AMD's Trinity APU at CES, Shipping in Mid-2012
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 12, 2012 8:45 PM ESTAMD has a bunch of cool stuff to show off at this year's CES. The first is the most expected: a demo of its upcoming Trinity APU. The demo started out with a desktop chassis driving two displays: one transcoding video using the CPU cores and one playing DiRT 3 at low quality settings. The big surprise is at the end of the video below.
Trinity will be available in the middle of the year in three configurations: a 65W - 100W TDP desktop part, a 35 - 45W notebook part and a 17W ULV part. The three are pictured below in that order:
AMD claims the 17W Trinity should offer similar aggregate CPU/GPU performance to existing Llano notebook APUs at ~35W. The standard voltage notebook Trinity APU will offer a 25% increase in CPU performance and a 50% increase in GPU performance over the A-series Llano APUs available today. Finally the desktop Trinity will be 15% faster on the CPU side and 25% faster on the GPU. Although AMD didn't disclose details, it's likely that these numbers are comparing a two-module Piledriver based Trinity to a quad-core Llano.
The CPU gains seem modest on the desktop Trinity, but the standard voltage notebook part is pretty interesting as the gains should be enough to mostly bring it up to mobile Sandy Bridge performance (if AMD's numbers are correct).
Trinity is likely going to maintain the integrated GPU performance advantage AMD currently holds, even when Ivy Bridge arrives.
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chuckula - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
LEt's get the accusations of anti-AMD bias out of the way in one compact post:Quote: "he standard voltage notebook part is pretty interesting as the gains should be enough to mostly bring it up to mobile Sandy Bridge performance (if AMD's numbers are correct). "
Quote: "Trinity is likely going to maintain the integrated GPU performance advantage AMD currently holds, even when Ivy Bridge arrives."
How DARE you quote that guy talking in that video! Obviously this "employee" is a paid Intel SPY! He implied that the game was NOT running at 5120 x 1600 at maximum settings at 500 FPS using DX 12 while doing 10x the computational power of the entire Folding@Home Project and using -10 watts!!! What kind of Intel SChill could ever deny those simple facts that I stated!?!?!?!
Here's how an OBJECTIVE reporter would have done things:
1. NEVER speak to anyone from Intel, but instead attack any and all Intel systems and employees with a SledgeHammer*!
2. Punch-out these AMD "employees' and other spies from Intel like John Fruehe. How DARE he even imply that Bulldozer would only be 50% faster than Haswell! SCHILL! Any TRUE Journalist would know that any numbers not massively in AMD's sole favor are pure evil lies.
3. Stop posting crap like this where you say Trinity will "maintain" a GPU performance advantage. That is a LIE! There is NO GPU and NO APU made by Intel! What's more. Trinity is coming out AFTER The 7970..do you not know that AMD *improves* its products over time? Obviously, a single Trinity will have approximately 47 TRILLION times the power of the 7970, and every man woman and child on EARTH will be able to play Metro 2033 at 800 FPS using 3D displays at 4K resolution using ONLY ONE CHIP THAT WILL BE PROVIDED FOR FREE FROM AMD BECAUSE THEY ARE T3H AWESOMEZORS!
* Bonus points for the AMD fanboys who remember that codename.
coder543 - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
This article was posted like 5 days late and provides no information other blogs haven't posted... so it still looks quite biased, even though I'm not really in that camp.chuckula - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
This article was posted like 5 days late --> Fascinating how it's 5 days late when CES only started on Tuesday and today is Thursday. Apparently every other news site on the Internet has an AMD powered time machine except for Anandtech...The video posted here was 1. more informative and 2. less BS ridden than the earlier posted videos, especially the one with some AMD marketing bot going on about how Trinity uses "second generation" DX 11 hardware how "second generation" DX 11 is "so hard" ... what a load of crap. At least this video has AMD people in it who don't spew buzzwords and actually told Anand what settings the game was running at (slicked up marketroid used buzzwords but didn't give real information).
A lot of AMD fanboys think that Anand should literally sell his own children into slavery and sacrifice his life and integrity to go on some holy quest to make AMD look good at all costs. That's not his job. If AMD wants to look good, the best thing AMD can do is to start doing things that attract positive attention. Anand is an excellent journalist and if AMD starts performing, they'll get the positive attention.
grrrrr - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
1. Because F1 is infinitely better than rally.2. Trinity doesn't bring anything new, unlike Ivy Bridge with its brand new, patented, on-die steering wheel controller for video players.
djfourmoney - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Anand has children? That's a scary thought...Anyway Trinity is an improvement over Llano. That said, I may just get a Llano anyway as when Trinity's come online the price will drop and this is for a HTPC upgrade I've wanted to make for a couple of years.
Intel Ivy Bridge won't be affordable in my book, especially in a struggling economy.
archive_60 - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
I just really get a kick out of seeing the constant references to AMD fanboys. Like AMD fanboys are a bad thing or something. I'm an AMD fanboy that goes back to the K6 days. Thats not to say I drink the koo-aid, I just respect what they do. And all you Intel fanboys should really appreceate those on the AMD side. Without AMD making desktop processors, and they wouldnt if there was noone buying them, you could break out an egg timer and clock how long it takes for intel to tripple or quadruple prices on their entir processor line.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
Our AMD meeting was always setup for Thursday. AMD scheduled our meeting later than most other companies so we couldn't get them in earlier in the week (AT CES meetings run back to back every 30/60/90/120 minutes from 7:30AM until 9PM, every day of the week).No conspiracies, just basic scheduling :)
Take care,
Anand
stadisticado - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
Whoa, whoa Anand! Don't ruin everyone's fun with reasonable explanations...MrSpadge - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
What you describe is "late" and not "biased".coder543 - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
But, I really can't argue with the fact that at CES, AnandTech did look *reallllyyyy* Intel biased to me, even though I had never heard anyone even imply it until after I came to that conclusion on my own this week. Personally, I'm not so sure.