AMD Trinity On The Desktop: A10, A8, And A6 Get Benchmarked!

[cangelini]

Desktop-bound Trinity APUs are shipping to OEMs, but they won't show up in the channel for months. Nevertheless, we got our hands on three upcoming models. How does Piledriver fare? What about VLIW4 graphics? Does memory play a big role? We answer within!

AMD Trinity On The Desktop: A10, A8, And A6 Get Benchmarked! : Read more

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Nice scoop, Chris!

 

[Youngmind]

This is so exciting! AMD is probably going to dominate the lower-end and give the poor gamers like me more bang-for-buck as their IGP get better and better !

 

[dudewitbow]

depending on how its priced, its a really nice alternative for bare budget gaming that opens up a quad core as well

 

[Guest]

I can't WAIT for this, HAIL AMD!!!!

 

[Guest]

So this means that a 'Crossfired' Trinity APU would beat ANY similarly-priced Intel (CPU+discrete GPU) ???
Well at least in gaming

 

[dudewitbow]

[citation][nom]JiggerByte[/nom]So this means that a 'Crossfired' Trinity APU would beat ANY similarly-priced Intel (CPU+discrete GPU) ???Well at least in gaming[/citation]

really the question is what gpus are able to hybrid crossfire with it. the information was never public. not all amd gpus will hybrid crossfire with it.

 

[Guest]

Well, where are the Ivy/Sandy i5's and i3's???

Once they are pitted against each other, that will be A TRUE measure of the APU Trinity's marketability

 

[mayankleoboy1]

in the OpenCL Winzip benchmark, when openCL is enabled the workload is done only by the iGPU or the CPU as well ?

i mean what is the processor usage during the benchmark ? are all CPU cores used? or only one?

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]in the OpenCL Winzip benchmark, when openCL is enabled the workload is done only by the iGPU or the CPU as well ?i mean what is the processor usage during the benchmark ? are all CPU cores used? or only one?[/citation]
Good question--I'll take a look for you.

 

[monkeymonk]

This is awesome. Glad to hear pile driver is making improvements.

 

[bawchicawawa]

[citation][nom]dudewitbow[/nom]really the question is what gpus are able to hybrid crossfire with it. the information was never public. not all amd gpus will hybrid crossfire with it.[/citation]

It was public... It will crossfire with up to the 7670, which is a rebranded 6670 from what i know, but with some slight improvements.

 

[bawchicawawa]

Next stop is to overclock and bench the a10-5800k with some nice 1866-2100 memory. Also some dual gpu action with these apu's.

 

[Guest]

Intel fanboy here but I'd really hope AMD catches up this time, coz once they fail, it'll be all over for us consumers, we can't afford Intel to dictate their ultra-ridiculous pricing scheme yet again, in these tough economic times, fewer and fewer people can afford a 200-dollar CPU, so, PLEASE AMD, don't fail us again

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]Randy West[/nom]Well, where are the Ivy/Sandy i5's and i3's???Once they are pitted against each other, that will be A TRUE measure of the APU Trinity's marketability[/citation]

Thats what I was wondering... every time you get an intel cpu review they always throw in an amd or two for comparison. Why didnt they do that here? Cant make an informed purchase if you compare 3 versions of the same car make and model when there are other makes and models out there to look at.

Oh and Jill... amd only has 10% of the market even with the APU's out there. So if they fail intel only goes from 89-99% of the market... dont see them changing their pricing plans over that.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]bawchicawawa[/nom]Next stop is to overclock and bench the a10-5800k with some nice 1866-2100 memory. Also some dual gpu action with these apu's.[/citation]
Dual Graphics is actually in there ;-)

 

[bawchicawawa]

[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]Thats what I was wondering... every time you get an intel cpu review they always throw in an amd or two for comparison. Why didnt they do that here? Cant make an informed purchase if you compare 3 versions of the same car make and model when there are other makes and models out there to look at.[/citation]

Because this is an article of amd's apus. They've already done a comparison between trinity's igp's and intels 4000 series.

 

[tonync_01]

Piledriver is looking good. I'm looking forward to the FX-8350.

 

[esrever]

Hope to see these in retail soon, I want to put together a budget box for general web surfing and HD video and I'd love a 65w trinity for it.

 

[army_ant7]

I want to point out an observation. If in floating-point intensive applications, Trinity is negligibly worse than Llano, meaning they're pretty much the same. Doesn't that mean the 2 floating-points units (2 modules) of Piledriver are acting on par with the 4 (4 cores) of Llano?
Anyone tell me if I'm wrong and why.

EDIT: Oh wait, they're clocked higher, but not by that much, though it is substantial. I would think it's still a big architectural improvement.

Also, I've noticed that in multiple articles, the writers are strapped for time. This isn't good though it could be understandable. Maybe TH should hire more "hands" or something?
I'm not sure how we'll find out when that video mentioned of the comparison with the A8-3870K and the i3-2100/2105 would show up. Well, unless we constantly check back.

Don't worry TH, you haven't lost me as a fan. It's just constructive feedback. I love you guys!

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]army_ant7[/nom]I want to point out an observation. If in floating-point intensive applications, Trinity is negligibly worse than Llano, meaning they're pretty much the same. Doesn't that mean the 2 floating-points units (2 modules) of Piledriver are acting on par with the 4 (4 cores) of Llano?Anyone tell me if I'm wrong and why.EDIT: Oh wait, they're clocked higher, but not by that much, though it is substantial. I would think it's still a big architectural improvement.Also, I've noticed that in multiple articles, the writers are strapped for time. This isn't good though it could be understandable. Maybe TH should hire more "hands" or something?I'm not sure how we'll find out when that video mentioned of the comparison with the A8-3870K and the i3-2100/2105 would show up. Well, unless we constantly check back.Don't worry TH, you haven't lost me as a fan. It's just constructive feedback. I love you guys![/citation]
Don't worry--I'm working on the data right now. As it stood, this story took more than a week of all day/all night testing, troubleshooting, new BIOS installing, and re-testing to nail down. It can go on indefinitely if you let it ;-)

 

[amuffin]

Looks good on desktop, now for the mobile factor

 

[triny]

Clearly Intel rules the cpu roost,however HSA will eventually make it to Intel chips too.
progress will eventually bury Intel if they don't board the HSA wagon.

 

[aicom]

This is actually a wonderful result for AMD, assuming the FX implementation of Piledriver performs similarly. The Piledriver 8-core FX chip will likely be clocked several hundred MHz higher due to additional headroom from the lack of a GPU and feature 8 better-performing cores, we may finally see the performance of an 8-core Phenom II.

 

[army_ant7]

Don't worry--I'm working on the data right now. As it stood, this story took more than a week of all day/all night testing, troubleshooting, new BIOS installing, and re-testing to nail down. It can go on indefinitely if you let it ;-)

First of, I'd like to say I'm a fan of your work, how you get so in-depth with details and the workings of stuff, in other words, how you explain stuff thoroughly. :-D Anyway, I wish manufacturers would give you more samples of the same hardware so you could work in parallel and be able to get more benchmarks through quicker and more easily. But I do hope if ever that that's the case with the slight delay and not a lack of manpower or something, that is if you don't prefer just working alone. Keep up the good work and I'll be most surely looking forward to more info you could generate about Trinity in the future, and maybe more so for a Vishera (I hope I got that right for the vanilla Piledriver). Good luck!

That aside... In addition to what I said above about the floating-pointing units performing a lot better, since I did notice that Trinity is running on a higher clock-rate, does that mean that the integer cores haven't improved that much if they perform somewhat on par with Llano's? I don't mean to add more work for you (guys), but maybe a benchmark of integer- and floating-point intensive applications along with multi-, lightly-, and single-threaded applications is in order? Or is the rough 15% improvement over Bulldozer enough to calculate how Trinity performs compared to Llano (their Pildriver and Husky/Stars cores more specifically)? I might've sounded like newb in anything I said above so pardon that if ever.

(If ever you read this blazorthon, thanks for pointing out/clarifying to me what Vishera and Husky are.)