Llano and trinity CPUs

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shad0wboss

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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?
 

Maxx_Power

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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 Llano on the other hand, is a little out of date, and certainly okay CPU wise (for very light, and non-demanding work) but don't expect much in the GPU department now that Trinity is released (for laptops).
 

shad0wboss

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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

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yeah my bad, i didn't mention it...so i guess it would give me good FPS in games...that's all i wanted to know.
 

Maxx_Power

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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

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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?
 

Maxx_Power

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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.
 

Maxx_Power

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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

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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 :p 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* :D
Trinity_Dual_Graphics_00.jpg


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 :D

 

Maxx_Power

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As 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.
 

Maxx_Power

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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

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Thanks a lot guys, it has been A LOT of help. I was wondering since llano and trinity both come up with L2 cache, though trinity A8 4500m is at 2.2 ghz and llano A8 3530mx is at 1.9 ghz so do you think that if the llano a8 is OCed to 2.2 ghz using K10? would it perform that same mainly in gaming?
 
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