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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
View All Comments
BSMonitor - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
It's funny how hardware announcements generates such emotion in some people. About the only reason anyone should get emotional about AMD or Intel, is if that person has remortgaged their house to buy Intel or AMD stock. Of which, Intel's is outperforming the market as we speak. With AMD's being a bargain if you think the company will continue to improve.Then, root with all your heart!
What is clear, both companies are making huge pushes into APUs however these integrated GPUs are by no means close in performance to something any of the people on these forums would really WANT to use.
APU's primary success will be in the notebook/ultrabook space. One chip that provides low power and great CPU/GPU performance. Otherwise, on the desktop side, they cut costs for Dell, HP, etc as they do not have to pay for a dedicated GPU for their mass quantity "business PC's". But are of little relevance to anyone looking to do real gaming or engineering.
For the record, neither is anyone near having a drop in APU replacement for a good Quad-core set up with a 7970 or GTX 590. The power envelope is just not reasonable.
medi01 - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Uhm, nope.Besides having incentives to support one or the other, people also have idea of what is fair and what is not. (heck, even some monkey species have it)
CUEngineer - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Wow is it me or is this guy crazy?Also By the way a GPU is just a Graphics Processing Unit... Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge designs both have integrated on die "GPU's" or graphics cores whatever you want to call it... lol
Everyone face it AMD peaked early after Athlon crushed P4, AMD has been flopping around like a fish in a dried up river...
CUEngineer - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Wow is it me or is this guy crazy?Also By the way a GPU is just a Graphics Processing Unit... Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge designs both have integrated on die "GPU's" or graphics cores whatever you want to call it... lol
Everyone face it AMD peaked early after Athlon crushed P4, AMD has been flopping around like a fish in a dried up river...
codedivine - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
Weren't we expecting Trinity early this year?MonkeyPaw - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
That's pretty impressive if Trinity was driving the whole setup. Fusion is finally emerging as a real option for mid-level users.warisz00r - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
What is the supposed surprise at the end of the youtube video?Dark Man - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Anythings u saw had been done by a SINGLE laptop (playing game, video transcoding and video playing)At first we saw anythings are done by a desktop chassis, that's normal. But later, they are from a laptop, and that's NOT normal. And this is a surprise ...
frozentundra123456 - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
So basically with the 17watt part they are claiming a 2x increase in performance per watt compared to Llano. And that is with a CPU that has so far been lower in performance per watt than Llano except in certain very limited scenarios.And a 50% increase in graphics performance with the higher power laptop part. would bring it up to what 6670 level or above?
They are going to have to make an almost magical improvement to the BD architecture to accomplish this, unless they are cherry picking the benchmarks.
So, I hope they can do it. I am not really into desktop APUs, but the laptop chips will be very exciting if they can deliver what they promise. However, considering all the promises made for Bulldozer, and then all the delays, and how it ultimately turned out, I will remain skeptical until real benchmarks can be obtained from independent reviewers.
Morg. - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Process change gives you a flat 30% anyway . so 20% for moving away from Stars .. sounds more than realistic ;)Nothing quite magical --
And yes .. AMD failed to deliver on time once again - let's hope 2012 is the year Global Foundries catches up somehow --