Mullins And Beema APUs: AMD Gets Serious About Tablet SoCs

[cleeve]

AMD recently introduced us to its Mullins and Beema APUs, which are architecturally similar to Kabini and Temash, but include some power and performance enhancements. We take an early look at a custom form factor and compare to Intel's best effort.

Mullins And Beema APUs: AMD Gets Serious About Tablet SoCs : Read more

 

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

...yeah, I don't think intending to benchmark full-on PC games that aren't even a year old on what is essentially a tablet APU was one of the wisest decisions you guys have made.

 

[cleeve]

...yeah, I don't think intending to benchmark full-on PC games that aren't even a year old on what is essentially a tablet APU was one of the wisest decisions you guys have made.

Actually, both Dota2 and Grid2 are well known for having low system requirements, and they represented a great opportunity to compare results to the desktop bay trail and kabini platforms. We would have tested these games regardless, but we would have added more, less demanding titles if we had more time.

 

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Hmmm, sounds like an AMD equivalent of an Intel "tick", especially considering that the IPC between Puma+ and Jaguar is unchanged.

Interestingly enough, this would mean that the PS4 and Xbone could use Puma+ cores in the future (with turbo disabled obviously).

 

[PreferLinux]

OK, so where are the power measurements? That is about the most important part of the chip, and is also the part that is missing.

 

[kyuuketsuki]

I'm not sure why you decided to benchmark Dota at 1920x1080 instead of 1200x800. You lost the ability to compare against the Venue 8 Pro *and* the results might have been something resembling playable. I'm always of the opinion that game benchmarking should focus around what the product in question (and its competitors) can actually, y'know, play. Seeing graphs of everything being in a range of 1-10 FPS just isn't interesting or particularly useful.

But yeah, I understand the limited time and environment, and the look at Beema and Mullins is greatly appreciated. I'm *still* looking forward to a commercially-available tablet with an AMD SoC in it, since one never materialized with Temash. That Vizio tablet that used AMD was actually pretty nifty, except for using the Z-60(?) which just wasn't up to scratch. It's too bad Vizio seems to be deprecating its tablet efforts, since an update of that tablet with Mullins in it would be worth looking at.

 

[NoClue_87]

Dota2 is very cpu intensive. It's a shame Valve aint interested in suporting mantle for dota 2.

 

[CaptainTom]

I seriously cannot wait when 5 years from now I can get mid-range PC gaming in a tablet... The future cannot come soon enough...

 

[tigger888]

HOW is the author of this article NOT amazed that the apu is pushing NEAR 30 frames per second! With the competition only having half... Who pays these guys to write articles..

 

[de5_Roy]

looks quite promising. these socs will be in media consumption devices, so i hope you'll include various media playback benches in the review.

the tskin temp and tjmax temp look a bit low for outside use. i wonder if it'll be enough to prevent throttling in actual devices.

 

[cleeve]

HOW is the author of this article NOT amazed that the apu is pushing NEAR 30 frames per second! With the competition only having half... Who pays these guys to write articles..

How did you not read the commentary, yet decide comment on it?

The article is very complimentary to the new APU's game performance. What exactly did you expect? Did you want me to write that its the "SUPERBEST GAMING APU EVAR"?

 

[renz496]

OK, so where are the power measurements? That is about the most important part of the chip, and is also the part that is missing.

if you check other tech site that covering this new APU there is not much detail on power consumption.

I was allowed to spend a few hours benchmarking AMD’s Discovery Tablet. Unfortunately the device wasn’t instrumented for power testing, nor was there enough time to run any battery life tests on it, so the usefulness of these numbers is limited. We already know that AMD’s idle power isn’t as good as smartphone silicon, but for some of these value Windows 8.1 devices it may still be good enough.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7974/amd-beema-mullins-architecture-a10-micro-6700t-performance-preview/3

it seems AMD only allow reviewer to do some benchmark on it and then take it back

 

[renz496]

Dota2 is very cpu intensive. It's a shame Valve aint interested in suporting mantle for dota 2.

maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.

 

[de5_Roy]

maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.

mantle would be great gaming performance booster for processors like beema playing games like these.

 

[renz496]

maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.

mantle would be great gaming performance booster for processors like beema playing games like these.

the question is will valve care to spend extra resource (out of their own pocket) on enhancement that can only benefit some of their user? yes mantle will be a great help for SoC like this but in the end it is still up to developer to use mantle or not.

 

[cleeve]

OK, so where are the power measurements? That is about the most important part of the chip, and is also the part that is missing.

There was no way to measure it. The CPU is too new to be recognized by the thermal and power measurement software that I tried.

We'll have to wait a bit for the details, unfortunately. Having said that, the TDP gives us a reliable range.

 

[rajangel]

More trolling and baiting from Toms Hardware authors, sigh.

 

[renz496]

More trolling and baiting from Toms Hardware authors, sigh.

i take that you are the one trolling here

 

[ykki]

nice to see some progress from AMD in the tablet segment. who knows what's next? (maybe smartphone processors )

 

[harly2]

Toms is very apprehensive to be positive on AMD, just can't give props. There are things to be excited about, but not to excited in this case because its straddled to the windows platform for tablets. It's faster then a K1, Intel mobile everything, A7, and snapdragon 801 but only for high end windows tablets....meh. Beema will be a money maker for them though.

 

[xenol]

I like that AMD is getting into the SoC business, which hopefully spells competition in the area... but I don't really care for their emphasis on gaming. I'm not going to game on a tablet, and if I do, it's going to be simple games.

The tablet for me is more for having a lightweight internet connected device than something I game on. I already portable consoles and a high performance laptop for that.

 

[cleeve]

Toms is very apprehensive to be positive on AMD, just can't give props.

Can't give props?

"In the Ice Storm Unlimited test, AMD's A10 Micro-6700T competes against Intel's 10 W Celeron J1900. The Cloud Gate benchmark actually gives Mullins a notable lead. "

"Still, that's not bad for a 4.5 W APU going up against a 10 W SoC designed to drop onto a desktop-class motherboard. "

"I'm impressed with the potential of AMD's newest low-power APUs"

"But that's one of the reasons I see so much potential in AMD's hardware. This is a company with ATI's DNA. It has what it takes to augment graphics performance in mobile devices. Mullins will never cope with Crysis, but it might be able to handle titles that you've never been able to play on a tablet before. And it gives me hope that we're only a couple of generations away from an x86 tablet with real gaming chops."

 

[donald4president]

HOW is the author of this article NOT amazed that the apu is pushing NEAR 30 frames per second! With the competition only having half... Who pays these guys to write articles..

How did you not read the commentary, yet decide comment on it?

The article is very complimentary to the new APU's game performance. What exactly did you expect? Did you want me to write that its the "SUPERBEST GAMING APU EVAR"?

Despite what was said the overall tone is "typical AMD blah"... It's common on this site.

 

[salgado18]

Very cool. I hope they can take the tech to their desktop processors. Just imagine an FX-8350 with 65W

 

[cleeve]

Despite what was said the overall tone is "typical AMD blah"... It's common on this site.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

This article is very complimentary for AMD, and Mullins in particular. But perhaps skeptical about the prospects of Windows vs Android and iOS on tablets... and not because this author isn't a Windows fan, but because the public seems more interested in cheap Android and Apple trendy.

In addition, there have been entire years where AMD has completely dominated the best graphics cards for the money article.

Maybe you'd prefer we slather a little more love all over it, but we don't do that for Intel either. When you've reported on hardware for many years, you get a realistic view of where things might go. If Mullins takes the world by storm and changes the tablet landscape I'll be the first to happily admit we should have gushed over it like giddy schoolgirls, but realistically I don't think that's going to happen. Would be great if I'm wrong about that. Time will tell, you can hold me to that when the time comes.