AMD Fusion Info Thread

If HP puts one in their dv6z, which is likely, then I am fine with it. I have owned two different generation dv6z's and both had an excellent keyboard and build quality. I can live with 1366x768 on a 15.6'' screen as well, though I would like something higher, and I am more than okay with it on a 14'', if there is one.

 

This is so true and pisses me off to no end. I had a thread a while back about the E350 being wasted potential. I bought a VAIO YB because it was the least ugly out of all E350 offerings. I put my Vertex 2 in there and it's much faster than I expected.

Everything else was a problem, though.

Crap screen? Yes, but I can live with that.

Noisy fan? Yes, and that pisses me off. And the APU is super cool temperature wise. Sony's thought process on this was like, "Hmm. This APU runs really cool and is highly efficient. Maybe we should put a noisy fan in there because it's doing its job too well."

The trackpad button clicks supremely loud like a pop-o-matic bubble. Lets all classmates know that you bought a really crappy computer. I usually tap instead of clicking, but still. If you're going to make clicks that embarrassing, might as well just make the tiny trackpad surface bigger and ditch the stupid keys.

 

AMD to use Coreboot in Llano, other upcoming parts

 

I bet the power consumption reduction comes with a reduction in productivity, multitasking, etc. as well...

Mr. Mysterious

 

I love rooting for AMD. You guys think they are closing the gap with Intel?

 

No, I'm firmly of the opinion that Intel is wayyy out in front of AMD in terms of CPU, especially with SB and Ivy Bridge already on the way.

In GPU's however, I believe that ATI (AMD) is much better than Intel or NVIDIA for that matter.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Llano is going to match Penryn Core 2 Duo performance, going to get ATI Radeon 5650 HD Performance for it's integrated GPU, and going to match Intel Sandy Bridge in energy efficiency.

Give or take 10% for all of those. Just my best guess.

Probably not going to get one unless they come in an Elitebook 12 or 13" with solid battery life, but I am rooting for AMD.

 

I would very much agree with that, and also add the Samsung Series 4 12in on that list. I just need that much extra cpu power vs ULV C2D in my Vaio, but would like more gpu power(specially now many apps are taking advantage of the gpu).

 

I thought current Mobile Phenom/Athlon IIs were comparable to low end Arrandales?

 

Key word is "comparable".

They were basically slightly slower than the last generation Core 2 Duos, but a lot less energy efficient.

Now that Fusion combines everything together, and enhances those Athlon II cores, I'm pretty sure energy efficiency won't be a problem and performance will still be slightly slower than Core 2 Duos. That isn't bad though, Core 2 Duos are still decent processors.

 

It is going to be a pretty decent cpu, specially since AMD is paring them with fairly good IGPs and such, and power usage is suppose to be comparable to SB.

 

Load power usage should be similar, but idle power usage is the biggest question. Sandy Bridge is extremely efficient when idle; that's what allows high-end quad-cores to move into battery life territory previously accessible only to netbooks and CULVs.

It would be interesting to see if AMD can finally match Intel in this. They haven't been anywhere close since the release of Core 2 so I wouldn't count on it, but for half a year they two companies will be on the same 32nm process so it's possible (of course, after that comes Ivy Bridge and its 22nm Tri-Gate transistors so I fully expect the gap to grow again).

 

Champlain was definitely near Arrandale when idle, arguably even more power efficient. A Champlain dual-core got similar or better battery life than an Arrandale dual-core in the same notebooks; dv7, i5, 6 hours vs dv7, N620, 7 hours

 

I'm liking all this talk about AMD coming even with the i cores and I officially am part of the 'wait for Llano' crowd. I just hope that they're available in more than we have now for AMD CPUs. The vast majority of what's out there is Intel based.

 

Funny how all the videos from AMD they are showcasing some graphical stuff but never shows any calculations or power draw in the different states.

If IGP is their Ace card about this technology i`d say "Meh" because the people use IGP for easy stuff like word, browsing, movies, and light gaming anyway. Intel already have that covered. But nevertheless it is good with competition

 

Your argument actually hurts Intel more, because Intel's CPU prowess isn't going to be used by the vast majority of PC users

However, you will hit the GPU wall far earlier than a CPU wall - load one game that's above the typical IGP's ability, and you won't be able to play it, no matter how fast your CPU is

 

And that is why there are still Core 2 Duos out in the market, because they actually do everything an average user needs them to do. (Heck, look at the tablets' capabilities now!)

But technology is moving forward. Quad-cores will become the mainstream in 2012.

Mr. Mysterious

 

You don`t get it. IGP users in general will never hit GPU limit. If gaming is one of their criteria for choosing a computer, they will much rather pick a laptop with a discrete GPU and be able to play on high details in HD.
And people are easily fooled. They pick the CPU with the most frequency and the most cores. They don`t pick a CPU because of it`s graphical strength. Heck 90% of Sandy Bridge users are unaware of what frequency and memory the IGP have. If you are a gamer and want an IGP it is probably because you want to be able to save battery or cooler laptop with Optimus/AMDs option while surfing etc.

So no, Intel have everything in order when it comes to catering the different user groups

 

Yes, but that battery life is not because of the CPUs. You are comparing a laptop with i5 + HD5470M to one with N620 + HD4250M and the i5 doesn't get switchable graphics. Take the discreet video card out and the i5 would win handily.

Arrandale was a performance-oriented architecture rather than one oriented to power efficiency, there's no doubt about that (note that in the comparison of those two laptops, the i5 has a 50% advantage in PCMark Vantage). However, even with those server-derived CPUs, Intel still had a substantial edge in battery life.

 

The i5 dv7 comes with switchable graphics, I assume that the test was done with the Intel IGP enabled. I also have first-hand experience. I had a dv6 with an N620 and it got the same battery life as the i5 dv6. My dv6 with a quad-core N970 got only half an hour less.

 

I doubt it. In the comparison to similar laptops on that webpage, the Dell Inspiron 17R (which has the same i5-460M CPU, but no discreet graphics) gets 4:09 hours:minutes with a 47Wh battery. The i5 dv7 has a 93Wh battery so I don't see how it would only get 6:00 with the IGP.

 

1. It'll be close to Penryn clock for clock, but I'd still give C2D the edge.
2. No way it's going to get 5650 HD performance with half the bandwidth.
3. Unlikely to match SB for energy efficiency or performance per watt, since SB is much faster to begin with. It speeds up to max frequency for a few seconds, finishes the job, and goes back to ultra low idle clock. AMD is unlikely to be able to match that with a revamped K10.

I don't understand who Llano is for, people who want to be able to play 3D games on a budget? These people know that an extra $100 for a better cpu and more importantly GPU will go a long way.

 

It's not because Intel's IGP is already strong enough to handle general computer tasks that user's aren't hitting IGP limits....user's aren't hitting IGP limits because developers can't write software that makes use of GPU acceleration while most computers are running an Intel IGP too weak to handle it.

In a similar vein there are a large number of people who are not PC gamers because they're strictly all about the serious business, but because as you described, the general user is mostly unaware of their computers capabilities and all they know is that the PC they own doesn't run the game they just purchased.....and, being that they're all easily fooled, that gives them the false impression that PC are only for Facebook and if they want to game they need to buy a console. If IGP were more capable of gaming, more people would game on the PC.


Intel hasn't been catering to user groups, they've been stifling, or in some cases out right controlling (See: Intel's Atom netbook restrictions) what users can do with a PC.

 

Thank you for that, I was about to post a similar argument before I read yours. Ofc you're absolutely right. People don't "need" better iGP not because they wouldn't enjoy something more capable with some correspondent software if it was made available, but because they don't realize to what extent they're limited by intel's sh!tty iGP that populate 98% of currently sold consumers' PCs.

 

No. Developers can't write software that makes use of GPU acceleration because the range of tasks that can be accelerated by GPUs is not very wide. You can do it anywhere you've got graphics and in fact with the exception of 3D gaming and programs designed around a single architecture (e.g. CUDA), Intel's GPUs do this quite well. You can also do it for some, but not all massively parallel processes. For example, my work uses software that can split up its task into millions of completely independent threads... but we can't use GPUs for this because each thread needs on the order of 1GB of RAM and GPUs have at most 4GB total. There are server applications where it's possible though (i.e. those that will not be bound by RAM or storage).

Beyond these, GPUs are simply not very useful. This has nothing to do with Intel or AMD -- it's just Amdahl's law. Most tasks cannot be made massively parallel and if they are not, then a GPU is no better than a very primitive processor running at a third of the clock speeds of modern CPUs.

 

Idle, the 5470 would not consume much more than the Intel IGP anyway. But the reviewer states that,

So I would take it to mean that they didn't switch back to the 5470 when they ran the battery test.

 

Well I disagree. It doesn`t matter to the average IGP user what power the IGP posess. They are mainly after office work etc. If it can play games excellent. So can Sandy Bridge as well, just not all games. If a person walks in to a store and ask for a computer for gaming, the sales men will tell him to buy the laptop with quad with superultra turbo and GPU that plays in full HD on high details etc. AMD offers nothing new.

 

The platform that people are overlooking here, imo, is price. If AMD offers a Llano APU with high-end C2D/lower-end Core I processor power, AMD5650 gaming capability and Sandy Bridge energy efficiency at around $700 then it is a pretty good deal. Personally, that is exactly what I am looking for.

 

You can already get that around $700 with the Acer 3820/3830TG. Llano will have nowhere near 5650 graphics with that crippled shared memory bus, and the low CPU performance will effect framerates in strategy games such as Civilization and Starcraft 2.

 

Do you ever get tired of shilling for Intel? I hope they shower you with Pentium III chips.

My VAIO YB AMD E-350 machine is a crap ton faster than my VAIO TZ with C2D 1.33Ghz. They both rank around 3.8 or 3.9 in WEI.

In other words, same CPU power. What's the difference?
Everything else. SSD, graphics, RAM.

If LLano keeps the TDP down and the graphics do around what we expect, then Intel chips will largely be obsolete for notebooks.

So, for people "in the know," there will be no other choice. Will it dent Intel's marketshare? No. There are plenty of automatons like you who buy Intel no matter what. Then there are those other people that just don't know what an AMD is and just equate computing with Intel. But as far as the computing power that most people actually want and use, the Llano will slay all others.

 

AMD will stay a generation behind Intel like they always have done. Ivy bridge is not far away with greater speed, better IGP 16 EUs and lower power consumption.

 

Two points:

1. Ivy is 2012. Llano is in a few weeks. Don't compare apples to oranges.
2. You don't know what Ivy will do, but we all have a good idea of what Llano will do. We have Zacate as proof.

I'm not pro-AMD or Intel.
I'm not pro-Apple, MSFT or Google.
I'm pro price-to-performance ratio. I wish more of you people were the same.

 

I am just hoping for a Llano version of the Asus EP121 tablet with better battery life(and lower price would be a bonus).

 

Nah I rather spend a bit more than buy an obsolete technology. Some details about Ivy is already available too. Half year from now Intel increase their lead even more.

 

AMD has not always been behind the pack. I still remember the day AMD came out with the first gigahertz processor, that was during the slot A days. I remember wishing how much I could get it, but I didn't have the $1,200 asking price for it.
AMD was also the first to come out with a 64-bit processor. AMD was also ahead of the pack during the pentium 4 days, with their athlon processors.
Since AMD purchased ATI, they took on a bunch of debt. When Intel came out with the core duo (and subsequently core 2 duo) processors, AMD fell behind. The only way they could compete was getting into a price war with Intel, which is still going on to this day. Since the aquisition of ATI, and the price war, financially AMD is in a much harder position than Intel these days.
I'll tell you something else. In recent years I see Intel only "innovating" when it's absolutely necessary, and not for the benefit of consumers. They only innovate just enough to stay a step or two ahead of AMD, never a bit more.
So even though they may be "behind", I still have faith in AMD to innovate, and I trust AMD is innovating more for the benefit of the consumer than it is for it's own benefit (while I strongly believe it's the complete opposite for Intel).

Edit: This is a great read, showing the state of the microprocessor back in 2000. The first three paragraphs are very telling.
AMD's Latest Thunderbird: SocketA Athlon at 1.1 GHz : Introduction

More great reads.

The Giga Battle : Introduction

The Giga-Battle Part 2 : Introduction

The New Athlon Processor: AMD Is Finally Overtaking Intel : Introduction

 

Guess what, your system would be vastly faster with a 1.33 Ghz C2D if it had the same memory, SSD and gpu (which isn't much these days) Now with SSD's becoming more common, the CPU is becoming the bottleneck.

I noticed a massive improvement in system responsiveness going from a C2D to a Sandy using the same amount of memory and the exact same SSD. E-350 can barely outpace the Atom which Intel deliberately cripples to not compete with the higher margin chips. It may be enough for you, but it's not enough for a lot of users.

Everyone notices the vast improvement in responsiveness using a faster CPU when they have an SSD and not bottlnecked by a mechanical HDD.

FYI, I used to rock AMD powered PC's during the K7 and K8 days when they were truly better, but after C2D came out, it's been game over for AMD and they haven't got back on their feet ever since. Their GPU's are better than Nvidia's in performance per watt, which is why I prefer them over Nvidia. During the 8800GT days, I preferred NV because they were indeed better at the time.

You're the one coming off as a mindless AMD drone. I merely get the best CPU for my money, and it used to be AMD when Intel f'd up with the P4 and RDRAM. Intel's been on top for the last 5 years and they're maintaining their advantage.

Currently the only place AMD is competitive is in the netbook segment with the E-350 which barely outperforms an atom. However, that's not saying much because you could spend $100 more (ASUS UL20FT goes for $500) and get a real CPU such as an Arrandale which would run rings around the E-350 and Atom. The only thing E-350 would come on top would be graphics, which is pointless because most people don't need anything more than what Intel IGP does, and the ones that need better graphics are better off with a discrete GPU which would run rings around the E-350 or llano.

 

Where have you seen the 3820TG for $700? $800 is the cheapest I have seen one.

 

Well, when I looked a few months ago they had i3's and were going around $700. Now they have i5's and go for $800. In any case, you wouldn't spend $100 more for far better cpu and gpu performance? You can afford the $700, another $100 is too much for 40-50% better performance?

 

I'd like to see where you see Atom being close to Fusion specially since NBR reviews showed Fusion being almost close to ulv C2D in their benchmarks. Sure its synthetic test but at least that something to use. Plus, Fusion gpu is much better than even 4500hd(and I think the first gen i core gpu), but that's not saying too much. However, that is still better than intel 500 gpu Atom machines have.

In the low end I would take Fusion, but when it comes to pricier machines don't get me wrong I will take an intel with AMD gpu. Then again the idea of a Llano powered Asus EP121 with better battery life does sound tempting to me.

 

E350 vs D510
Of course I was only considering the CPU part of it. E350 GPU is better for games but that's irrelevant to the main netbook customer, who only needs the GPU for video acceleration. Even Intel GPU's are capable of that, as well as the ION.

Here's E350 vs Dual core celeron (C2D based) at 1.6 Ghz, where the E350 gets annihilated. There's not much price difference between these two, and as I said before, Asus UL20FT with Arrandale is only $500, treading on netbook territory.
E350 vs Celeron E1200

 

Amdahl's Law deals with applying many processors to a single task, or multiple tasks dependent on each others' completion, when only part of the task(s) can be run in parallel....and in those cases it may be that GPU multi-threading may not always help. A personal computer, however, simultaneously runs many tasks that are independent of each other, and are not slowed down when another unrelated task can not run in parallel...and in those cases more parallelism will help more often. Even if a PC's multiple independent tasks are grouped together and classified as being a single dependent task because they're sharing the same processing resources, Amdahl's Law would agree that overall PC use will see a speed up since a larger portion of the individual tasks are benefiting from more available parallel processing.

From there we start to get into Gustafson's Law, where the belief is that larger more complex tasks can be set to take advantage of the development of faster and more parallel computers....and therein lies the future direction of GPGPU.

The areas where GPGPU can help may be limited now but those areas are not at all insignificant to the average users. Antivirus, and network security look to make use of GPGPU and while it's common to think graphics just improves games and videos, graphics are also involved in image recognition, & optics and can be applied to changing how users interface with their computers. Furthermore, technology always improves and the areas where GPGPU isn't capable today is where they'll advance the hardware features tomorrow. The sooner stronger GPU are spread out there handling the tasks they already can, the sooner it's found out where their capabilities are lacking and how they can be expanded to take on even more sophisticated tasks.

 

I dunno, I had a first gen netbook with the N270 cpu, and its performance when it came you youtube, and certain video files(neither HD), that machine would sputter bad. I am not sure how much better newer netbooks are, but for video(be it flash or native), cpu and the gpu can come in handy, specially if they want to play HD stuff.

 

But that's not how human beings use personal computers. Forget the level of parallelization needed to make GPUs effective, for most personal uses (i.e. for people who run work-related stuff on their home machines), we can't even make full use of a quad-core and quad-core processors have been around for half a decade. There are theoretical use cases that would give the CPU a workload more efficiently handled with greater parallelization, but nobody actually does that.

A modern CPU such as a quad-core Sandy Bridge is extremely unlikely to be the bottleneck of any personal usage. This is the case that AMD has been making for years to sell its inferior chips and to a considerable extent it is true. This didn't help them because they drive the performance so low that it pushes into the region where the CPU does become a bottleneck and because they have a reputation for hot and power hungry chips which takes a while to shed even after they stopped making the latter, but the idea itself is difficult to dispute.

Gustafson's law is the same thing as Amdahl's law, only phrased in terms of a different variable. You can set up larger and more parallel tasks and this is happening in some industries, but it's still restricted to a certain class of task.

Anti-virus is actually a perfect example of an application where parallelization is useless. Nvidia has been trying to do this for a long time, but they haven't gotten anywhere because anti-viruses aren't CPU-bound, they're slow because they hammer the storage and using a GPU is not going to make that any better.

Maybe. I can't predict the future and it is possible that somebody will find a use for them to do something new and interesting. At the very least they'll be used in large data centers and for games and such. However, I think you are badly underestimating the difficulty of finding such tasks and making them work in the presence of limited memory bandwidth and speed of access to storage.

 

It depends on the other parts of the notebook; such as build quality and keyboard; but, if everything else was equal, I would say no. Why would I spend $100 more on performance I don't need? $100 is not a little bit of money. I would also like to know why you say that the TimelineX would offer much better GPU performance when the only thing we have heard about Llano is that the IGP performs about the same as the 5650?

 

Back when you had a N270, Flash probably didn't use GPU acceleration and it's a single core CPU so it struggled. These days it's a lot different with a dual core atom and gpu accelerated flash even Intel IGP's can use.

 

You're ok with %50 of 5650 HD performance? Just use Sandy Bridge IGP then...

You are not understanding the part that bandwidth is everything in GPU performance. Having the same number of shaders as the 5650HD doesn't mean you're going to perform as well when those shaders are crippled by a low bandwidth memory bus that'll be shared with the CPU.

Real World Technologies - Memory Bandwidth and GPU Performance

 

Funny thing is that you get cheap laptops with GPUs that rap* the IGP of Fusion. Asus laptops with GTX 460M goes for around $1100 ish and that card is vastly superior to the 5650M. The prices will fall once 560M is introduced in a few weeks. Laptops with Sandy Bridge and GT 540M with GDDR5 memory goes for around $800.

 

The only benchmark we have seen of Llano is for the desktop A8-3550, unknown processor speed but the IGP has 400 stream processors and a 594MHz clock speed ( link) and it shows a 3dMarkVantage score of 3335, which is about the same as the 5650.

 

Which is nice if you play 3D mark vantage I guess? That benchmark is more shader heavy than bandwidth. Not to mention a 35W notebook APU is going to score much lower than a 65W desktop power hog.

 

The only notebook Llano IGP that we know the config of is the 6620, and it has 480 SP's and a 725MHz clock speed.

3dMark may be shader heavy but bandwidth does play at least some part in the score, and the Llano IGP still scores higher than the 5650M even though they have the same amount of SP's.