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AMD Demos Llano Fusion APU, Radeon 6800 Series
MojoKid writes "At a press event for the impending launch of AMD's new Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 series graphics cards, the company took the opportunity to provide an early look at the first, fully functional samples of their upcoming 'Llano' processor, or APU (Applications Processer Unit). For those unfamiliar with Llano, it's 32nm 'Fusion' product that integrates CPU, GPU, and Northbridge functions on a single die. The chip is a low-power derivative of the company's current Phenom II architecture fused with a GPU that will target a wide range of operating environments at speeds of 3GHz or higher. Test systems showed the integrated GPU had no trouble running Alien vs. Predator at a moderate resolution with DirectX 11 features enabled. In terms of the Radeon 6800 series, board shots have been unveiled today, as well as scenes from AMD's upcoming tech demo, Mecha Warrior, showcasing the new graphics technology and advanced effects from the open source Bullet Physics library."
There is also the problem that the poster is measuring performance based on some single metric (presumably FPS in some game) which doesnt necessarily mean much.
Many years ago I upgraded from a Voodoo 3 to GeForce 4 Ti 4600, and for more than a few games that GF4 was slower in FPS than the Voodoo at first (but still more than fast enough for gaming.)
This was at a time when games were almost strictly simple textured polygon throwers, which was the Voodoo 3's only strength. As the use of multi-texturing became more prevalent (heavily used in terrain splatting..), the advantages of the GF4 over the voodoo became apparent as more scene detail became essentially free, whereas that voodoo required many rendering passes to accomplish the same thing.
Now I'm not saying I know that this generation of AMD gpu's will experience the same sort of future-benefits as that GeForce 4 did, especially since DX10/DX11 really isnt having a rapid uptake, but there could easily be design choices here that favor DX11 features that just arent being heavily used yet.
The question is not 'is the 6870 slower than that 5870?' in some specific benchmark. The question is, which is these cards will provide a solid gaming platform for the most games. As with my experience, that voodoo performed better than the GF4 for while.. but for the newest games the GF4 kept providing a good experience whereas that voodoo became completely unacceptable.
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The idea AMD is going for here, and I think there's some merit to it, is a low range desktop type of system. People who want something cheap, but still want to play games. Intel's integrated chips don't work that well for that (though they've improved) so this is to try and fill the market.
Think more mid-to-high-end laptops.
As mentioned in the summary, this is a low-power version of the Phenom II. Not an ultra-low power for consumer electronics or netbooks like Atom or AMD's Bobcat, but still solidly aimed at the mobile market. It provides all the power and cost advantages of a UMA solution plus gets rid of one of the system buses for more savings, while providing good-for-a-laptop graphics without having to significantly re-engineer the motherboard or cooling solution. This is still in theory; demonstrations of engineering samples are nice, but it'll be interesting once the reviewers get their hands on some.
Of course you're also right, since cost and power usage are relevant for desktop. Just not as much, since you're not dealing with battery life, or the form factor that make it difficult to work with discreet graphics. A single line of UMA-based motherboards with optional pci-e graphics card can serve multiple markets with one design and acceptable margins.
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