While AMD doesn't provide a true reference platform for its new APUs, the company did have its engineers put together a functional test bed for demonstration purposes. Dubbed the Discovery project, we got to try out the platform at AMD's campus in Austin, Texas.

Equipped with the 4.5 W A10 Micro-6700T flagship, based on the Mullins APU, AMD's Discovery tablet is equipped with 2 GB of DDR3L-1333 inside a generic 10" display form factor. AMD showed off stylized peripherals alongside the device, such as a game controller attachment and dock, and demonstrated the platform wirelessly broadcasting video to a television.
Although it's interesting, Discovery isn't a shipping product. So, the tablet's most important job is simply showing that Mullins operates in a handheld chassis without thermal issues.

Discovery also gave us a sneak peek at the platform's performance capabilities. Naturally, we prefer to put retail hardware through its paces in our lab. However, AMD only has a handful of these things, and there aren't enough to send out to reviewers.
As a result, we were limited to a few hours of testing on-site at AMD. To the company's credit, we were given completely unrestricted access to the hardware and were allowed to install anything we wanted. Still, though, this is a one-off device benchmarked at AMD. There's no way for us to guarantee its clock rates or the amount of time it was able to sustain them represents anything you'll see in the future.

Typically it takes us days of testing to come up with truly useful data. But form factors are so important to tablet benchmarking that going deep into a demo platform would yield limited information anyway. I'd much rather put a commercially available product through the wringer, and that's what I'll do as soon as it's possible. Until then, the few numbers gleaned from AMD's Discovery will hopefully shed some light on the potential of AMD's newest APUs.
Even though I didn't have much time to test, I prepared a couple of interesting comparisons. For instance, I benchmarked Dell's Venue 8 Pro tablet equipped with an Atom Z3740D, giving us representation from Intel's low-power Bay Trail line-up. To better plot where Mullins falls on the spectrum, I also have the Celeron J1900 (Bay Trail-D) and Athlon 5350 (Kabini) in my charts. Those two processors are rated at higher 10 and 25 W TDPs, respectively.
Actually, both Dota2 and Grid2 are well known for having low system requirements, and they represented a great opportunity to compare results to the desktop bay trail and kabini platforms. We would have tested these games regardless, but we would have added more, less demanding titles if we had more time.
Interestingly enough, this would mean that the PS4 and Xbone could use Puma+ cores in the future (with turbo disabled obviously).
But yeah, I understand the limited time and environment, and the look at Beema and Mullins is greatly appreciated. I'm *still* looking forward to a commercially-available tablet with an AMD SoC in it, since one never materialized with Temash. That Vizio tablet that used AMD was actually pretty nifty, except for using the Z-60(?) which just wasn't up to scratch. It's too bad Vizio seems to be deprecating its tablet efforts, since an update of that tablet with Mullins in it would be worth looking at.
the tskin temp and tjmax temp look a bit low for outside use. i wonder if it'll be enough to prevent throttling in actual devices.
How did you not read the commentary, yet decide comment on it?
The article is very complimentary to the new APU's game performance. What exactly did you expect? Did you want me to write that its the "SUPERBEST GAMING APU EVAR"?
if you check other tech site that covering this new APU there is not much detail on power consumption.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7974/amd-beema-mullins-architecture-a10-micro-6700t-performance-preview/3
it seems AMD only allow reviewer to do some benchmark on it and then take it back
maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.
maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.
mantle would be great gaming performance booster for processors like beema playing games like these.
maybe because Mantle only works on GCN based card. not even 6k or 5k series support mantle. we might see Dota 2 having Mantle support if AMD pays Valve to use Mantle.
mantle would be great gaming performance booster for processors like beema playing games like these.
the question is will valve care to spend extra resource (out of their own pocket) on enhancement that can only benefit some of their user? yes mantle will be a great help for SoC like this but in the end it is still up to developer to use mantle or not.
There was no way to measure it. The CPU is too new to be recognized by the thermal and power measurement software that I tried.
We'll have to wait a bit for the details, unfortunately. Having said that, the TDP gives us a reliable range.
i take that you are the one trolling here
The tablet for me is more for having a lightweight internet connected device than something I game on. I already portable consoles and a high performance laptop for that.