Mullins And Beema APUs: AMD Gets Serious About Tablet SoCs

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

AMD recently introduced us to its Mullins and Beema APUs, which are architecturally similar to Kabini and Temash, but include some power and performance enhancements. We take an early look at a custom form factor and compare to Intel's best effort.

Game Benchmarks

We brought games with us that we knew would be lightweight. However, the following two titles turned out to be more demanding than a 4.5 W APU can realistically handle, even with detail settings dialed all the way down. Had I been able to take the platform home with me, I would have revisited my choices. For now, the following results still tell an interesting tale about 3D performance, at least.

The frame rates are low across the board. But the A10 Micro-6700T beats the Celeron J1900 in Grid 2. I was hoping for more in Dota 2. However, it looks like that title prefers Intel's x86 architecture over AMD's. Still, that's not bad for a 4.5 W APU going up against a 10 W SoC designed to drop onto a desktop-class motherboard.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get Dota 2 onto Dell's Venue 8 Pro for Atom Z3740D numbers. That tablet is limited to 1280x800, and I was benchmarking at 1920x1080.

Don't be discouraged by the low frame rates. I've had surprising success getting some great titles running on tablets with Atom processors inside. Hopefully, Mullins pushes progress in that space even further, given AMD's experience with performance-oriented graphics.

Don Woligroski
44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Nintendo Maniac 64
    ...yeah, I don't think intending to benchmark full-on PC games that aren't even a year old on what is essentially a tablet APU was one of the wisest decisions you guys have made.
    Reply
  • cleeve
    13193339 said:
    ...yeah, I don't think intending to benchmark full-on PC games that aren't even a year old on what is essentially a tablet APU was one of the wisest decisions you guys have made.

    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.

    Reply
  • Nintendo Maniac 64
    Hmmm, sounds like an AMD equivalent of an Intel "tick", especially considering that the IPC between Puma+ and Jaguar is unchanged.

    Interestingly enough, this would mean that the PS4 and Xbone could use Puma+ cores in the future (with turbo disabled obviously).

    Reply
  • PreferLinux
    OK, so where are the power measurements? That is about the most important part of the chip, and is also the part that is missing.
    Reply
  • kyuuketsuki
    I'm not sure why you decided to benchmark Dota at 1920x1080 instead of 1200x800. You lost the ability to compare against the Venue 8 Pro *and* the results might have been something resembling playable. I'm always of the opinion that game benchmarking should focus around what the product in question (and its competitors) can actually, y'know, play. Seeing graphs of everything being in a range of 1-10 FPS just isn't interesting or particularly useful.

    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.
    Reply
  • NoClue_87
    Dota2 is very cpu intensive. It's a shame Valve aint interested in suporting mantle for dota 2.
    Reply
  • CaptainTom
    I seriously cannot wait when 5 years from now I can get mid-range PC gaming in a tablet... The future cannot come soon enough...
    Reply
  • tigger888
    HOW is the author of this article NOT amazed that the apu is pushing NEAR 30 frames per second! With the competition only having half... Who pays these guys to write articles..
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    looks quite promising. these socs will be in media consumption devices, so i hope you'll include various media playback benches in the review.

    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.
    Reply
  • cleeve
    13193593 said:
    HOW is the author of this article NOT amazed that the apu is pushing NEAR 30 frames per second! With the competition only having half... Who pays these guys to write articles..

    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"?

    Reply