AMD Desktop Trinity Update: Now With Core i3 And A8-3870K

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... to paraphrase Steve Ballmer, but in other words... 'GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's!!!! ', stop, to get some air and then again: 'GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's, GPU's!!!'
 
[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]I think I can go with FM2 with a $100 quad core *IF* AMD had such a CPU for clients who need a good office PC. I can't go with FM1 or AM3 since those are EOL... and there are no FM2 products for us to choose from yet.[/citation]

Quad core for office work... Get real.

FM2 isn't even out yet and you think FM1 is EOL. And you think AM3 is EOL too? Hmph. Because there were so many produced, I can still find Socket A motherboards, from 10-11 years ago, and I bet you will find AM3 10 years from now as well. Don't forget about AM2+ motherboards (which can use an AM3 CPU).
 
Nice article. However, I would love to see overclocked results from the unlocked Trinity/Llano APUs vs the core i3 in non-gaming benchmarks. I mean, that is the whole point of getting these unlocked APUs anyways, right?
 
the ideea is that ivy I3 will come when trinity will coma, an we all know that Intel will smash on the performance and trinity will shine on the IGP.

HTPC and home user => trinity

1080p gaming and processor intensive soft =>ivy / sb e
 
[citation][nom]dspider[/nom]I don't see any A8-3870K in the benchmarks. What am I missing?[/citation]
Eyegasses, perhaps ?
 
Woohoo! Finally! It took a while but it's here. I won't take that against you, Chris. Thanks and good work!

Hm... It's that girl again in the video. I actually thought she was gone for good, though I wasn't saying that she sucked. I would've really preferred if you, Chris, or any "middle-aged fatboy geek" would've presented it. She has been presenting what brief info there is well, whether or not she's an enthusiast or knows what she's talking about.
On a more personal note though, my fiancee wasn't particularly happy about that girl presenting the video. Hahaha!

Anyway, if you read this Chris, you double posted the A8-3850 on the 2nd page, and forgot to put the board for the Core i3's, just pointing that out. 🙂

I'm not sure if you just realized that yourself, or you read my or someone elses post, but it's nice how you pointed out the superior FPU's on the Pildriver compared to Husky (Llano).

What is the recommended minimum and average FPS for Arkham City that Chris said it was only playable at 1280x720?

Just sharing this, it's for Skyrim on underperforming systems. It needs a mobile Core i5 at least, but it only needs an Intel HD2000, just like the Core i3's above, so I hope it isn't too irrelevant to the topic. I'm interested in trying it myself. http://eshop.lucidlogix.com/?q=dynamix1

I agree with ojas, there should be a performance/cycle test included, just for information's sake. Though it is important to know that the clockrates they have already are what you pay for as well.
An overclocking test wasn't given, though it's understandable that not all of the chips may overclock equally, but I would've personally still wanted to see what you could do with what K-series chips you had, Chris.
I would think that a special emphasis on the unlocked-multipliers of the K-series chips is only proper, because, as you mentioned in the article, you pay a price premium for them and their also something the Core i3's don't have for their price. 🙂
csbeer's request for dual graphics/asymmetrical crossfire and ColinP's power draw and efficiency tests and reviews would've been nice if included as well.

I understand though that you, Chris may be swamped, and that the final products have yet to come out, which you might rather get into with other less immediate need-to-know tests so as to be sure not to waste time if ever the final products do come out differently.
 

Hey, I'm not sure if Tom's gets "bought out" by any company, aside from when the explicitly denote something's paid promotion or that an article is sponsored by a company. As much as I love Tom's, I wouldn't know, but there are some people who say Tom's is AMD-oriented and probably other stuff, but now, if I'm getting what you're saying correctly, their Intel-oriented now, possibly because they were paid to be so. Again, I'm not sure if this is true, but you should just take what info Tom's can give you and not say anything derogatory like that.

I just take what they give as good journalism and what they CAN give.
 
[citation][nom]dspider[/nom]Quad core for office work... Get real.FM2 isn't even out yet and you think FM1 is EOL. And you think AM3 is EOL too? Hmph. Because there were so many produced, I can still find Socket A motherboards, from 10-11 years ago, and I bet you will find AM3 10 years from now as well. Don't forget about AM2+ motherboards (which can use an AM3 CPU).[/citation]
FM2 is out for the likes of HP and the people who run sits like Tomshardware. The new CPUS (Trinity) used in this article are SOCKET FM2.

EOL, okay - perhaps not the right word... Discontinued. There are NO new Socket AM3 CPUs.
There are NO new AM2 CPUs (for quite a while) and there sure as hell are no new Socket 939, Socket A AMD CPUs.

There are NO new Socket FM1 CPUs. So buying a new system build for yourself with FM1 would be kind of stupid. AM3+ is supposed to last till 2014. But NO new CPUs are planned AFAIK.
The current AM3 CPUs are 2+ years old with a few X4 at or below $100. The FX-series that came out in 2011 is it. the cheapest "8 core" is now down to $170 with top end at $200. Looks like the 8170 is MIA.

The A10-5800K is a slightly faster (200mhz) and is a tweaked version from the original BD core. So, if you are going to BUILD a new AMD system... do you go with dying socket AM3+ with a $200 CPU or the faster FM2 A10 CPU for $???. the current AMD 900 series boards are basically certified Bulldozer boards with no real features above the 800. No PCI-E 3.0, NO native USB 3.0.

Meanwhile, FM1 and FM2 has native USB3.0 (A75 & A70 chipsets).

So right now, intel has 2 consumer grade chipsets in which the Extreme Edition is $$$ ($300 for the boards) which offer very little over their regular CPUs... it can be ignored. While AMD currently has 2, soon to be 3 chipsets... (kind of) as FM2 will REPLACE both AM3 and FM1. Its a bit of a messy transition as FM1 CPUs won't work in FM2 boards, AM3 CPUs won't work on any FM board.

Its not quite clear WHY AMD is making FM1 & FM2 completely incompatible considering they are still using the A75 on FM2 and there IS NO PCI-E 3.0 for AMD systems until AFTER 2013?!

WTF?! AMD sells PCI-E 3.0 video cards. (Yes, we know that NO card can saturate PCI-E 3.0) But combined with USB3.0 (which uses the PCIe bus) and devices sucking up bandwidth... OUCH! Cool thing about PCI-E, two top end Video cards on Intels Z77 boards can run in 8x8 in 3.0 mode and not lose any performance.

(in case you don't know. With intel i5-3xxx CPUs with Z7x boards... you get Native 3.0 USB/PCI-E/SATA) Picked up a gigabyte board for $80... supports both SLi and Crossfire. Installed Win7Pro in 7min, boots to desktop in 10sec (after POST).

"4 core for office"? The difference in cost between a dual core vs a quad AMD is $30. Might as well. But yeah, considering how well Windows7 runs on an old bottom end Core2 (which AMD's Llano is easily faster) - its enough... but why not spend $30 for an extra 2 cores? Speeds up a few things.
 
[citation][nom]s3anister[/nom]Trinity is innovative and interesting but I just want to tear into a dedicated Piledriver CPU.[/citation] You won't. Fusion has been planned for over 6 years. You see, MOST CPU sales are to Dell/HP/Acer/etc... so putting the GPU on the CPU is better than on the motherboard.

AMD makes a bit of scratch selling the GPU with the CPU, the mobo's costs about the same... a tad cheaper. Hence both intel and AMD have different GPUs with their CPUs. The mobo's video ports are getting their info from the CPU directly for the most part.

Also, there are BENEFITS to the onboard GPU: graphic card failure. Makes for a great backup.
AND for rendering video / 3D images in which SOFTWARE can utilize the onboard GPU for even faster renderings... especially if you have a dedicated card installed.

PS: Every intel I5 system I build has yet to include a video card. My builds are easier, the systems are very rock solid. But I'm perplexed by the 380MB! video driver for intel CPUs.... HUH?
 
[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]This gives me real hope that Piledriver will be a worthwhile chip to put on my 990FX rather than scrapping it for Intel as software becomes more demanding.I made myself read the entire article. I consider myself a literate person, but I still cannot find words to properly (and respectfully) express just how physically Beautiful your announcer is.[/citation]

Not these sandy bridge parts. They do not have OCL support.
 
[citation][nom]god money[/nom]The video review girl is lovely, but being able to see her black brassier pushing her incredible breasts through that see-through shirt made me not pay attention at all to what she was talking about.[/citation]

Extacly what I was going to say, and when she said "my favorite, Diablo 3" I said in my head. Marry me. Nvm Im already married lol

And about the article. This looks more promising for entry lvl gamers and young people that want to play their console games on their PC but they cant afford real gamer PC with a Discrete GPU. This makes good choice.

Thanks Toms and what I said about the Trinity Review, Hope is coming back on AMD side.
 
The rumor mill has it that the Ivybridge Core i3 desktop line up will include at least one model with HD4000 - namely the Core i3-3225 and will show up in Q3 - possibly before Trinity desktop parts
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i3/Intel-Core%20i3-3225.html

If this site has it right, the Core i3-3225 also bumps CPU frequency by 200MHz from 3.1GHz (for the Core i3-2100/2105 SB tested here) to 3.3, has 10W lower TDP (55 vs 65), and adds back AES instructions (which, as the article says, were fused off for segmentation on Sandy Bridge).
 

nice article..
 
1) Intel will have their i3 Ivy bridge CPUs out roughly the same time that these CPUs hit the shelves, which will again whomp all over AMD on CPU power, while closing the gap in GPU power (though it will still come in last, just not so embarrassingly behind on graphics)
2) I'm not exactly sure who the AMD cpus are aimed at... I mean, yes, they do have a better IGP (way better), but when the cheapest i3, and even most Pentium G series CPUs, are already overkill for a HTPC (web/flash games/blueray), and typically run cheaper than the A series APUs. For gaming you can get an APU which will barely meet spec for low/med graphics, or you can get a Pentium G for $50 (gotta love microcenter), and then pick up a dedicated GPU for $50-75 and make the APU really look quite terrible, while at a lower price point.
3) About the only thing an APU makes sense for is laptops where having graphics in an extremely low power budget becomes important
4) Not sure why everyone always says "But you can overclock an APU, while you cannot overclock a PentiumG or i3". That argument is like saying you can buy a go-cart or a golf cart... you can overclock the go-cart... and while it may be fun, it is still a go-cart with specific platform limitations. Any machine where you 'need' to overclock in the first place is built wrong, and overclocking a weak CPU just makes it a less-weak CPU, it does not make it something that can compete in a higher class.

5) All that said, it is good to see that AMD is still in the game, and that they seem to be fixing some of the issues that they previously had with their Bulldozer CPUs. I hope they can get back into the CPU game and shake things up a bit more, because we simply don't care about having premium graphics on a low end chip... we will just replace the igp with a GPU
 
Well thanks for the update Chris but I think what people were saying when they said include an intel cpu in the benchmark was an intel cpu with a high end gpu. Lets say a 2500k sandy bridge with a 670 gpu. That way we can see exactly where this apu falls on the list of gaming cpus and gpus. You know since that's what they are trying to make here.
 
[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]Well thanks for the update Chris but I think what people were saying when they said include an intel cpu in the benchmark was an intel cpu with a high end gpu. Lets say a 2500k sandy bridge with a 670 gpu. That way we can see exactly where this apu falls on the list of gaming cpus and gpus. You know since that's what they are trying to make here.[/citation]

Yes, because very high end systems are great measuring tools against lower mid-ranged and upper entry level gaming systems. What a fair comparison that will accurately gauge these lower end parts in an unbiased way. It would be helpful for comparing the low end to the high end so that we know what we're paying for, but it's nearly useless as a gauge for how effective these APUs are in their own market.

[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]1) Intel will have their i3 Ivy bridge CPUs out roughly the same time that these CPUs hit the shelves, which will again whomp all over AMD on CPU power, while closing the gap in GPU power (though it will still come in last, just not so embarrassingly behind on graphics)2) I'm not exactly sure who the AMD cpus are aimed at... I mean, yes, they do have a better IGP (way better), but when the cheapest i3, and even most Pentium G series CPUs, are already overkill for a HTPC (web/flash games/blueray), and typically run cheaper than the A series APUs. For gaming you can get an APU which will barely meet spec for low/med graphics, or you can get a Pentium G for $50 (gotta love microcenter), and then pick up a dedicated GPU for $50-75 and make the APU really look quite terrible, while at a lower price point.3) About the only thing an APU makes sense for is laptops where having graphics in an extremely low power budget becomes important4) Not sure why everyone always says "But you can overclock an APU, while you cannot overclock a PentiumG or i3". That argument is like saying you can buy a go-cart or a golf cart... you can overclock the go-cart... and while it may be fun, it is still a go-cart with specific platform limitations. Any machine where you 'need' to overclock in the first place is built wrong, and overclocking a weak CPU just makes it a less-weak CPU, it does not make it something that can compete in a higher class.5) All that said, it is good to see that AMD is still in the game, and that they seem to be fixing some of the issues that they previously had with their Bulldozer CPUs. I hope they can get back into the CPU game and shake things up a bit more, because we simply don't care about having premium graphics on a low end chip... we will just replace the igp with a GPU[/citation]

The CPU is not that weak. Besides, they A8s are probably significantly better gaming CPUs than any Pentium that's out right now, especially when overclocking and a manual fix for the scheduling problem (which is kinda easy to implement, I might add) for Trinity. Furthermore, the Pentiums don't even get HD 2000/2500 level graphics, so they're not even considerable for any gaming machine unless they have a discrete card whereas these APUs can play without one and can play even better with one.

Unless you like having a 2.6GHz dual core Sandy Bridge CPU over a generally faster quad core Trinity CPU, keep in mind how games are constantly becoming more and more parallel... We hit quad threaded qutie a while ago and even the clock freuqency difference is neough for the Trinity APUs to more or less catch up to the Pentiums in single and dual-threaded performance, especially with a scheduling fix implemented and not the crappy MS patches that prioritize the wrong scheduling mask. So, you don't even need to overclock... It's just an option for people whom want to anyway. Also, the IGPon those Pentiums is not overkill for HTPCs. It's not even close to being overkill. Heck, even HD 2000 can have problems with some 1080p playback in 3D and it's way faster than the HD graphics crap used in the Pentiums.

Furthermore, you can't make the Llano nor the Trinity APUs look terrible with the Pentium/Celeron plus cheap discrete card solution. A Llano A8 APU can be had for $90 and no graphics card short of the Radeon 6670, a $70 card at the cheapest, can beat the A8 significantly when it has 1866MHz memory. Considering that all this takes is a decent 1600MHz kit and a little overclocking, that's a good proposition for AMD, especially since the $50 Intel CPU plus $70 Radeon 6670 DDR3 is already $30 more expensive, so you might as well fit in native 1866MHz memory and overclock it to 2133MHz for the APU machine and that would pretty much level off the playing field in both performance and cost. Using a Trinity A8 with a scheduling fix would be even better, especially in the CPU, but I don't know how well they would fit into such a budget yet.

I probably wouldn't buy one for myself simply because I prefer higher end machines, but you could at least be realistic with your post. You also ignore the fact that Microcenter deals aren't available to people who aren't close enough to a Microcenter for going to one of their stores to be reasonably possible, so most people don't have that option anyway and that leaves your options being either get a more expensive Pentium, or stick with $50 and get a Celeron.
 
The CPU is not that weak. Besides, they A8s are probably significantly better gaming CPUs than any Pentium that's out right now, especially when overclocking and a manual fix for the scheduling problem (which is kinda easy to implement, I might add) for Trinity
Click to expand...

part in bold is FAIL.
the scheduler does nothing. nothing.
its only when you disable the hyprerthreaded core...er... the second module, that you get better performance.
 
[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]part in bold is FAIL. the scheduler does nothing. nothing. its only when you disable the hyprerthreaded core...er... the second module, that you get better performance.[/citation]

Letting the second core (which has nothing to do with Hyper-Threading Technology which is a very, very different technology with different performance metrics) idle while the first core works overtime does the trick almost as well and this has been proven.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21865


Oh but whatever. I made a correct statement that you disagree with, so it must be an inaccurate fail just becuase you both dislike it and want to compare it to a totally different and unrelated technology, yet you also failed at doing so. It's the second core per module, not the second module, that needs to be idle/disabled for the first core per module to get the performance boost despite the lower Turbo frequency.
 
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