The Ultimate AMD Trinity Notebook List

Video of the Asus K55DR playing Dirt3 at 1366x768 resolution with High settings at 31-39fps and Deus Ex:HR at 33-42 fps at 1366x768 resolution with medium settings. Pretty impressive for a 500€ notebook!

 

Impressions of the Envy 6z with the A10-4655M APU.

 

Looks like you are correct, Intel's ULV graphics chip is slightly ahead of AMD's. The only other question is how does single-channel vs dual-channel memory differ and by how much? Check out these 3dmark 11 scores.

i5-3427U 645- 648






I wish there were more scores for the AMD's ULV chip!

a6-4455m 571- 626


I did find this bit of information here with more scores:

 

Good find! Looks like it might be getting released soon.

3dmark11 scores really suck in single-channel memory, 667. I don't think there's any question whether one should upgrade.

EDIT: I don't like this new forum layout/theme. I can't even multi-quote correctly anymore and I think there's not enough contrast between the texts.

 

^That and the scores are probably skewed by the CPU performance (as opposed to being a pure GPU score).

 

Yeah, thats true. But, it honestly dosen't matter to most if one GPU is stronger than the other if the stronger GPU still gets less FPS.

Unfortunately the need for dual-channel memory definitely reduces the value of Trinity too. They are lucky DDR3 is sooo damn cheap.

 

Dual Channel memory reduces the value of Trinity? (When the performance goes up by over 35%!!!).

Could you explain this please?

 

Asus K55DR is the only Trinity laptop available in my country So it have been released quite a while ago on my territory. And for some reason presented configuration costs about 575€ using current ratio between local currency and €... so... not sub 500€

Dual Channel need reduces the value of Trinity.

 

Well, Dual-Channel need to increase Trinity's performance over 35%, not sure how is that going to reduce the value of it.

 

The fact that dual channel is a requirement to take the most out of Trinity makes it a less atractive proposal for OEMs who are lazy and cheapstakes who don't want to use it to take the most out of it.

 

I do not mind seeing laptops with 4GB Single-Channel memory, easier and cheaper upgrade to 8GB Dual-Channel Memory. What concerns me reviews made with Single-Channel memory configuration, while the laptop could be capable for Dual-Channel. This particular review bugging me, reading "No user upgradeability", while it is absolutely easy with removing the backplate.

 

But the issue is that by not receiving notebooks with dual channel memory, reviewers dismiss Trinity notebooks as not being powerful enough and uncompetitive with Intel. That's a problem for AMD and they should've worked with the OEMs to make sure that at least units that were delivered to reviewers had dual-channel memory.

 

Oh, so the real issue is that while Dual Channel is a good way to get much higher performance from Trinity - manufacturers/reviewers without a clue about what they are sending/reviewing are reporting false information about the real performance Trinity is capable of (when shipped with a single Sodimm installed).

Does not make Trinity of less value in my books - just makes manufacturers/reviewers stupid if they can't figure that out and then just report inaccurate data to the masses.

 

Unfortunately this is what happening, while reviewer guys should ensure each laptops bringing their best. I guess Intel has hands on it, they do not want any AMD laptop shining better than theirs.

 

Intel doesn't have to worry (their platforms are the crème de la crème right now).

AMD should be more proactive and have a set of minimums/standards for their systems too.

 

Intel computers also come with single channel RAM so they are no different and could be considered in the same category of laziness. Faster and higher capacity dual channel helps Intel's iGPU just as much as it does AMD's.

I agree. Reviewers should be able to test this as part of their reviews.

From paulnelson88's Sleekbook review:

 

They probably didn't try because it was screwed in.

 

AMD constantly shooting themselves in the foot!

 

really? with cost-effective dedicated graphics from nvidia or ati, maybe.
surely you don't mean those with embedded intel graphics

I just did an eval on a core i3 ulv dell unit. it is a good comparo to a thinkpad x120e e350 unit I have.
it fares pretty well for a very-low-budget notebook, especially since it has 3G/4G wimax. but if one wanted graphics, especially the ability to plug hdmi to external 1080p/bluray mon and enjoy some gaming or whatever... it is laughable. I figure it is just a matter of short time before Intel throws in the towel and buys the ati talent [that is, what's left after apple is done] from ati and stops this madness of wheel reinvention which they obviously are flunking.

 

First off, I thought we were talking about computing performance here (not gpu...).

Second, I don't game so that doesn't bother me in the least (that it is laughable...).

Third: Intel is not throwing in the towel - they have a plan and they don't care if it takes a few years to get there. With SNB I was (finally) able to ignore dGPU's for my default builds - IB is already much more powerful and future Tock's on Intel's side will make even my most gpu demanding workstations not require a discrete gpu anymore. Good bye to them (dGPU's), to their heat, noise power and own set of glitches.

For anyone who games; sure AMD is offering a better balance - but like I said, I thought we were discussing computing performance - not specifically gaming.

 

Last time I've tried using Gimp on my work notebook with I3 Sandy Bridge /which is one of the better Intel GPU's - HD3000/ on battery was like waiting around 6-8 seconds every time I try to make a transition from one zoomed side of the opened image to the next one. And believe me that was with the better windows drivers, with OSS drivers in Linux the things does not look better, even worse. At the same time, the 3 years old Asus with HD3200 in the chipset with between two to four orders of magnitude weaker processing power /AMD QL-62 2 GHz/ was doing all that on battery like magic with the lets say at least buggy OSS drivers in Linux 3.2
I think that some things are incomparable. Intel is very strong in computation, but computation on itself was never the ultimate goal I guess.

 

Gimp? Maybe it was the (non-optimized) software and not the platform?

There is no 3 year old technology that is 2 to 4 orders of magnitude weaker than an i3 SNB cpu...

 

It doesn't make much sense to be better optimised for 3 years old platform (AMD Puma). That's the closest I could find while travelling:
AnandTech - Bench - Mobile
Look at the Futuremark scores /yes, i know they're synthetic/ - i3 with hd3000 scores at least 2 times faster than similar with QL62* CPU, so it shouldn't be so slow rendering simple PNG image In the latest GIMP, right? My point is that in general faster computation does not always correspond with better user experience.

*Actually HD4200 should be a little faster than HD3200, but is statistically the same.

 

Yeah but for the average consumer, who makes up the majority of the market, that doesn't care about or know about it user upgradeability they are stuck to getting dual chanel from the OEM have to pay insane markups. At $100 to $200 for a 8gb upgrade it may make more sense for most users to buy Intel with a low power discrete nvidia solution and get the best of both worlds in terms of CPU and GPU for a similar prices to Trinity with dual-channel DDR3.

 

Yes that may be true but we were all novices at one point, then we got curious & decided to learn more so we educated ourselves & became better informed. Its possible for an average consumer to evolve in that way too. So until they learn, then they are stuck paying more money for something they shouldn't be & that can be applied to many aspects of consumer life.

Many consumers don't know & simply won't care whether they're computers are operating in single or dual channel mode or how it can benefit them (or their computing experience). These topics can be brought to their attention, be it through product reviews or by word of mouth, & they might start to understand. But we are not the average consumer here & we want to see what the full potential of these Trinity APUs is. That is why we are concerned about these little details.

We can assume the average consumer will not know or care what memory configuration they have/need/want without some kind of learning. So how can you say that spending more money, which they may not have budgeted, & adding "a low power nvidia solution" is going to solve their problems? If anything, it'll confuse them more, increase the cost of the computer, increase energy consumption, increase heat output & they probably won't even need that level of performance anyways.

Goodluck explaining that to them. If you're going to explain that, might as well mention how doing something as simple as adding a second $15-30 RAM module can benefit them without taxing their budgets as much as buying a more expensive Intel/Nvidia solution can. Trinity's cpu & igpu already is more than enough for the average consumer in many retrospects, they just don't know it yet.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

its a shame that prod mgmt, what passes for marketing at amd/ati is an abused small cadre that reports to engineering - same as the PowerPC group was at Motorola eons ago..... remember??? they were going to beat intel and conquer the world.
AMD/ATI has a good story but they are awful at telling that story - everything in the e-world is trendlining toward more and more data being transferred/consumed via rich media - whether its business, education, medical, public, private... Example: a close relative is a lobbyist, essentially, in DC Beltway - a lawyer by trade. he keeps a finger in technology for business reasons but knows essentially little about computing, components, software, whatever.... does not want to deal with it but he must because the content he must sift, absorb, decide, etc is a deluge. MUCH of what he deals with daily is heavy on graphical content, from video clips [conferences, defense docs, security presentations, auto-presentations, live vid streams etc]. He has NO clue that when his notebook is giving him poor results that it is because of poor video implementation. hooking up a projector or a large display or whatever seems to him like rocket science 'cause no one has demonstrated hdmi with ease....
and so it goes. His ilk are AMD "prospects" but the message never gets to the target

 

I was browsing through AMD's facebook page in search of anything of interest. I found a few photos I wanted to share of Trinity-based notebooks from Computex Taipei 2012. I know, things are a bit slow at the moment.

15.6" HP ProBook 4545s


14" HP ProBook 6475b (can be configured with an anti-glare 1600x900 HD+ display)


ASUS, my guess is the K series.


I really wish they would've taken some closer shots.


MSI GX60, still just a mystery.



EDIT:

Take $100 off the HP ENVY Sleekbook with coupon code NBNV3927 (expires 08/03)!

Use eCoupon code CTO6475b during checkout to save 25% on the HP ProBook 6475b!

Use eCoupon code CTO4545s during checkout to save 18% on the HP ProBook 4545s!

 

Man, Probook 6475b is $1000 for A10 and 1600x900 screen even after removing OS and barebones everything else.

Where the heck are all the A10 13 inch 1600x900 notebooks, and for less than $700 at that!

Toshiba Satellite L840D-BT2N22 Laptop is only $429 today direct from Toshiba's website with A8-4500! But dammit, where's the A10?

 

lousy display on the toshiba but pleasant surprise is the capacity of 16gb ram... unless that's a marketing mistake

 

Now this isn't Trinity notebook related and the media has spotlighted it but I am hoping, as well as a lot of other individuals, that this piece of news will benefit AMD's future product releases. AMD's IGPU have proven to be fantastic so far but current CPUs are not. Maybe this man can help AMD bring more to the table than what we've seen lately. AMD could use the help, the pressure is on Mr. Keller!

Apple A4/A5 Designer & K8 Lead Architect, Jim Keller, Returns to AMD

Superstar Executive Jumps Ship From Apple, Returns to AMD

 

Reviews of the Samsung NP535U3C and NP535U4C are starting to trickle out. For those who may be interested this information will be a welcomed sign. The original 4GB DDR3 RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and users can add additional RAM via the free RAM slot. The 13.3" version comes with a 7mm 2.5" HDD and the 14" comes with a 9.5mm HDD. We now have confirmation that there exists a dGPU, the Radeon 7550M 1GB GDDR3, in the 14" model in Russia (this model comes with the A6 instead of the A10 like in the US). Follow the link for more details!

Ultra-thin notebooks and Samsung 535U3C 535U4C: AMD Trinity in



Amazon customer reviews:
Samsung Series 5 NP535U3C-A01US 13.3-Inch Laptop (Silver)
Samsung Series 5 NP535U4C-A01US 14-Inch Laptop (Silver)

 

Finally! I scoured the Internet in search of reviews of these two notebooks.
It's a shame that we still haven't seen benchmark results of the 14'' notebook. That seems to me to be the best Trinity notebook available but it is expensive. If it offered a 1600x900 screen it would be perfect.

Edit. Already finished reading the review. The ultrathins with the A6 ULV APU are slightly underpowered compared with Intel i3 ULV Sandy Bridge. So I would say they're comparable with Centrinos. However, they have comparable battery life and the iGPU performance is decent. It's a great APU for 500-600$ sub-14'' notebooks.

Now it would be interesting to see how the A10-4655M behaves.

 

The A10 is available for the 15" L850D Toshiba Satellite L850D-BT2N22 Laptop

 

I see it in 15" notebooks but not 13" which is where it should be. Most laptops with even 17W CPU and 30-35W GPU can fit in 13" or even smaller laptops, this is a 35W CPU that offers both CPU and powerful GPU functions.

 

After seeing the pictures of the samsung I'm having a hard time telling but can anyone confirm if the processor is soldered or if that's a socket? If so then simply swap the weak a6 for a10 and problems solved.

 

The Samsungs pictured above use A6-4455M which is "Socket FP2" - soldered. No CPU swapping...

 

The toshiba l840 seems to be most attractive currently at 14" and 1.1" thick with swappable processor. Swap a a10 in that and you're set. Price still low at 439 up 10 from last week.

 

I believe AMD does have the potential for something good there, BUT so far I haven't seen my personal must haves for a 2012 notebook:

1) DECENT DISPLAY !!!! For God's sake, how long will we have to wait until we get rid of the TN panel crap? And with the Zenbook UX32VD priced close to an A10.... I'm sorry AMD, you are doing something REALLY wrong here...
2) Backlit keyboards!!! Apart from the fact that they are cool they are very, very useful (night travellin in plane/train-surfing in bedroom with gf/wife sleeping/ etc...)
3) 13.3??? only a couple of models??, 12.5???? 11.6???? why has the 11.6 segment have to be cramped with the brazos 2.0, while Acer already offers an i5 with HD4000 for a few bucks more?? I'm using a Brazos 1.0 which I love but at 2012 the game has changed and AMD has to follow....

Waiting for the A10 13.3 IPS panel notebook... (i think i'll be waiting long....)

 

Another review of the 13,3'' Samsung Series 5 ultrathin.
This time in english. I just wish we would get a review of the A10 version.

 

You and me both! I've seen others wanting the same thing too. 13.3" with high quality display, preferably 1600x900, backlit keyboard, an A10, but most importantly reasonable cost. Less than $1000, realistically it should be under $800 and would gain a lot of buyers.

 

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but don't you think it is very odd that such promising APU doesn't get any real high-end ultra-thin production model yet?
Even the rest of the dull designs almost always force slow 5400rpm HDD & stone-age resolution monitors.

See, it is a FACT that Intel has been sued in the past by the EU for paying manufacturers to stay away from AMD & they payed a hefty $ 1.3 billion fine.
And now it is very apparent that something similar, or worse is going around, but they are being much more careful not to be caught again.

Only appealing design i found was Samsung NP535U3C Series 5 535 13.3” Notebook. still it was an A6 based not A10 & have a sluggish 5400rpm HDD & low resolution monitor!!!

 

All interesting thoughts. I've gone ahead & posted on AMDs Facebook page in hopes of getting a response as to why we're not seeing anything exciting from AMD's partners. I linked this thread to the post but so far there hasn't been a reply. I would like to post on their twitter as well (I currently do not use or have a twitter account). I would also like to write emails to AMD reps as a way to shed some light on this & get someones attention in hopes of seeing a change or at the very least a response. Another method would be for someone, even myself, to create a Youtube video & post it in response to their Trinity APU videos AMD has on their Youtube page. Maybe its the optimist in me but I think if enough people started asking questions, someone would have to start have answering back. Maybe even contacting or doing the same with AMD's partner.

I think for many us eventually we'll give up waiting & just go to the next best option (Intel). I don't want to believe or think that its Intel's doing that AMD-based notebooks are simply being killed before they even have a chance to succeed. I hope someone has the courage to stand up to it & go against the grain & try harder.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks! I'll go ahead & add it to the list.

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I couldn't agree more with the screen resolution you propose. At 13.3 1600x900 is the sweet spot. I've seen the display of the Zenbook which is gorgeous, but at 1080 it's causing too much of an eyestrain, unless you scale, which causes problems with some software...
Price wise, I would be willing to spend up to 1000 USD for such a system...
Judging by the rest of the comments we are all on the same boat... I agree that AMD HAS to see this thread and realise they have an opportunity here... I'll be waiting until Novemeber to December, but if AMD does nothing it'll be either the X230 (most likely) or the Zenbook... Each of the two has its flaws (in one case no discreet GPU in the other too high res screen, buggy fan, some problems) but if AMD sticks the A10 ONLY to 15.6 with crappy TN panels then it's a no-go... Hope some manufacturer or AMD is reading this thread...

 

I already posted in AMDs facebook page asking something similar. Unfortunately, I don't think the problem is lack of consumer interest. There are other problems. Maybe distrust of OEMs torwards AMD? Intel offering incentives to OEMs to not ship AMD devices?

 

I think that the margins for 13" notebooks just aren't as big as for mainstream 15" ones or something.

 

You bet, consumers are always interested in cheaper solutions, but big guys might not. It's just like oil business...

 

Hmm, what're the chances of it working if you swapped out the Samsung 13.3's screen for something like:
CLAA133UA01 replacement Laptop LCD Screen $66.99 Brand-new screens (never used).

I'm assuming it's a bit of a shot in the dark (connector location, connector compatibility, backlight compatibility, BIOS support (?), dual-channel LVDS cable, ...):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pgrades/602312-asus-k53ta-screen-upgrade.html

 

Not trying to be mean but id say your chances are as good as winning the lottery. Its anyones guess & really a gamble. You'd have to be willing to be the guinea pig.

1366x768 resolution at 13.3" would actually be fine for me. Id even be ok with that at 14" (like my current setup) but 1600x900 would definitely be the sweet spot for me allowing me to view two Word docs side-by-side much more comfortably (less scrolling, more viewing area). The Samsung NP535's matte display is actually very nice. If I had money to burn, id buy the 14" version for fun. I have read because of the cooling system & thin design, throttling is an issue. I'd like to see how its thermals compare to the HP Sleekbook 6z. I think the 6z would be better simply because the heatsink/exhaust vent isn't in between the hinge & case but rather at the rear/bottom edge of the notebook.

I need a job ASAP, still looking!

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I'm always wondering what their sales and marketing departments are doing,
It's been over a year since Brazos came out, its proven to be popular.
People will warm up to AMD, it's just so poorly marketed
"something other than intel? oh i dunno bbq because i dont ever hear about it."