The Ultimate AMD Trinity Notebook List

WOW, how did they manage to get their hands on AC, i want one of those cards to put in my system. And I think out of those 2 models the 15.6'' one is the most impressive. How did they manage to put a 35W APU and a dGPU along with 90Wh battery in only 4.84lb and 0.68'' thin? And as for the design, it looks like a combination of Samsung and HP (which is not a bad thing). From the sides it looks like Samsung Series 9 and the inner surface resembles the HP Envy 15 somewhat (seams like hp killed that line, which makes me sad because those tings looked awesome and had great graphics).

 

A shame that it doesn't have a Richland APU.

Oh well, as long as they introduce the Richland version before the end of "Back to School" sale season, I'll consider the ultrabook.

 

If you are gona wait that long, Kaveri will probably be out already so it should be fine if there is no Richland refresh.

 

The issue is that I'm going to college this year, and I do plan on doing some light gaming (low-mid eyecandy settings). And the only suitable laptops that I have available are:

- A 14" (4:3) 5.8lb 2006 Dell business laptop with 11 hours of battery life (because there's a second battery in the DVD drive compartment) and an Intel GMA.

- A 11" laptop with an Intel HD 2000 GPU.


My current laptop is a 6.4lb 17.3". Not going to haul that thing around.

 

Get a few classic games from GOG.com to tide you over until you can buy a new laptop that can push newer stuff.

 

The more I look at it, that Vizio has a great package, however the price is a bit stiff. If it were Richland I'd likely bite. 1080p screen is appealing. But glossy touch is a bit of a turnoff. It's a good sign though. Maybe Vizio will see the light and offer a Richland 13" and 15" laptop with their top end 35W APU with matte non-touch screen.

 

The new MSI G70 is Richland and 8xxx series graphics....and if current prices are any indication, around $1200

 

Personally, for AMD I'm looking for thin and light and gaming capable. If I'm going for full sized laptop I'd rather go with Intel/nVidia to be honest. I'm keeping an eye out for this Vizio.

 

Last year the prices lower drastically after MSRP within a few weeks. For $600 it gonna be excellent buy.

 

Wow if it's really about $600, I'm sold for sure.

 

What I don't get is why Vizio refuses to include an SDXC Card Reader and additional USB 2.0/3.0 ports. If size is an issue at least a couple microSD card readers onboard would be cool considering the AMD thin and lights have "only" 128GB SSDs whereas the Intel thin and lights have 256GB SSDs. This will have an impact on performance for some users considering all we know about 120GB vs 256GB SSDs and spare area for performance consistency. I don't know what SSD form factor Vizio is using for these but I sure hope its 2.5" 7mm or at the very least the standard mSATA form factor, NOT some proprietary stuff. I would quickly ditch the stock SSD for the upcomming Crucial M500 480GB mSATA SSD that's for sure and the main reason I would like to have an SD card reader onboard is because i use SD cards all the time and i can add more solid state storage for my needs between my existing laptops.

On a related subject, the 11.6" Vizio Z-60 Windows 8 Tablet also has few too many ports (so far). MicroHDMI, MicroUSB, 3.5mm headphone and a charging power connector. I'm all for simplicity and cleanliness but there should be no reason not to include SD/microSD Card Readers and a few more USB 2.0/3.0 ports here either (considering a docking port is also missing). Maybe Vizio's next generation of thin and lights and tablets will improve in these areas.

Edit: I know the Z-60 has a reduce functionality chipset but still i cannot see why a standard size USB 3.0 port and SD Card Reader cannot be included.

However, I am still considering one of Vizio's products. They are very tempting but Temash and Kabini are not that far off and those will be quite a lot better SOCs than this "new" Z-series APU. Those Jaguar SOCs will be killer. I'm excited to see how much the Z-60 Vizio tablet will cost and how end-users will react towards AMD's tablet in comparison to Intel's Atom and Clovertrail competitors. The APU/iGPU is in AMD's court for now.

 

Oh true, no SD card is a missed opportunity. I almost *need* an SD card reader as I use one for my camera all the time to load images. USB is not an option, just something that will likely get lost or broken.

 

I don't expect the Vizio tablet to do well. Sales of Windows 8 tablets have been anemic (Samsung even pulled some of their tablets from the market) and I don't expect AMD tablets to do better.
As for the successors lets see how they behave.

But AMD has the best product for mobile form factors since they're close to creating a well-rounded x86 SoC.

 

Then bring your 17.3" laptop with you to be used as a stationary desktop replacement in college (for dormitory), while you can use the 11" laptop that has Intel HD2000, or the DELL laptop on the go (to carry around - though the 11" is definitely more portable for such a function) until AMD Kaveri comes out.

Mind you, if what AMD says about Kaveri turns out accurate, then it's 4 core APU might (or should) finally be on the similar level of a quad core Ivy Bridge or entry level quad core Haswell (CPU-wise), while the integrated GPU should be more powerful than Richland (Trinity IGP is already more powerful than any Integrated solution Intel has on offer and will also be more powerful than Haswell IGP).
Haswell (cpu-wise) is a mere 5% to 10% increase in clock/clock performance (biggest 'boost' will be in the IGP).

So, if I were you, waiting until Kaveri comes out later in the year (which should be around August/September this year) would seem like a better option.

 

Sandy was the big deal. Hell, i tried a 3110M and 2348M in the same notebook and the 2348M scores a litlle better in cinebench 64 bits despite its slight lower cloks. Ivy just have higher cpu turbos which are faking benchies. Cause we all know that cpu turbo is pretty much a scam when most notebooks can't handle it more than 1 minute ot two before throttling. Fist thing u do is deactivate turbo to get normal temperatures and silence haha.

So Haswell being only 5%/10% better than Ivy is pointless. With probably higher turbos that will rarely be enabled. If amd wants to catch up cpu wise, it's now.

 

I looked up the 11" laptop's model. It's a Samsung 300ua that weighs 2.69 lb, and only has up to 2.5 or 3 hours of battery life...

 

AMD ready to blow away the competition int the low-power market!

Fudzilla



Really awesome!! Playing Torchlight 2 at 1080p with an A6 Kabini APU. Simply amazing.

 

That's why you need Throttlestop... max turbo indefinitely (as long as your laptop cooling can manage it).

 

I'm glad someone else agrees with me on this one! AMD has got hybrid and tablets in the bag this round. Why the heck would you even consider an Intel now? And then there's Bluestacks Android emulator too plus all the x86 legacy apps we all love.

AMD is going to kick them in the nads for sure when Temash SOCs come out (graphics-wise, there's no competition, even CPU-wise will be close). It is amazing what these APUs and tablets are capable of doing. I love the Turbo Dock idea, even if it requires a "Safe to disconnect" step when undocking. I'm sure they'll improve this little issue in later revisions like they did with Switchable Graphics/seamlesss switching. I'm tempted by the Z-60 Vizio tablet but this hybrid is just much better in many ways. The dock itself makes it worth it.


Some APU related news:

 

Well, the Intel tablet would be obviously a more viable choice if you're running apps that rely mostly on CPU, though I can't think of any other than older software or Skrim, Starcraft 2, Planetside 2, or Cities XL. But Intel would need either significantly better GPU performance, or try to win the battery life and thinness war.

 

Well they are not, at least the atom tablets which are meant for Windows RT and can barely run full Windows. Their CPU performance may be similar to Z-60 at best, Temash A6 is in a completely different league, even outperforming ULV Core i3s in some CPU tests. Graphics again is on a completely different level. And the only tablets with core i CPUs are bulky, power hungry and cost over $1000, so I don't see neither the Atom nor the Core i3/5 in tablets being decent competition against Temash.

 

I've found this topic upgrading A10-4600M to A10-5750M in HP's support forum and funny the HP representative guy thinks A10-5750M is a graphics card and have no clue of anything . Seriously why doesn't they hire someone from our forum? I think any of us could provide better support...

 

Because most knowledgeable people on our forum would demand a higher salary than HP or most other computer companies are willing to cough up.

Kinda reminds me of a Retail Comic strip where the incompetent manager fires competent employees and keeps incompetent ones simply because the incompetent employees have lower wages.

 

Well, its possible the HP representative simply mis-understood and thought the OP wanted to switch out his 7730-M... in which case he should probably read the question properly.
Or if he really thought the A10 was a GPU, then he could have at least googled it to know the difference.

Anyway... I think upgrading from A10-4600m to A10-5750M should be possible.
The slot to my knowledge will remain the same (even Kaveri should work in it even though it will probably get a new slot but should be backwards compatible from what I read in some of the articles - don't know for sure though). I think the bigger question will be BIOS/UEFI support.
Seeing how laptop manufacturers aren't big on upgrades but rather on prompting people to buy whole new systems... its a question.
Heck, HP might just always stick to the general response: 'This laptop doesn't officially support this product, so any upgrades will void your warranty'.

At least, that's the kind of response I got from Acer support (though they can be notoriously BAD) when I asked them about 8GB and a quad core.

 

A lot of laptops have odd BIOS which are set to only allow certain CPU models. Drop the incorrect model, and the laptop won't boot because the BIOS would notice a different CPU that wasn't on its "allowed" list.

There was one person who tried to go from an i3 to an i5 on a laptop. The laptop failed to boot without a custom BIOS.

 

I checked few Trinity HP laptops and all of those already have new bios as of 15th March with following tag "HP Notebook System BIOS Update (AMD Processors)"
However because Richland same architecture as Trinity, I can imagine even without bios update the laptop would start up...

That is Intel, but with AMD as many times I changed APU, never faild to start up and everything worked 100% good, expect upgrading Llano laptop with Trinity APU .

 

Wow this thread has grown since the last time I visited

Just wanted to know, is there an alternative to PSCheck for editing Pstates? My A10 4600m is capable of some very nice undervolting but damn PSCheck either crashes on startup, when loading a profile or generally mucks about

Also, will be keeping tabs on this thread more often to see if anyone manages to swap a Trinity with a Richland I have a Samsung NP355V5C btw.

I hear the iGPU in the A10 5750m is about as quick as my 7670m dGPU... Which raises the question, will it CF properly?

 

The Richland APUs can be CF'ed with the 8xxxM series despite having asymmetrical GPU architectures (VLW4 with GCN). Now the 8000s are essentially a re-brand of the 7000s, so the 7670m should be compatible.

 

Because 8650G and 7670M performance are very similar, good chance CF will finally work properly, effectively and without micro-stutter.

 

Oh no, I'm not talking microstutter, just downright crappy performance I'm many (if not all tbh, lost patience) I saw less frames per second than using the 7670m alone

BTW what drivers do you recommend Atom?

^ That's me btw

 

The worse performance has nothing to do with the difference in card performance, it's a driver issue. And to have dual graphics working best download latest Enduro Drivers.

 

I'm running 13.1 mobility WHQL, any idea what the latest Enduro supporting drivers are and where to obtain them please?

I feel like I've tried them all, and all betas up to and including 13.3

 

Oh, as an aside, I ran the Tomb Raider (2013) benchmark a few times. This is the most Hybrid Crossfire friendly game I've ever seen. Ran each bench twice

With CF on

Min 31.1/33.0
Max 46.7/48.0
Ave 39.4/40.1

CF off

Min 32.0/31.1
Max 46.0/46.6
Ave 39.5/39.5

So... with CF on you gain bog all, apart from some stutter, and this is the best example I've seen in a modern game

 

I never had dual graphics configuration, so hard to tell. But if you say it is not working with newest Catalyst, than nothing to do, it is still buggy.

 

Actually I'm not running Enduro Edition Drivers anymore, stupid driver Update that Windows did set it back to something really old, from 2012, talk about a downgrade.
And I got my latest Enduro drivers before that by just searching for best compatible drivers through Vision Engine Control Center.
After that old driver mess I installed 13.1 drivers, but for some reason the option isn't there anymore in the Vision Engine Control Center.
In any case if you have the latest non-beta drivers and includes Vision Engine Control Center then you should stick to it, otherwise try to get that.

 

Do you guys think my 6475b (A10-4600M/7660G) would have a problem displaying 3 displays at once using this HP dock? I recently purchased this A7E36AA#ABA dock with a 120W charger (original is 65W) from ebay for $126 (can be had for $140 here) but have not received it yet. It is one of the docks recommended by HP for my notebook. I want to use 3 monitors for working and internet browsing (not so much gaming as I'm sure the 7660G will not do very well running 3 high resolution, HD+/FullHD/etc., displays at once, though i will test it).







I think I found my answer, but now I'm wondering what the max resolution can be for each monitor and can the 7660G make it all happen smoothly:

I read in another HP pdf the 6475b does support DisplayPort 1.2:

Whats better? DVI or DisplayPort? I'll go research it later but anyone is welcome to share their knowledge on this.

Thanks,
David

 

That is one massive dock. And no HDMI on the dock either? What the heck?

 

i wondered if that had to do with the fact that the laptop didn't have hdmi... anyhow displayport is the way to go. you could daisy chain monitors using that if you only wanted to use one connection. displayport has 17.28gb/s bandwidth!

and i love my dock. enjoy.

edit: and i now looked at your pic. damn. that dock looks bigger than mine by a bit. the section with the power button/eject button is at most 3 inches, whereas yours looks more like...6? 8? wow. mine is the 90w version, but that sata slot does look nice. do you have plans for it?

 

If you look closely at the first image... on the left lower side (in between the USB ports) it has 2 'Display ports'.
Now granted, this doesn't mean those are HDMI... but they do look suspiciously very much like HDMI in appearance.

 

FAQ- DisplayPort

this was helpful when i was deciding on my 6475b. my concerns were screen quality and the lack of hdmi output. i decided displayport was more than capable with high resolutions and that my apu would be the bottleneck, not this connection. just my two cents.

 

Lol yeah it is quite massive. Its HP's "Advanced" dock, the BIG DADDY dock (minus the GIANT 230W AC adapter) with all the bells and whistles. I liked this one because of the extra Upgrade Bay for use with an optical drive or a HDD/SSD caddy. DisplayPort can be converted to VGA, DVI or HDMI. Not the other way around, so DP is best in that sense.

I'm starting to understand why DP is best. It has many benefits over the other video connection standards and seems like the right direction for video connections of the future. DP 1.2 supports 4K x 2K resolution and monitor daisy chaining, which is very interesting. According to that FAQ, "2560 x 1600 (WQXGA resolution) is supported over all 2-meter “DP Certified” cables."

Yeah this is the big Advanced dock. Since it'll sit and stay at my home most of the time, the size didn't concern me. I just wanted all those extra ports and the extra SATA connection. My plan is to makeover my "workstation" at home for now. However if I was to start my own business within the next few years, this setup will be on my desk.

They're DP, but can be converted to HDMI with an adapter. Only question being whether it supports audio at the same time as video?

From the FAQ iamflang posted:

EDIT: Great news! I just noticed the DisplayPort++ logo on my 6475b, that means it supports "dual-mode" and or audio too.

Thanks! That is very informative and will keep it bookmarked (as well as pass it on to others). :thumbsup:


Some interesting read:

HDMI vs. DisplayPort: Which display interface reigns supreme?

 

Personally I'd prefer HDMI because it's universal at the moment. Pretty much anything that is a display has an HDMI input. Adapters can get lost or add another link in the chain. Plus I don't know that adapters will relay audio.

 

All great points!

Our 6475bs support DP1.2 with audio/video transmission (you're right this is not universal, it is up to the OEM). Luckily for us we dont need adapters when using a straight DP to HDMI cable. You should carry your own HDMI to HDMI cable or DP-to-HDMI cable and not have to rely on someone else for that. But anyways, at its current state, neither HDMI or DP seem to be going away. However, I predict HDMI will slowly die off and leave just DP.

A lot of cables? Depends on what you're doing.
DP to VGA
DP to DVI
DP to HDMI
DP to DP

 

Cool, now I also want a laptop with DP1.2 connectors;

 

True, DP to HDMI cable works. I've just dealt with too many proprietary or non-standard connectors and adapters over the years that it becomes troublesome when you do forget your cable or misplace it you can't just run to Best Buy, drug store or local supermarket and just buy one. I guess it is the most flexible option for connection though. For a dock it will most likely just be set it up and forget it so probably not as big of a deal, just for the laptop itself. But that's being nitpicky.

 

I believe that DP 1.2 is the same connection speed/interface that Apple is using with their 'miniDP' design, just in a smaller form design. I say believe because I read all this quite a while ago and my memory is certainly fallible haha. I was quite pleased to see HP implement the latest DP tech even on these mid-range Probooks.

 

HDMI has saturated the PC and TV markets so its quite universal and conveniently found everywhere. I will give it that.

Apple's miniDP is exactly like DP1.2, just physically smaller. Its license-free too so I assume other OEMs could implement it into thin and light designs or even standard notebooks. And DP 1.2 is built into Trinity APUs (same should apply for upcomming Richland) but its a matter of if the OEM will implement it into their notebook design:

 

HDMI 1.4a does support higher max resolution (4096x2160) than DisplayPort 1.2 (3840x2160) so it won't go away anytime soon.
The newer DisplayPort 1.2 HBR2 does support 4096x2160 though, just not sure if anything has it implemented other than high end Video Cards like the Radeon HD7970GHz Edition.

 

More APU powered tablets are showing up, although this one still uses a Z60.
AMD-powered LuvPad tablet runs Windows 8 | TG Daily

 

I wonder if Kaveri laptops will come with more than 4 GB GDDR5, or if any GDDR5 at all.

"New! A10 Kaveri with 3 GB of ultra fast GDDR5 system memory! Because using more than six 4Gbit chips would've compromised the ultrabook design..."