Q1 2012, will use Bulldozer cores

Edit - Beat to it

 

It will probably be a struggle/won't be pretty--the X120e with its E-350 and Radeon 6310 (basically, overall, a more powerful C-50 and Radeon 6250) runs SC2 at a bit over 30FPS at native 1366x768 with all settings at low (see: NotebookCheck).

You will probably be able to play it with all settings at low, and less than native res.

 

The cheapest Sandy Bridge laptop I found was this one for $479. Amazon.com: Probook 4530S 15.6" I3-2310M: Computer & Accessories
Could probably find cheaper too, but that isn`t so far away from your estimates of around $400. Probably a crappy computer anyways

 

$400 isn't my estimate

 

That`s gonna be one sucky sucky laptop and CPU. 40% of the amount of Radeon cores that the Quads have + lower clocked
But then again, it is only 400 bucks lol

 

Exactly. The IGP should still be around that of SB and the processor is enough for most That is what AMD is trying to do.

 

Because it's a lot slower than a Sandy Bridge clock per clock, and SB gives more FLOPS per watt consumed. K10 will have to burn more power to do the same computation as the SB. If both are left idling with nothing else, the results would be around the same.

You have zero evidence of this and the word mobilemark 2007 does not come up even once. However, every company spins the truth to their favor in their marketing. I know I'll be right when Llano comes out and benchmarks are released though.

If the E-350 is more than enough for the average consumer, why does AMD bother with Llano in the first place? Maybe you'd like to admit that CPU power matters more than you think.

I notice the difference from C2D to SB i5 every day, it's a big difference. Llano is going to be C2D level.

 

Now you are just guessing.

 

Under light use the difference in power consumption is going to be negligible, however. Especially if Llano can completely shut off parts of the APU that aren't in use. Under heavy usage I am sure that SB will beat Llano in battery life. With normal web-surfing, I think they will be close.

A couple of years ago AMD was all over the place trying to get manufacturers to advertise active time battery life as well as MobileMark2007 figures, which they called resting time. There are a lot of places you can read about this

Why Your Laptop's Batteries Die So Fast - Newsweek

Mobile Mark 2007 | Home Blog

And, like I said, we don't have the footnotes that the slides refer to because these slides were leaked early. When the footnotes are made available I know I'll be right and that they did use MobileMark 2007.

I think it matters less than you think. That is why the netbook and tablet markets have grown so much recently. At this moment, I stand by the statement that the E-350 is enough for most people. In the future that may not be true, which is why companies continue to try and advance their technology. There is also the competition side of things. If Intel moves their technology forward, AMD has to do the same or they will go under.

Really? Because when doing light-to-moderate web-surfing I can't even notice a difference between my E-350 and my previous i5. When I get to heavy flash pages or start running a lot of applications at once, I start to notice a difference but I didn't between my N970 and an i5.

Based on the fact that it has twice as many SPs as the E-350, which is about half as good as the HD 3000, yes.

 

i'll be waiting for the E-350 the c-50 fropping to 6-7 fps in the third mission is a llittle to far for me

thanks for the links and info

 

A lot of ifs and buts in that statement. People have more applications and more tabs in their browser open at one time than you realize. In those cases AMD mobile CPU's fall short.

I guarantee they stacked the deck in AMD's favor just like that other demo a few months ago where they were watching a movie, doing 3D modeling and playing a game at the same time 3D acceleration beyond what SB (or even E-350) offers is a tiny niche in PC computing.

Actually, people who bought netbooks the first round are realizing its inadequacies and moving to CULV's, which are faster than the Atom or the E-350.

I have an SSD so the slow speed of a traditional hard drive doesn't mask the actual responsiveness of the system and it becomes CPU bound. I also run a Virtual Machine as just another application window on my system along with office apps and firefox. The speed improvement from C2D to i5 was very noticable. That said, if I had a mechanical HDD, I'm sure it wouldn't be very noticable since everything would be waiting for it.

 

Actually, it would be more noticeable. A faster cpu makes every component faster too (like a HDD or an SSD).

 

How does a faster CPU make a faster HDD? It doesn't increase the spindle speed or the data density. Since I replaced my DVD with a second HDD, I tried installing a second win7 partition to it. It was so painfully slow that I gave up and deleted the partition and created it on my SSD Similarly, my C2D came with a mechanical HDD and it was also dog slow until I replaced it with my SSD.

 

One 'if' and no 'buts', to be honest. Even if Llano can't completely shut down parts of the APU not being used, under light use the difference in consumption between it and SB will be almost nothing.

All I can say is that we will see. It would be pretty pointless of them to stack the deck like you think but then but the system details where the people they gave the presentation to had access to them

I disagree. There are very few notebooks that feature SB CULV processors and there weren't that many with Arrandale CULV, either. C2D, specifically the SU7300, saw the most sales among Intel CULV but the sales have just gone down since then. If anything I think more people are moving to Atom and Zacate because they realize that is all they need and it is cheaper.

For one, most people aren't running VM's. Second of all, I guess you are different from me. then. I have used a notebook with an i5 and the Seagate Momentus XT and used the same drive is an SU7300 machine, and I did not feel any difference in day-to-day operations.

 

No, nobody said it would increase the spindle speed or data density.

But a faster cpu makes all components faster nevertheless.

Same reason most benchmarks are done on the highest end systems available. The 'numbers' show there is a difference - I feel them.

 

Not really, NVidia did it when they listed the compiler version and of course the C2D has a much older build in that example. This was right on the slides, not even in the footnotes, so explanation of the stacked deck on the footnotes are very likely. All companies twist the truth in their marketing.

SB CULV's are just ramping up, and there are plenty of notebooks with Arrandale CULV's. C2D CULV's were a hit and many people discarded their Atoms for them. Atom and Brazos are inadequate processors for the general user.

As I said, you're not going to notice much difference with a mechanical HDD, because the CPU is waiting for the HDD most of the time. With an SSD, the difference is very clear. Momentus XT doesn't count as a real SSD, and if you currently find an E-350 sufficient, you probably don't do much with your computer to begin with.