AMD A10-4600M Review: Mobile Trinity Gets Tested

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

AMD steps up to the plate with an all-new processor. Armed with the updated Piledriver CPU core and VLIW4 graphics architecture, the Trinity APU represents an impressive improvement over the Llano generation. But can it stand up to Intel's best efforts?

CPU Benchmarks: Media Encoding

Media encoding is where we expect to be able to benchmark AMD’s fixed-function VCE logic. We’ll start with CyberLink’s MediaEspresso 6.5.

Interestingly, VCE doesn’t seem to help Trinity much with the 480x720 iPhone 3G target. However, the 1280x720 Asus TF101 result is completed in almost half the time of a software-only transcode.

Unfortunately for AMD, Intel’s Quick Sync makes short work of the same tasks, finishing them in a fraction of the time. 

Arcsoft’s MediaConverter 7.5 also supports VCE, but wouldn’t enable any encode acceleration for the iPhone 3G profile on Sandy Bridge or Llano.

Once again, VCE didn’t seem to do much on the low-resolution iPhone target using our Trinity-equipped notebook, although the render time for the 1280x720 profile was much improved. Once again, though, Quick Sync achieves the best result, although not by as much.

Lame, iTunes, and HandBrake offer no OpenCL or VCE acceleration. As a result, all of the workloads run on x86 execution cores, where Intel dominates. At the same time, though, AMD’s A10-4600M manages to beat the A8-3500M by a significant margin. We’re eagerly waiting on an OpenCL-accelerated version of HandBrake in the works and expected later this year.

Don Woligroski
153 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JAYDEEJOHN
    Hope its only the beginning of much more
    Reply
  • Recently Charlie at semiaccurate (a massive amd fanboy) hinting an upcoming apple products, then I saw an article in thg that tells an upcoming mbp will using retina display... 15 inch retina will require huge gpu horsepower, my wild guess is mbp will use trinity as it's CPU.
    Reply
  • Based on this, gaming is much better than old i5, but everything else including application performance is still better on the old Sandy architecture. I'm not really sure why I would buy a Trinity other than for a casual gaming laptop. Unfortunately, budget says that my laptops have to be used for business first, play time later.
    Reply
  • beenthere
    Nice to see that Trinity and AMD have delivered the goods. I want a Trinity powered Ultrathin. Intel can stick their crap where the Sun don't shine.

    BTW, Charlie @ SemiAccurate is not an AMD fanbois IME. He just calls it like it is. Reality bites sometimes be it Nvidia, AMD or Intel's problems. Denial never changes reality. It is what it is.
    Reply
  • cleeve
    duckwithnukesWhere is the Intel HD 4000 vs. AMD Trinity comparison? Lazy reviewing at its finest.
    A10-4600M laptops will be int eh $600-$700 neighborhood, and we're still waiting for Ivy bridge Core i5 to arrive in this price range.

    We go over this. We also talk about how we'll do a follow up as soon as an appropriate product is available.

    You need to read for it to make sense.
    Reply
  • FlippyFlap, Apple doesn't use AMD and an HD4000 can power a retina display. I'm sure Apple has worked with Intel engineers to get the drivers right for retina displays which is HD4000's problem. HD4000 is still lacking in terms of driver support (one can see that from the OpenCL benches around the net where only 1/2 get acclerated on HD4000). When the drivers work right, there isn't much difference between Ivy and Trinity.
    Reply
  • I agree with Cleeve and I personally hate comparing a reference system to a selling system anyway. Review 2 actual selling systems with similar parts and that gives you the benchmark.
    Reply
  • DRosencraft
    This looks like a very nice effort from AMD. I really, really need to replace my notebook. It's a six year old Toshiba Satelite with an AMD 1.9 GHz Turion 64 X2 with intergrated X2100 graphics.... yeah. Ancient now, I know. I've been trying to figure out a sweet spot in power since my needs are kind of complex. Typically I don't need it to do much more than handle MSOffice and web surfing. But I also tend to use it for video gaming when am interesting game comes around and some work in PaintShop when I'm out of the house, or don't feel like sitting at my desktop. This may be a little closer to what I'd like. It would be nice to get a notebook that combines this with a really good discrete card (sort of like how some MacBook Pros have their dual graphics setup). Nevertheless, Trinity looks to be just about enough power and performance, but the question is price. If tradition holds, it should be a good price competitor with Intel, which is the most important part, otherwise I'd just buy a core I7 already.

    In a related question, does Trinity's details and specs lead to any conclusions about what Piledriver desktop processors will be like?
    Reply
  • neoverdugo
    So this means that AMD can kick Intel's ass in the gpu department for the moment while AMD suffers greatly in the CPU portion of the apu battle. Didn't I said before that Intel is trying to make an (proprietary) Intel only PC with no third party strings attached? We all know that there is no competition in the CPU battle when it comes to Intel. Still, i would like to see that the morons of intel to drop the price of their hardware for once and for all and drop ridiculously low end hardware out of production.
    Reply
  • dgingeri
    No WoW benchmarks this time? I was wondering if this might make a good laptop for WoW, but you guys failed me. :(
    Reply