AMD's Fusion APU Pitted Against 21 Desktop CPUs

crookedvulture writes "When AMD unveiled the Bobcat CPU architecture behind its first Fusion APUs, the company claimed its Atom-killer would achieve 90% of the performance of mainstream desktop processors. But does it? This article compares the AMD E-350's performance to more than 20 desktop CPUs between $87 and $999 to find out, and the results aren't particularly encouraging. Although Fusion offers much better integrated graphics than Intel's latest Atom, neither stands much chance of keeping up with even low-end desktop CPUs. The E-350 does offer very low power consumption and impressive platform integration, making it a good choice for home-theater PCs and mobile systems. Desktop users are better off waiting for Llano, a Fusion iteration due out this spring."

Comments

Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[Alphanos]

Ok wait, so AMD's next-gen "atom-killer" successfully trumps Intel's next-gen Atom, but "the results aren't particularly encouraging" because it doesn't also beat full-fledged desktop processors? Seriously, talk about misleading.

In other news, iPods aren't the best at 3D graphics rendering, and cars are not the best choice for transatlantic shipping.

This is a test of CPU/GPU integration at the low end to start with - and a successful test at that.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[fbjon]

The "not encouraging" part seems to be regarding the "90% of desktop power" claim. Perhaps not much surprise there.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[thermopile]

Hey, wait a minute, Alphanos. Give credit where credit is due (or something like that).

As described in TFA, they sheepishly admit that they wouldn't normally pit low-power CPU's against full fledged desktops, but AMD was so brash in its product announcement that they felt compelled to do it. From the third page:

We likened Bobcat's potential performance to 90% of the Athlon X2 255's—then arguably a "mainstream" part as these terms tend to be used—and noted that "the X2 255 is more than up to the task of running modern games" and "should be plenty adequate for the vast majority of everyday computing tasks." With prospects like that, a comparison seemed to be in order.

The appeal of this to HTPC's and other medium-to-low end computing makes this a tantalizing prospect for me.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[VGPowerlord]

Unfortunately, Intel's ultra-low power Sandy Bridge chips, the Core i5 2537M, Core i7 2617M, and Core i7 2657M, likely came out too late to be in this comparison.

Reportedly, they started shipping earlier this week.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[billcopc]

What I took away from the article, is that the CPU & GPU performance is slightly too low for most uses. For a netbook, OK, but for a compact and low-power desktop or HTPC, it falls short. More importantly, if it took this long for AMD to barely eke out the Atom, there's a good chance Intel's Cedar View will blow it away when it is released later this year.

The one place where Fusion wins is power consumption, as their chipset is far more efficient than Intel's half-assed PCH. This means that even though performance is blah, for netbooks the Fusion will gain a fair bit of traction. Nettops will probably skip it and wait for Cedar View.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[0123456]

...yes. Just don't do anything remotely interesting computationally like play a game or watch/edit a video.

The dual-core Atom is faster than the systems I used to use to edit feature-length movies a few years ago. It does suck at HD H.264 playback without GPU assist, but then so did those.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[hattig]

AMD had made it quite clear that it was a per-clock comparison, not an absolute comparison.

It's unfair to compare it to 3GHz desktop chips and then act all surprised and disappointed when it doesn't meet those incorrect expectations.

Fusion beats Atom, it comes close to the low-end desktop CPUs or even beats them in some areas. It seems nicely balanced. It's cheap to buy. It's cheap to integrate. It doesn't use much power. It's does desktop tasks and even some gaming.

However yes, wait for Llano if you want more from a Fusion chip.

Re:Wow, Biased Summary Much?

[hattig]

And at $50 a chip ... no, wait.

I like the C-50

[X86Daddy]

I bought an Acer Aspire One 522 recently. It's a netbook with a 10.1" screen, 1280x720 resolution, and the new Fusion chip, so it has a Radeon 3250... I can actually run games on this device. I installed StarCraft II, dropped all the settings to minimal, and received playable framerates (after upgrading to 2GB ram). I blogged about it for those wanting more info. I need to make another post about Linux, because I have Ubuntu running near perfectly on it now.

I have no idea what business this new architecture has going against powerful desktop rigs, but for low-power applications, like a netbook, this offers a balance of computing power and energy consumption that's really nice, and beats what I've seen before.

Yes it will only be good for about 70+% of users.

[LWATCDR]

Really most users today do not do much with there PCs but run a browser and email. It will run Office just fine and most software you would expect to find in most offices today. It should sell like hotcakes. Look how well the Atom does for so many tasks.

Yes if you are doing CAD, Gaming, editing video then this sucks.
For most other people it will be small, cheap, cool, and good enough.

Re:If the technology was so great...

[bill_mcgonigle]

why wouldn't they just make desktop procs with it and leapfrog ahead again?

When's the last time you saw a Ferrari F-40 pulling a tractor trailer?

Re:If the technology was so great...

[Chris Burke]

Because you make a very different chip if you're aiming at 9 or 18W vs 60 or 80W.

Put all those desktop chips in the same power envelope as Bobcat, and they'd suck ass. Give Bobcat the power headroom of the desktop chips' environment, and it wouldn't know what to do with it.

The results as far as I can see are pretty good, given realistic expectations. Of course the article points out AMD claimed 90% of desktop, which just might be where some unrealistic expectations came from. Knowing AMD, that probably wasn't completely bullshit. It was probably a statement about IPC at equivalent frequencies, not delivered performance at their respective TDPs, possibly confused by a PR person, with a bullshit multiplier in there somewhere. ;)

Even Slashdot readers...

[WoTG]

I've been using the mediocre Intel IGP's for years on the last couple laptops. The GPU on these new AMD chips wipe the floor with the 2 year old Intel IGP on the laptop that I'm typing this on. Even basic home video editing doesn't really use the GPU, those goofy home videos are all CPU work.

Having the fastest computer doesn't mean much for most people. It's the form factor and utility that counts. Heck, we're one hop-skip-and-a-jump away from perfectly adequate ARM based machines that people will use instead of Intel or AMD... oh, wait... that was the iPad and it came out last year.

LOL, and to think that we used to measure computer speed by how fast it could recalculate a "large" Excel spreadsheet.

Re:If the technology was so great...

[Chris Burke]

A fair point that TDP isn't the whole picture, and I didn't say anything about die area ergo cost as a distinguishing feature of the market Bobcat and Atom are going for. I'd believe it does do better with a bigger core and lots of die space spent on 3.5MB of cache. It would have been interesting to see it in this comparison.

Though the conclusion would have been the same, as clearly a $250 part is not competing in the same space.

BTW, you seriously need to stop projecting.

Re:How do they compare to Pentiums of yesteryear

[0123456]

EG, Pentinum 2ghz compared to atom D525 or amd E250

Not sure about current Atoms, but the 330 dual-core benchmarked about the same as a 3GHz P4 when running multithreaded apps (and quite a bit slower when single-threaded).

Or, if you prefer big iron, if I remember correctly it gets about the same as a Cray Y-MP.

Re:64 Bit RISC

[0123456]

The x86 and x86_64 carry around a lot of transistor baggage needed to be maintain 4 decades worth of backwards compatibility

Not really. More and more of the CPU is cache, so the size of the instruction decoders becomes less important all the time. Plus I believe I read that Intel can now turn off the instruction decoder when it's not required (e.g. running tight loops from the micro-ops cache) so that reduces the power usage too.

Why do giants like Intel and AMD continue throwing money into improving what will always suck?

Because they want to run Windows apps.

Perfect for a Media Box

[TheRedDuke]

I've been waiting for a good low-power CPU to come along that'll play 1080p and fit in an ITX rig, and it looks like this could be the one. It'll be nice to run Boxee on a computer that actually fits in my TV cabinet.

Re:90 percent of desktop performance

[TrancePhreak]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20091115090149_AMD_Bobcat_Sub_1W_Chip_with_90_of_Today_s_Performance.html

Here it is, on AMD's slide.

Re:Yes it will only be good for about 70+% of user

[hedwards]

You pay a premium for tiny. I remember when I got my Nomad Jukebox 3, the iPod of that generation was selling for a couple hundred dollars more and had less disk space, but it was a fraction of the size. People are willing to pay a lot of money for something that's tiny, whether or not that's the wisest course of action.