Llano and trinity CPUs
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CPUs
- Trinity
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Last response: in Laptop General Discussion
shad0wboss
July 26, 2012 10:38:59 AM
I was thinking of buying an amd cpu again after buying athlon M300 which was the worst cpu i've ever tested in terms of performance and heat output. Since llano and trinity cpu come out with some really good gfx cards, i was thinking of buying a laptop.
Would someone like to shed some light onto the performance of these quad core cpu and the amount of heat they produce?
Would someone like to shed some light onto the performance of these quad core cpu and the amount of heat they produce?
More about : llano trinity cpus
shad0wboss
July 26, 2012 7:11:47 PM
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Komomu
July 26, 2012 7:27:47 PM
if your budget goes up to $600 this acer aspire V571g-6602 blows even the a10 out of the water
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V3-571G-6602-15-6-Inc...
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V3-571G-6602-15-6-Inc...
Trinity is pretty good GPU wise, for an integrated. That means if you want to spend only a couple of hundred dollars and want some light gaming, trinity is suitable. Llano on the other hand, is a little out of date, and certainly okay CPU wise (for very light, and non-demanding work) but don't expect much in the GPU department now that Trinity is released (for laptops).
See benchmarks for the Trinity A10-4600m.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a...
Surprisingly it looses to the Intel HD 4000 in Batman: Arkham City, Dirt 3 and Skyrim.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a...
Surprisingly it looses to the Intel HD 4000 in Batman: Arkham City, Dirt 3 and Skyrim.
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 10:11:32 AM
jaguarskx said:
See benchmarks for the Trinity A10-4600m.http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a...
Surprisingly it looses to the Intel HD 4000 in Batman: Arkham City, Dirt 3 and Skyrim.
Yeah but with dedicated gfx card, trinity performs mmuch better and that's the only way i'm interested in trinity cpu due to its price and the dedicated card it comes with otherwise for the same price range, i have an i7 2670m available with gt 525m but i suspect, it is likely to perform worse than trinity in crossfire with hd 7690m
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 5:38:26 PM
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 5:56:30 PM
shad0wboss said:
i've also read that micro stuttering is one of the major issues when it comes to crossfiring mobility cards?I had this problem on the desktop as well. It is supposedly a lot better since the HD5000 series.
BUT it also can occur with SLi configs. Not sure about Virtu configs, not that I know anyone who uses Virtu multi-gpu for games anyway.
My understanding is that in dual graphics with Trinity mobile there are three areas to focus upon for a smooth configuration:
1) the discreet graphics should be DDR3-based;
2) the discreet core clock should be sync'ed to the APU graphics core clock; and
3) sync-up the memory speeds between the discreet and APU graphics memory clock.
That's the trick ...
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 7:29:55 PM
Wisecracker said:
My understanding is that in dual graphics with Trinity mobile there are three areas to focus upon for a smooth configuration:1) the discreet graphics should be DDR3-based;
2) the discreet core clock should be sync'ed to the APU graphics core clock; and
3) sync-up the memory speeds between the discreet and APU graphics memory clock.
That's the trick ...
1. DDR3 is slower than ddr5, so why that?
2 and 3. So what you're saying is that both chips (integrated and discrete) should run on same core and memory clock while having ddr3 so sync with each other?
shad0wboss said:
1. DDR3 is slower than ddr5, so why that?2 and 3. So what you're saying is that both chips (integrated and discrete) should run on same core and memory clock while having ddr3 so sync with each other?
1) I think this is because the onboard has only access to DDR3. So mixing and matching creates problems.
2) I think when you Crossfire a Trinity and a Discrete AMD, the clocks do NOT have to match. In other AMD discretes, the driver resets the clocks for cards used. In trinity, this (I think) is done asymmetrically.
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 8:46:50 PM
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 9:02:21 PM
shad0wboss said:
Does that include llano and trinity or only trinity?Llano on the desktop, YES. On the laptop, I don't know if anyone has bothered to do a Llano laptop with a discrete card since the Llano is meant for cut-cost laptops.
Trinity with a discrete, YES. Otherwise there wouldn't be benchmarks everywhere showing what the integrated scores, the discrete scores and the int+dis scores...
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 9:11:16 PM
Maxx_Power said:
Llano on the desktop, YES. On the laptop, I don't know if anyone has bothered to do a Llano laptop with a discrete card since the Llano is meant for cut-cost laptops.Trinity with a discrete, YES. Otherwise there wouldn't be benchmarks everywhere showing what the integrated scores, the discrete scores and the int+dis scores...
But if it shows discrete in benchmarks, don't you think that it is implied that the discrete is in xfire with integrated?
Also there's a laptop with llano A8 3530m with hd 7690m gddr5 on sale here
dunno if it is worth getting this one or trinity with ddr3 discrete hd 7670m I suspect AMD is using *PowerTune* in some fashion to regulate the discreet graphics with Trinity mobile. Idle (purportedly) is 10-11w, and the discreet graphics does not power-up with the CPU cores (they call it 'bi-directional' power in their slides)
AMD seems confident in the improvements they have made in crossfire with Trinity -- so much so they renamed it, *Dual-Graphics*

The APU graphics engine plays really nice with OpenCL, and you don't need to *max* the APU graphics engine when using a dual configuration. When you add the HD7670M Discrete, either the HD7660G or the HD7640G will give you the maximum HD7775G2 dual-graphics. I found this:
HP g7z-2100
AMD Quad-Core A8-4500M Accelerated Processor (3.0GHz/2.1GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD7670M Discrete-Class Graphics
$579.99
If you are the handy type, I'd snag an OCZ 60GB SSD for that suckah, reload Windows and drivers, and pop that internal HDD into a $10 Vantec external enclosure.
That would be your $650 AMD Ultra-Whoppie
shad0wboss said:
But if it shows discrete in benchmarks, don't you think that it is implied that the discrete is in xfire with integrated?Also there's a laptop with llano A8 3530m with hd 7690m gddr5 on sale here
dunno if it is worth getting this one or trinity with ddr3 discrete hd 7670mAs it turns out, this is called Dual graphics, and it is optional, which means you can choose to enable it in the driver control panel. Should be the same as the older A8's.
The A8 is a little underpowered CPU wise for newer games like SC2, I would personally go for a Trinity, even if it is just a little faster.
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 9:34:17 PM
shad0wboss said:
and they all have L2 cache? How can it affect the performance of the CPU in games or other multi tasking stuff?All the Trinities will have L2, but I don't think any of them will have L3, which is one thing Piledriver will provide in addition.
Having a larger cache generally benefits scenarios where the data isn't steam lined like matrices for video encoding. So games will benefit. It has been shown that CPU intensive games benefit the most from more cache.
You are going beyond everyone's pay-grade.
AMD with Trinity is essentially in the middle of a design architecture which unifies APU processor cores, graphic 'cores' (they call it a SIMD engine array) and cache, with system RAMs --- they each will utilize and share the same address space in memory. That's the concept behind the 'APU'.
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 9:45:16 PM
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 9:57:55 PM
But a8 4500m is at 157th and a8 3500m is at 161th so if 3530mx is 400 mhz higher clocked than 3500m then it pulls ahead of 4500m?
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmar...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmar...
shad0wboss
July 27, 2012 10:02:31 PM
shad0wboss said:
well, i'm totally newb at all this, that's why i started the thread but then i looked at the benchmarks and got confused. I guess trinity is "supposed" to be better since it is the newer chip....Each CPU has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, the old A8 based APU's have a CPU core which is clock for clock and core for core, as fast as or faster than the A10's Partial-Piledriver cores.
However, the A10's cores are usually faster at integer operations and inter-core cooperation tasks.
So, if you have a benchmark which emphasizes on raw FPU and Vector power like encoding tests, or photoshop tests, the old A8 may come out on top. If you use a benchmark that tests for other things, emphasizing on branch prediction, multi core scaling, etc, the A10 may come out on top.
Ultimately, how well a CPU work depends on what the manufacturer has decided that the CPU will spend most of its time doing. The A8 has CPU cores from an era when the CPU is expected to do everything from FPU, Vector to Integer. Now, AMD has decided that a lot of stuff makes sense to be offloaded to GPUs and there is nolonger a need for as much FPU power in a modern CPU, so they traded the space normally used for large and bulky FPUs to do something else. How successful this is depends on what you use the CPU for (or how you BENCHMARK the cpu). Eventually, down the road I think we'll see if the philosophy AMD took on Trinity is a viable one by with standing the test of time.
Guardian2834
October 2, 2012 5:39:02 AM
Maxx_Power said:
Trinity is pretty good GPU wise, for an integrated. That means if you want to spend only a couple of hundred dollars and want some light gaming, trinity is suitable. Llano on the other hand, is a little out of date, and certainly okay CPU wise (for very light, and non-demanding work) but don't expect much in the GPU department now that Trinity is released (for laptops).Excuse me? I have a laptop with AMD llano processor and I play Skyrim at high graphics. And I don't think Skyrim is a 'light' game. Please don't think so poorly of AMD's APUs. And the processor runs extremely cool. Intel's i5-2450M processor meanwhile overheats so bad that I can't imagine even using it.
Guardian2834 said:
Excuse me? I have a laptop with AMD llano processor and I play Skyrim at high graphics. And I don't think Skyrim is a 'light' game. Please don't think so poorly of AMD's APUs. And the processor runs extremely cool. Intel's i5-2450M processor meanwhile overheats so bad that I can't imagine even using it.Subjective vs. Objective...
Where the power consumption is lower for AMD APUs (mostly gaming):

The exact opposite work load:

And where it is either just a bit worse, or about the same as Intel i5-2450m:

Whether or not it overheats depends on the cooling subsystem design.
CPU performance wise, the i5 is better hands down. See this review:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-4600m-trinity-p...
So it depends on the workload (or if you ONLY game, what exact game, SC2 for example heavily depends on CPU performance and cache size). That the fact that when your specific budget includes discrete GPUs, the APUs becomes uncompetitive all around.
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