Opinons on AMD's APU's

[nna2]

im wondering, where are people at on AMD's APU's, i believe they are going to turn out somthing like intel's "sandy bridge" processors, but at the same time amd does make graphics cards, where as intel dosent

 

[iam2thecrowe]

turn out like sandy bridge? in what way? SB are way faster CPU's, they just have slower built in GPU's. IMO apu's are pointless at the moment. Its better to get a faster phenom IIx4, dedicated video card and motherboard. APU's offer nothing more than onboard graphics, they just moved the chip from the motherboard, to the CPU. IMO its a waste of money buying a CPU with integrated GPU when you will most likely have a dedicated GPU if you are into playing games.

 

[mauser1891]

turn out like sandy bridge? in what way? SB are way faster CPU's, they just have slower built in GPU's. IMO apu's are pointless at the moment. Its better to get a faster phenom IIx4, dedicated video card and motherboard. APU's offer nothing more than onboard graphics, they just moved the chip from the motherboard, to the CPU. IMO its a waste of money buying a CPU with integrated GPU when you will most likely have a dedicated GPU if you are into playing games.

There are some really interesting things going on with the A series architecture that will allow people with low budgets to beef up their graphics later with the crossfire feature.
"Similar to AMD’s CrossFire technology, this enables the on-board GPU to team up with a discrete AMD GPU to provide extra graphical horsepower. "
But then the A series are great on laptop's... I am really happy with my A6-3400M powered NV55S07u Gateway. I also found this to be a various interesting video with a Sandy bridge vs a AMD A series laptop's sitting side by side @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqBk0uHrxII&feature=related I am also very pleased with the scaling that works great for power management.
And I only paid $449 USD for it which is a far cry from my $399 Compaq C551NR. This things runs for four hours easily in a single charge, and not sure how long offline as my eReader, but I am still playing with it.

Personally I have ran Intel's and AMD's since late 1994, also ATI and Nvidia's graphics cards. Plus a few other odds and ends.
We as users benefit when new tech comes out regardless of who made it. Personally CPU(s)/GPU(s) on a single die are the single best solution for new system builders by providing them a matched combo. Just as a person can get a lower end starter, they can always drop in a better unit later if they need to. But most forget that everyone had started somewhere.
Just as I started with my experince with Win 95 UG. It was on floppies, which was not fun since my Win 3.1 was already on floppy also. Not much later I sold that set for 50% off, and bought it on cd, and moved the files that the UG was looking for onto a single floppy. So when I had to do a reinstall, it was simplified. On the next Win release I used the same method without having to install a previous version of MS Windows... But I can finish this story another time.
Just as I started with my linux experience back in 1998 with Slackware when it was really RTFM to install it. Today I write you from my Kubuntu 11.04. I am still trying out various current distro's that have current or fairly recent kernel's.

I dual-boot... Win 7 for my games and a few other things. Kubuntu I do everything else since it has many open source tools that I do not want to have to try to buy in Win 7.

 

[jaguarskx]

AMD's Llano APUs are similar to the Sandy Bridge Core i series in that the graphics core is integrated with the CPU instead of being part of a chipset. While the graphics core in Llano APUs are a little more power than the Intel HD 2000/3000 graphics core (depending on the Core i3/i5/i7 model number). However, Llano's CPU processing power is much less powerful than Sandy Bridge CPUs.

In my opinion the Llano CPUs are ideal for laptops and low end non-gaming PCs like for a Home Theater PC. As for a gaming PC... with the price of a Llano APU you can buy an AMD Phenom II CPU and a low cost graphics card that will be better than a Llano APU.

 

[Maksym]

turn out like sandy bridge? in what way? SB are way faster CPU's, they just have slower built in GPU's. IMO apu's are pointless at the moment. Its better to get a faster phenom IIx4, dedicated video card and motherboard. APU's offer nothing more than onboard graphics, they just moved the chip from the motherboard, to the CPU. IMO its a waste of money buying a CPU with integrated GPU when you will most likely have a dedicated GPU if you are into playing games.

The beauty of APU, as compared to Intel's SB, is that you can Crossfire the integrated GPU with your dedicated card, which is, correct me if I am wrong, not possible with Intel chipset.

Getting crossfire without having to buy the second video card, that's another + for AMD APU.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

crossfiring low end gpu's creates insane microstutter, and doesnt even give the performance of a good mid-range 6850. I would much rather have a good CPU and good dedicated GPU for what it would cost to get a crappy athlon x4 equivelant and a crappy low end crossfire setup. Alsom the inteegrated graphics uses up some ram, so thats another - for AMD APU . I actually cant think of a reason to get one...... Maybe a HTPC.

 

[diellur]

As has been said, they're good for HTPC usage. Also, people who want a desktop PC in the house and are into light gaming would benefit from one of these too. It's not a chip aimed at enthusiasts really, unless the enthusiast is building a non-high end machine. It'd be also interesting to see if they'll end up selling integrated APU / mobo combinations - that would be like ION. Except, it'll be good.

 

[sonoran]

crossfiring low end gpu's creates insane microstutter, and doesnt even give the performance of a good mid-range 6850.

Is this an issue with the AMD APU's specifically, or an issue with any low end CPU unable to keep up with crossfired GPU? Are there any articles about this online?

 

[simon12]

The current A series I don't think will ever appeal to harcore gamers or enthusiasts, but where they are very good is budget gaming laptops. Also I think if they get into low end Dell and HP desktops they could give PC gaming a big boost as in the past anyone buying a low-mid range desktop has not been able to run high end games at all. Now with these you can run any game (some at very low settings) on potentially some of the cheapest PCs there are. This could lead to kids buying cheaper PC versions of games instead of console games. Then again it might not.

 

[mauser1891]

"Not only does the integrated Radeon HD 6620G graphics deliver synthetic scores that are 24% better than the current Intel integrated graphics, but the Radeon HD 6690G2 dual graphics produced scores that were between 38% and 233% better than Intel integrated graphics."
reference @ http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6155&p=3

"Then again, if you fire up a game, the A-series APU surges past Intel’s HD Graphics implementation. Play that same title on a mobile system using battery power and you’re treated to another surprise: improved performance is complemented by longer battery life."
" this APU easily outclasses Intel HD Graphics 3000. Its power-saving advantage is definitely appreciable in the notebook space"
" And Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture actually does a fair job with its HD Graphics 3000 engine. But Llano blows that away in 3D workloads, using less power in the process."
reference @ http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/a8-3500m-llano-apu,review-32207-23.html

Yes, the A series is a good thing. tick-tock...

 

[ghnader hsmithot]

Llano..
ugh..

 

[madmikie]

It sounds to me like a bunch of people running cars down that they have never driven. Ive got a 3850, 16 gigs Cosair ram, xigmatek cpu cooler, 2 WD 320 6gb/s drives Raid 0, Corsair 750 Enthusiast PS, NZXT Case.

Runs Black OPs, MWF2, LFD2 1024 x768 great, maybe faster than my 1100t 6 core 3.3 gig and its a 2.9 gig but its a 32 nm and the 3.3 is a 45nm plus it has a 4 MB L2 cache and is Optimized for gaming, plus its memory controller is 1866 and the Phenoms are 1333 no bottleneck moves data faster. $550.00 Great for people that cant afford more, then later they can add a video card and juice it up if they want to. Ive added 2 different cards to duel graphics but it slows down the graphics and adds chop and stutter, runs better with the chip only GPU graphics.

 

[madmikie]

The stutter is caused by the Drivers. ATI has never written a set of drivers that worked the first time since the K-5. It looks like they would have fired those guys by now and hired somebody that can program. Maybe by the next set of drivers, which will be the 4th set they will have what should have come out the first time.

 

[BaronMatrix]

im wondering, where are people at on AMD's APU's, i believe they are going to turn out somthing like intel's "sandy bridge" processors, but at the same time amd does make graphics cards, where as intel dosent

Well, in terms of overall mainstream performance, APUs are better than great - Sandy Bridge notwithstanding. If the next iteration (Trinity) improves upon Win7 perf then we'll see something similar soon. If not then we have to wait for Win 8 to see the module paradigm pay off for desktop which will level the landscape.

 

[gnomio]

this is Cyprus

This is Slimer

The pipeline flow: vertex shader->hull shader->tesellator->domain shader->geometry shader->pixel shader

 

[gnomio]

It sounds to me like a bunch of people running cars down that they have never driven. Ive got a 3850, 16 gigs Cosair ram, xigmatek cpu cooler, 2 WD 320 6gb/s drives Raid 0, Corsair 750 Enthusiast PS, NZXT Case.

Runs Black OPs, MWF2, LFD2 1024 x768 great, maybe faster than my 1100t 6 core 3.3 gig and its a 2.9 gig but its a 32 nm and the 3.3 is a 45nm plus it has a 4 MB L2 cache and is Optimized for gaming, plus its memory controller is 1866 and the Phenoms are 1333 no bottleneck moves data faster. $550.00 Great for people that cant afford more, then later they can add a video card and juice it up if they want to. Ive added 2 different cards to duel graphics but it slows down the graphics and adds chop and stutter, runs better with the chip only GPU graphics.

Because the cpu have nice and big caches where they get the data from

 

[diellur]

It sounds to me like a bunch of people running cars down that they have never driven. Ive got a 3850, 16 gigs Cosair ram, xigmatek cpu cooler, 2 WD 320 6gb/s drives Raid 0, Corsair 750 Enthusiast PS, NZXT Case.

Runs Black OPs, MWF2, LFD2 1024 x768 great

Added the bold myself...your screen resolution is hardly representative of what most gamers would use. As for your 'running cars that they have never driven' comment...well, I think that applies to everyone on this forum at some stage or other. But what people do is read reviews and look at benchmarks, to understand how any component runs, and then feed that back if necessary.

 

[redsunrises]

I also have a llano HTPC. Fantastic processor, and I feel the APU is the future. This particular APU might not be the most powerful, but it just goes to show where things are heading. Enthusiasts are not all that turned on by the APU, at least not until they get a bit better, but for the mainstream computer users, this is a great thing. AMD has at least done one thing right making APUs... IMO this will pay off big time in the long run for AMD, because I personally think the enthusiast gamers on PC are diminishing, and in the end it matters more when you make a great product for the masses. To summarize, APU was AMDs best move recently, and hopefully they dont mess it up like they have so many other things

 

[nna2]

i have to agree with diellur if you tryed running your games in 19** x 1080 or higher im sure you would hit problems... and when it comes to memory bandwith, i brought mine up to 1600mhz, it dosent matter all that much...

 

[jerry6]

For 90% of users it is the way to go . More than enough to run video , most games , e-mail and other tasks . Not meant for gamer or heavy work loads ,now , maybe in the long run the chips will have the power though .

 

[nna2]

yeah, im sure in time, integrated will get closer and closer to gfx cards

 

[dave1ee]

I am a system builder and have put the A-8 3850 Chip through the paces with several different configurations. The Onboard GPU handles games pretty decently since you can dedicate up to 2 GB ram to Video in the bios. One thing we did find out is there is a sweet spot for the speed of memory for the APU that needs to be kept in mind. I have turned out several gamer versions and have been more than astounded by the increase of video performance over what the video card could produce by bechmarking it alone.
Best machine in my line-up is a A-8 Apu with our standard Liquid cooling, 16 GB ram, 6950 ATI 2 GB Radeon (in Crossfire with APU), 1 TB HD, DVD RW/CD, 18-1 Reader, 8 channel sound, Windows 7 Home Premium. Running without overclocking this machine can play any game out there and benchmarks way above everything else I have seen. I have even had two monitors hooked up one I was gamming on and the other playing a movie and saw no decrease in Hi-end gameplay. This APU is simply put Awesome! Below is a bit of text I sent a customer when building and testing the configurations for a machine he wanted. The first part is about MS system rating and how speed could be increased by a Solid State drive, second is about benchmarking.
"Overall rating is still 5.9 but that could only be sped up by using solid state hard drive or even a Hybrid drive but the graphics is maxed out at 7.9 for aero & business & Gaming! This one shows 3dmark11 test (only for direct x 11 machines), It only goes up to max score of 4200 and yours is 4443!"
Of Note (I have the 3Dmark Graphs) The similar systems were way down bunched at a benchmark of 986 with the closest benchmark only at 1900 and this was with the 3DMark11 benchmark run on 9/30/2011.
I later ramped up the system by overclocking it to a very stable 3.8 GHz with our standard liquid cooling system and it stayed very cool.

 

[nna2]

dave you said it was being linked ith a 6950, that would prolly pull it up coz thats a high end card (*9**)

 

[dave1ee]

but you missed the point that there was a big increase over just using the card itself which only gave it a score of about 2396! so that was an over 100% increase with it in crossfire with the APU> The APU Graphics alone scored 2146!

 

[mildgamer001]

im looking at this same threa because im building a Llano low end gaming rig for a friend and wanted to see about overclocking, seems some people think they are awsome and can really handle themselves and some think they are trash....