Slashdot Mirror
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."
The 6870 actually has less performance than the 5870... Same goes for the 6850/5850... I don't really understand why they named them the way they did... Either way, a 6970 is supposed to be released in the near future to surpass the GTX480/5870.
I'd love to see this thing in an Android tablet, or a next-gen game console. I'm sure the pixels-per-watt are fabulous. I hope it shows up in the Wii-2, or in some super-powered tablet that will make PCs obsolete.
I have a feeling that people who buy expensive pieces of hardware have tendency to do at least one web search or pop at least one question off at an internet forum about products before they buy. It's not like AMD is putting the or anything...
Typo in summary,
ATI makes Radeon. Not AMD.
Posting anonymous for obvious reasons.
AMD buys ATI. ATI animates Lizard. Lizard bites Spock. Spock buys nVidia. nVidia dominates ATI.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've got no idea how fast an "Alien vs. Predator" video game needs the graphics system to be, since I stopped caring once any modern hardware could play Nethack or Solitaire.
Can the hardware play 1080p video without needing a noisy fan? How low power is "low-power"?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
PCs will be obsolete when I can have a chip implanted in my brain.
Will you go for Ponch, or Jon?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
come about by a tornado blowing through a refuse yard that contained the parts to the airplane, or a camera came about by blind chance. Only a fool would believe that a web site could create itself in cyberspace without the intervention of a programmer, even though all the ingredients exist there.
Yet many so called intelligent people believe that the universe came about by pure chance. This of course has to include the galaxies, solar systems, suns, planets and the micro world of atoms, protons, electrons, quarks etc. Then we also have to consider the dimensions, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, plus all the natural laws, anti matter, dark matter and the code that make up the fabric of the physical realm. Now the human mind cannot even conceive of the scale of the universe, never mind thinking at such wonderful design came about by luck. To believe that all this plus much more, came about without a God/designer/programer is absolutely pathetic. This belief is worse than a fable or farytale, it is the most extreme form of ignorance possible.
People who do not believe in God, also believe that the wonderful and technological human eye was not designed by God, rather such design came about because creatures without eyes had a less chance of survival. Yet when we see a man made camera we all know without a doubt that it was designed and built by someone. Did a camera come about by evolutionary processes because of the need for people to take photos, no it was created by intelligence for that need. However the truth is that the human eye and the human camera both use the same technology to turn light into an image, that can be understood. If you believe that a camera is always created by a designer (and so you should), then why is it so hard to believe that there was a creator for the human eye. If you don't attribute the wonderful technology of the human eye to a Creator, then what you are really saying is you believe that nothing or blind chance did a much better job with this technology than intelligent beings ? Humans who by possessing intellect can not only increase the odds in their favor of such design to come about, but actually make it possible at all. So how can nothing create something better than so called intelligent beings. To not believe in a creator is illogical and this is but one small example of Mans incredible foolishness. It is not hard to imagine the countless more examples of mans foolishness that exist. The question is, are you wise enough to accept obvious truth, or do you want to be blinded to the obvious by reason of your intellectual pride.
If you saw 20 apples on the ground and positioned to form a perfect circle on flat ground, you would automatically assume that these apples were placed there by somebody. What if I told you that there was a hole in my bag of apples, and when they fell out they formed a perfect circle by chance or the more accurately the elements that were in process at the time, such as wind, gravity and the angle that the apples fell out of the bag created this circle of apples. Would you not say that I was mad if I told you that they just fell out that way. Then how is it that some say the complex universe came about by chance. (I think I am being very extremely generous in my examples in a statistical sense).
Such people who believe that the universe itself, formed the earth, other planets, stars and galaxies, in fact the whole universe including the atomic world may be fools, but they are also ignoring the fact that the ingredients had to come from somewhere in the first place, which only makes the odds much greater. The only alternative to chance is constructive design and enlightened people understand that where there is design, there is always a designer.
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Will it run Linux?
(old ATI joke)
I know you are a troll and this is very much OT...
but to think that all things that exist had to have been conciously thought of is the foolish thing, my friend. look around: you think this is the best that a perfect being could have come up with?
your own argument ('how wonderful things are') is the argument I use against you. things are quite shitty 'down here' and there is no sign of anyone in control. a supreme being would probably not be an absentee ruler and yet that's exactly what your religion would have us believe.
"the best thing I could say about god is that he seems to be an underachiever"
have a nice day, fundie.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
"...showcasing the new graphics technology and advanced effects from the open source Bullet Physics library"
Nvidia has their PhysX engine, and Intel advised they were to acquire Havok. Bullet is exciting for me. It was used in Grand Theft Auto 4, and in the movie Hancock.
So for me, reading AMD, ATI, Bullet in the same sentence is the interesting part.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Will apple use this new cpu with gpu build in?
as they like thin and small and intel new chip with gpu build in does not fit with apples techs and apple does not like putting in add on video chips in there low end systems.
"Test systems showed the integrated GPU had no trouble running Alien vs. Predator at a moderate resolution with DirectX 11 features enabled."
What constitutes "moderate resolution", what does "no trouble" mean (15fps, 30fps, 60fps+?) and how does that performance compare CPU/GPU setups?
I have no idea what this claim really means other than the fact the system didn't crash when running a reasonably recent game. It says something, but numbers would be nice.
Oh, I see, they took the sentence almost verbatim from the first page of the cited Hot Hardware article, but the submitter didn't deem the resolution important enough to leave it in.
Answer: "a moderate 1024x768 resolution". Moderate it is. I look forward to additional details.
but the lack of OPEN CL in Intel's chip is bad and do you want a $700 desktop with intel video?
a $1200 laptop? $1500 laptop?
also the 320M they have now is better then what Intel new chip can do.
APU doesn't standard for Applications Processing Unit, it's an acronym for Accelerated Processing Unit.
http://sites.amd.com/us/fusion/apu/Pages/apu.aspx
"The GPU, with its massively parallel computing architecture, is increasingly being leveraged by applications to assist in these tasks. AMD software partners today are taking advantage of the GPU to deliver better experiences to across an ever-wider set of content, paving the way to breakthrough experiences with the upcoming AMD Fusion Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APU)."
No, that's not old ATI joke. nVidia runs perfectly, ATI crashes. Nothing else matters if it costs about the same.
AMD makes comparable, stable drivers for Linux for this new processor, and hell, I'll buy it. I'll probably buy 1000+ of these. But if they don't, well, then I'll buy 0 because I can't use the hardware. It's actually that simple.
I am wondering how your Geforce4 Ti4600 got outclassed by a Voodoo3. The Voodoo3 was equaled or outclassed by the original GeForce256. Maybe your memory is fuzzy, but there would be some major issues if your Voodoo3 was faster than the Geforce4. Also multi-texturing was a big deal around the TnT2 & Voodoo2/3 days, the Geforce3/4 were way past that stage with the introduction of shaders. By the time the GeForce4 came around 3Dfx was already dead for two years after their Voodoo5 failed miserably against the Geforce2. In some cases, like going from a Geforce2 to a Geforce3/Radeon 8500, there wasn't much performance gain until shaders got involved. But I cannot see how a card that would have been 3 generations behind could have bested the Geforce4 even in lower-end non-shader games. The Voodoo3 would have been outclassed even from a raw clockrate, TMU, ROP standpoint.
I ultimately feel that the reason AMD is changing the model # is to save face so it doesn't look like they're putting out a low-end part first. This looks like they're still pumping out a leading edge flagship product. It's misleading, but that has never stopped the ill informed consumer from continuing to be ill informed.
...and not a NAHASAPEEMAPETILON.
And this is some simple text to get through the caps filter...
Those who are interested in fast cars will usually make sure to buy the biggest engine (GPU/CPU) they can afford. ;-)
Your average ricer kids (gaming nerds) are also likely to obsess about technical details and be at least somewhat well informed.
They might also decorate the car (PC) with lots of spoilers (LED-illuminated fans).
And then they go drag racing (comparing benchmarks
C - the footgun of programming languages
. . . maybe it's because this is AMD's answer to ION? Or maybe not, I dunno, just a thought.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.