AMD Shows Off More CPU/GPU Fusion in Zacate

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kamen

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[citation][nom]ares1214[/nom]Anandtech proved it, the i5 520m in this video had the wrong drivers which cost it a LOT of performance. But still, good job AMD.[/citation]
In that Anandtech article it goes on to say that Amd allowed Anandtech to force install new intel drivers and add extra benchmarking software of its own choice and the Amd chip still beat the Intel by a wide margin. This chip is the Zacate duel core chip and it is beating an Intel i5 m520. I can't wait to see how badly it beats the Culv line of cpu's it is really meant to compete with. Zacate's little brother "Ontario" (single core) should be a Atom smasher in the netbook form factor. Here's that Anandtech link.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3933/amds-zacate-apu-performance-update
 

schmich

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As many sites state it's sad how AMD keep tweaking their benchmarking previews. This time with anything from bad drivers on the Intel laptop to making the competition render harder things. On one video I saw the Intel laptop render a completely different area of the map. On another they spin the Intel 360degrees and mention the FPS at its lowest points whilst only showing the AMD in one specific direction.

Zacate is a nice chip so why do they do this lowly thing, that's more big Intel's job of not being fair and square.
 

hellwig

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I know that board in the picture is some kind of development setup, but I'm perplexed by its hugeness. What kind of crazy things can they do with that board?
 

eyefinity

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[citation][nom]schmich[/nom]As many sites state it's sad how AMD keep tweaking their benchmarking previews. This time with anything from bad drivers on the Intel laptop to making the competition render harder things. On one video I saw the Intel laptop render a completely different area of the map. On another they spin the Intel 360degrees and mention the FPS at its lowest points whilst only showing the AMD in one specific direction.Zacate is a nice chip so why do they do this lowly thing, that's more big Intel's job of not being fair and square.[/citation]

It's not AMD's fault if intel's drivers don't work!
 

Parsian

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man this is impressive. Just look at the size of that thing and thats CPU+GPU... Things getting smaller in words does quite actually hit you until you actually see it. I thought ATOM when it came out was small
 

mcvf

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I like what Anandtech did, their real-world benchmark on the place tells me more than anything else. Now I can feel comfortable that new chip will beat Intel chip by 55% on most titles (on others by larger margin). Moreover, we know how it does in some today's game titles - this says more that thousands words. That is something one can consider if there will be equal availability of both solutions.
 

helldog3105

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I went to Anandtech and read their updated performance article. It seems that even with updated drivers, the Intel i5 520M wasn't able to graphically compete. That being said, there were no performance benchmarks on the actual CPU performance. A processor at 1.6GHz is more than likely going to not compete super well with a 2.4GHz in raw computational power. I'm guessing that with the Zacate setup there is some serious offloading on the the integrated GPU, or APU, is that what they call it? Still, the performance graphics-wise is very heartening. Especially when you consider this is for the 500 range of notebooks, and under including the 9w little brother which is going to try and challenge Intel's Atom chip in the netbook arena. Low end notebooks could prove to be interesting in the near future. I await the Llano and Bulldozer TDP and performance numbers. If they perform well, AMD will definitely look more appealing to companies, such as Apple. Which is something I wouldn't mind seeing, even though it will still be Apple stupid expensive.
 

saturnus

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It is indeed good to see that AMD is catching up by Q2 next year when Bulldozer have launched Intel will not be performance leading in any single market segment. In the ultra low power end they're beat by ARM based chips, and at low power and up they will be beat by AMD.

I bet that Intel will still come at a price premium for some time though.
 

mikem_90

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[citation][nom]helldog3105[/nom] A processor at 1.6GHz is more than likely going to not compete super well with a 2.4GHz in raw computational power. [/citation]

As I keep telling people, its not how fast you spin your wheels, its how much power you put to the road. Remember the old Pentium 4's and AMD Athlon X2s? The AMD ones were 1Ghz slower yet ran rings around the Intel offerings.

All clock speed is a slice of time. What you do with it depends on what is under the hood.
 

helldog3105

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True raw speed doesn't mean everything, but IPC help, and we have no hard numbers for those on the AMD chip. My guess is if you see a brute force CPU test between the Zacate chip and the i5 520M in a non biased test that doesn't favor one manufacturer over another we would see a performance difference between the two. What is nice is it looks like the APU is picking up the slack of where the CPU's drop off to give the chip remarkable performance for the wattage. If the lowest end chip can do that much, what can the highest end chip in the integrated APU line do? A Quad-core processor with the equivalent of a 5770 GPU on it running at 120W? I am very interested in seeing more of the Llano and Bulldozer line when they are available, even with having to upgrade to a new Socket.
 

saturnus

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[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Sandy Bridge leaves Bulldozer a generation behind....again. [/citation]

No, Sandy Bridge is a slight upgrade on the current iCore with a entry level GPU thrown in. Hardly a competition for a completely reworked design that is very likely going to beat everything in the Intel line-up.
 
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Zacate is to AMD what Centrino/PentiumM was to Intel, except maybe even more so, since it will perform GPGPU better than any discrete GPU(owing to direct communication with the CPU cores, rather than PCIe latency, and having to copy data to the GPU's memory first before processing).

If this thing can be overclocked by OEMs, and hit perhaps 2.6ghz@35w(and maybe 1ghz GPU), it will be serious competition for any dual-core laptop platform out there.
 
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