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AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Launched, Tested
MojoKid writes "AMD lifted the veil on their new Trinity A-Series mobile processor architecture today. Trinity has been reported as offering much-needed CPU performance enhancements in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) but also more of AMD's strength in gaming and multimedia horsepower, with an enhanced second generation integrated Radeon HD graphics engine. AMD's A10-4600M quad-core chip is comprised of 1.3B transistors with a CPU base core clock of 2.3GHz and Turbo Core speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The on-board Radeon HD 7660G graphics core is comprised of 384 Radeon Stream Processor cores clocked at 497MHz base and 686Mhz Turbo. In the benchmarks, AMD's new Trinity A10 chip outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gaming but can't hold a candle to it for standard compute workloads or video transcoding."
That's really all that matters. I've always been and AMD fan but If they can't pull out the same performance for less or equal price, they're done.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
They should do that the other way round.
Reminds me of the AMD Tombstone, a weird ass 48 bit CPU they got all ready to make and then ditched at the last minute in the late nineties. AMD has a habit of making some very strange CPUs. Hopefully this one will see some success.
You mean AMD TwoStone, right?
Tombstone was the "joke" name people in AMD management gave it, for obvious reasons.
I've seen a lot of reviews of various laptops that have missed the most important metric in this competition - Price!
What's been common in all reviews is that the only the very top end Intel "integrated" (No separate, discreet GPU) solutions have been competitive to the new fusion products. We're talking mobile i7s. I don't know if you've priced laptops lately, but the i7's are only found in expensive, high end systems.
The fusion APUs are nowhere near that expensive. Price wise, they should be compared to i3s or "pentium" mobile cpus.. Where they will win quite handily!
It turns out that AMD's 'APU' solutions have been very popular with low end device makers and AMD sells them by the boat load. What's impressed me, however, is how much intel has improved their GPU in ivy bridge. It's always been garbage before, but now it's starting to be something you could call 'low end'.
I don't transcode and my Excel sheets aren't that complicated. I suspect that most people are like me, we do basic work and play a game or two. I play TF2 on my laptop, it's 3 year old laptop with a new SSD. Plays fine. I can't think of the last time that I was truly CPU limited. I've been GPU limited since Crysis. I can't play that beyond low detail level.
From what I've read, on CPU tasks it's between an i3 and an i5. An i3 is "fast enough" for most general use, so I think that's pretty good. On GPU tasks, it's significantly faster than Intel's integrated chipsets, knocking on the door of respectable gaming performance if not walking into the room.
If you're doing CPU tasks, you really want the i7. If you're doing hard core gaming, you're also going to want the latest generation video card, even if it's an entry model. If your budget is less than $700 and you still want to play video games, Trinity is a good compromise. I think it's perfect for college students.
Oh, I see where I went wrong, I completely pulled it out of my ass.
Hey! I did not, what are you talking about!
Yes you did, you dirty little harlot?
What did you just call me?!!
A dirty little harlot.
Ok, but you are still stupid.
What the fuck are you talking about and who are you?
I'm Anonymous Coward, who the hell are you?
You can't be Anonymous Coward cause I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
No you aren't.
Yes I am.
They used to be able to beat Intel in the Athlon days. Now they are hopelessly far behind and dumping huge hot graphics cores into their chips putting them further and further behind. Focus on cheap compute with unlocking cores AMD. Not stupid graphics cores which do nothing for the CPU. A 16 core phenom ii at $100 will sell much better than this insane graphics + cpu crap.
That is pretty much the exact opposite of a good plan for AMD(as much as I would like cheap compute...) Since Intel has a process advantage, and presently has a superior x86 compute core architecture, they can almost certainly beat AMD on production cost for chips of a given level of punch. Trying to compete on price with somebody kicking out chips a process node ahead of you just isn't a good plan. Unless they really fuck it up, or their yields tank horribly or similar, they'll be able to beat you on production cost every time. Intel has little to gain by cutting its own margins in order to chase AMD down a hole(since lower margins are bad, and killing AMD would mean becoming antitrust scrutiny case #1 for the indefinite future...); but there isn't any architectural barrier to their doing so.
Since Intel has comparatively worthless GPU designs, tacking GPUs onto CPU dice is a way for AMD to offer something that Intel cannot(and at a price lower than a discrete CPU + discrete GPU without totally cutting their own throat), and also happens to go well with today's enthusiasm for laptops and all-in-ones. They have a second niche, much more directly focused on price, in compute-light, memory-heavy server applications(since you can populate your sockets with AMD CPUs for less and the number of DIMMs you get is roughly proportional to the number of sockets you have active); but competing on price isn't good for your margins.
With an inferior process and a weaker x86 design, gunning directly for the compute performance crown would just be asking for a whupping from Intel.
> Ivy Bridge and Llano actually ended up 'tied
Yes, but Llano is the *old* AMD processor ;-) Check the reviews for performance of a HD 4000 vs a Trinity.
Built myself a PC to play WoW 3 months ago. Went with the high-end Llano, no discrete graphics required. An Intel setup would have required a graphics card, larger base (mini-itx MB), and more money. For most users that are also *casual* gamers (not hard-core), AMD's CPU/GPU balance saves a graphics cards while providing sufficient CPU power.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Speaking of all-in-ones, an all-in-one AMD chip would be a dandy basis for a games console. If not one from Microsoft (who has no particular need for x86) then it would perhaps be a good match for Valve. Public distaste for Sony is at an all-time high, but is it enough to unseat them? etc etc.
if I could have a 16 core phenom ii, though, that would be pretty awesome. I could drop it right into my current machine. I'd pay $100 for even eight cores, though, let alone sixteen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even pretty old stuff is good, I have the last nVidia IGP without CUDA support and it's good enough to do 1080p with XBMC. This story would be cooler if I could remember which IGP it is... 9400 or something. Of course that's nVidia and this is AMD but I guess there's some hope the drivers will work since they're pretty much betting the farm on this one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Exactly. These articles and benchmarks are a joke. The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value, that I can't help but feel embarrassed for AMD.
Without AMD you clueless retard would have to pay 5 times the price for an Intel CPU. You should thank them for providing competition instead of dissing their products.
You'll never know.
Or wait, does that mean I'll never know?
Hold on now, what the fuck is going on?
Hell if I know.
Who the fuck are you?
I already told you that, I'm Anonymous Coward.
And I already told you that you aren't, I'm Anonymous Coward.
Bullshit, there is no way you are Anonymous Coward because I am.
Wait, what?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
the Ivy Bridge (Asus N56VM) is $1200 (MSRP) to $1300 on some preorder site. pre launch marketing (heh) claimed that a Trinity lappy might be $600-700. who knows, tho.
So, AMD has the lead on average FPS, but it's now small enough that Intel wins in a few cases. AMD's integrated GPU is still a little better normally, but it's not a slam dunk any more.
AMD's integrated GPU advantage is gone.
That's also compared to the more expensive i7 part. There was no i5 or i3 comparison.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Appreciating competition is not mutually exclusive with being critical of the competitions quality.
Both your and the GP's quotes can actually be true at the same time...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
An employer that provides a tower can go Intel. Most of the time, an Intel GMA (Graphics My Ass) is OK because the employer doesn't want the user playing 3D games on company time. In other cases, the employer provides a discrete card because it anticipates use for CAD, 3D graphic design, or video game development and testing.
What I find most impressive of AMD's APUs is that they made basic gaming on sub-$400 laptops possible.
Did you just seriously insinuate that Intels GPU's are better than AMD's?
So Intel has a better GPU than this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161399
I think you might have meant that Intels best GPU's are starting to compete with AMD's bottom rung GPU's
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
> So, AMD has the lead on average FPS, but it's now small enough that Intel wins in a few cases. AMD's integrated GPU is still a little better normally, but it's not a slam dunk any more.
It's curious, that this is the case for mobile, but on the desktop the HD4000 is beaten by the Llano by a large margin:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/15
Log the fuck in so I can be sure I'm talking to the same moron who posted "Since ivy bridge intels GPU now equals anything from AMD."
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I thought we were talking about laptop graphics not desktop graphics? What laptop can you put a 7970 into? The article is about a laptop CPU with build in graphics. Many laptop do have that today. They are not gaming laptops usually.
Intel does have some good day to day 1080P movie watching graphics. But for high end gaming? No, they are lacking. For a low power movie watching dvr, the Intel graphics do work fine. Well the 4000 series and later 3000 series anyway. Before that, no. Intel needed work. They finally got there.
Personally I prefer to have a separate video card in my home desktops. If it breaks I can change it. If the built into the motherboard video card breaks, swapping out the motherboard is harder and takes longer then changing the video card. The less down time the better. I usually have a spare video card just for that reason.
> AMD has the lead on average FPS, but it's now small enough that Intel wins in a few cases
Not really, Intel does win on a couple cases and is close for some cases.. Most of those are older CPU bound games. For Civ 5, AMD is close to 100% faster. A lot of the games that I looked at were ~ 40% faster (e.g. starcraft 2). e.g.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Mobile/AMD-Trinity-Mobile-Review-Trying-Cut-Ivy/Performance-Synthetic-3D-Real-World-Gaming
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5831/trinity-vs-ivybridge-gaming-new.png
So better gaming perf at a cheaper price.. AMD has a better single chip solution for games. If you want a discrete graphics card for games, better to go with Intel.
So far I have seen no mention of it, but would this not make a great HTPC platform?
Very low powered CPU but a tank of a GPU sounds great to me... Especially when your box is idling.
Any thoughts from someone more knowlegable? I'm still like 5 generations behind running an AMD X2 5200+.
> The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value, that I can't help but feel embarrassed for AMD.
Not so. The Intel traditional CPU is faster, but the AMD integrated GPU is faster.
For AMD's pure-CPU parts, they seem competitively priced to me (ie: cheap).
IPC is instructions per clock and is highly relevant to the discussion at hand.
They aren't competitive though. You keep missing the point. Intel's Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge integrated GPUs basically do video playback on laptops at a suitable level. They cannot play any sort of games made within the last 2-3 years at any level beyond the most base settings. the A-series processors by comparison can play the newest games at relatively low settings and the new Trinity based models can do it at reasonable settings. With the newest A10 laptops starting prices around $600 for 17' laptop that's quite competitive since the first Nvidia/AMD dedicated laptops that can hold a candle to them start around $800-900. The small ultrabooks are going to be harder to justify using intel when the A10 will do it all faster and just as thin. In other words AMD has a serious contender in the mobile market for gaming and cost-effectiveness.
The problem remains that Intel holds the cards on mainstream OEMs and will continue to keep the A-series processors out of the big seller's hands because mobile is becoming their bread and butter.
That's complete bullshit. I'm typing this on an IBM ThinkPad T42: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-57838
Over the years, I've upgraded it to 2GB RAM, bought Windows 7 Professional x86, installed a 320GB HD, and at this point it's pretty much "maxed out", from a hardware perspective [1]. As I type this, it's running Windows 7 Pro x86, playing music via Winamp, has Outlook running, Opera, Ubuntu in a VM under VirtualBox (Why? Why not? *grin*) and 2 RDP sessions to other systems on my home network and is quick and responsive - perfectly suited for the things for which I use it.
I think I'm doing things with it, and doing them quite well, thanks very much. YOUR problem is that you think that the tasks that you list are the ONLY things worthy of a computer.
Again, bullshit. Underpowered for the tasks that you think are important? Sure. Useless, as you imply? Not hardly.
:)
Regards,
dj
Notes:
[1] Now, for those of you who are wondering why I'd spend money to upgrade an "obsolete" laptop such as this? That's easy: I didn't pay for it. It was broken when I got it. I fixed it (because I can), and then bought RAM for it when it was dirt cheap... and bought the HD the same way. My total investment in it, from a cash perspective, was more than worth it to me. In return, I got a rock-solid laptop that is quick and responsive, to keep in my garage, which isn't heated or cooled, but despite that it keeps running, day in, day out, and gives me access to my home network, the Internet [2], when I'm puttering about in the garage, and has done so for years. I don't have to baby it, don't even back it up: I don't store anything on it that I'd miss if it stopped working, because that's what my NAS and its backups are for. Now, if the prices of the Pentium M 765 would finally drop to about $50 US, I'd buy one...
[2] I just replaced the Intel 2200 b/g WiFi NIC with a TP-Link Wireless N adapter. Had to patch the BIOS (via the commonly available No 1802 patch) to do so, but now I have Wireless N connectivity to my home network. WELL worth it, for the $ 19 US that I paid, plus a little time researching and tinkering.
[3] This note has no reference from above
I'm a professional software developer. I have an i5 laptop with built-in graphics, 8GB of memory, a couple of external displays, and a gigabit link to 2TB of NAS. Why would I need a tower?
I don't game much anymore, and when I do most of it is on my tablet anyway. My laptop is perfectly respectable for doing office work, compiling large amounts of code, doing photography work, and hobbyist CAD work in sketchup. It decodes high def video mostly in hardware with minimal overhead.
I have no desire for gaming-grade graphics in my laptop--I'd rather have an extra hour of battery life, thanks.
So the "any" is clearly restricted to the GPUs embedded in the CPUs not discrete GPUs in huge cards.
Okay - So talking about AMD having 384 stream processors per die in the 7660, vs... 16 for Intel in the HD4000. Not even the same game, never mind the same ballpark.
Sorry, but AMD wins this round. And although the average Joe hasn't yet realized it, the "number of cores" war has turned a corner, in that the CPU has already started serving merely as an "overseer" of massive numbers of GPU SPs/CUs. If you do, specifically and exclusively, transaction processing - The CPU still wins. In scientific computing, cryptography, signal analysis, physical simulations, CAD, and yes, even gaming - No one cares if you have a 12-way Xeon or an AMD Geode, it matters that you have an AMD 59/69/79xx (and yes, I do mean AMD - despite their overall gaming performance, for GPU computing, even NVidia doesn't even come close, though the uber-expensive Tesla does at least get to share the playing field).
/ Note that the recent Slashdot article on media transcoding dealt specifically with mass-market solutions using hacked-up shader routines, not optimized OpenCL kernels.
AMD is also in a nice position to do more work in the ultraportable (think tablets, maybe phones in the future) market. Intel has repeatedly dropped the ball with Atom architecture, especially with their garbage implementations of PowerVR graphics cores. AMD may be skiddish to compete with Atom and various ARM architectures, but the risk could be worth the payoff.
Beating ARM performance is trivial, though performance per watt is a much more difficult task, especially using an x86 instruction set. Beating Atom is not too hard, as even Intel admits they keep missing goals at nearly every step. AMD has a huge amount of low power graphics IP to pull from as well as multiple established paths to scalable graphics. It would be great for OEMs to tout a tablet with equal or better than Atom battery life (>7 hours, 10 hours being the crown) and better than iPad 3 GPU power, even if the battery life drops in half playing let's say an Infinity Blade grade AAA game title. ARM architectures are also heavily constrained by crappy, crappy, interconnect bandwidth to storage and RAM.
Even on a lowly Atom z540, Android x86 cold boots in sub 12 second range because the x86 architectures have good bandwidth to the SSD (PATA no less!). Compare this to ARM tablets with 2-4x cores taking 25-60 seconds. Alternately consider the smattering of ARM based NAS boxes which top out at 20-40 MB/s over GbE with 4x 2 TB hdd in RAID 5, when each drive supports >70 MB/s transfers.
1920x1080 video decoding is not impressive. I have a core2 duo laptop with a Graphics My Ass 4500MHD that can do it. Of course, it gets pretty choppy trying to run compiz on my 3520x1200 X screen.
1920x1080 video decoding is not impressive.
Good thing I wasn't trying to impress anyone.
Of course, it gets pretty choppy trying to run compiz on my 3520x1200 X screen.
Too bad you weren't trying to impress anyone, because you failed.
My point was that it does what I need to do, and it's old and integrated. And most users don't need anything more than that, though faster is usually nicer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They have a second niche, much more directly focused on price, in compute-light, memory-heavy server applications(since you can populate your sockets with AMD CPUs for less and the number of DIMMs you get is roughly proportional to the number of sockets you have active)
I haven't tried AMD's latest server machines, but if they are even 1/2 as good as the old, ones they are a _MUCH_ better deal. My 6 !! year old DL585G2 is actually faster on every single thing it gets used for than the much newer westmere machines we have been buying. The problem is that intel is charging an absolute fortune for chips clocked fast, so we end up with 1.8 or 2.2Ghz westmere machines, and their single thread performance is abysmal compared to the much older 3.2Ghz AMD machine. Our application scales nicely, but quickly becomes IO bound, so both machines basically get the same throughput, but the AMD machine has much lower overall latency. This results in it actually getting much better benchmarks in our tests.
So, in theory we could get an intel that kicks the crap out of the AMD machine, but its going to cost us 5x as much (from ~$5k to ~$25k). So we buy the cheap ones, and they get their ass handed to them by a 6 year old machine that cost $5k when it was new.
Well, the benchmarks disagree with you. The HD4000 IGP in the Ivy Bridge processors are DX11 that can run recent games at low to medium settings quite well. The Anandtech review for example shows that on some games like Batman Arkham City, Dirt 3 and Skyrim, the HD4000 even outperforms this new AMD APU. It loses on the other 4 games tested but it's still competitive. I'm only talking about gaming performance here, not video decoding where Intel wins by a large margin. Since Sandy Bridge, Intel GPUs have stopped sucking as bad as they used to IMO. They're at least now comparable to the integrated AMD GPUs.
Mada mada dane.
246 mm die size! That sucker's big! Ivy bridge was big already at 166mm.... Wonder what the pricing will be....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Even with IGP's intels stuff gets obliterated. No need to take anyones word for it on here though, just go and look at the benchmarks on places like tomshardware. Intel still has the better CPU but AMD are really leveraging their one strong point here and that is superior graphics chip performance. Still don't think it will be enough to give AMd the overall edge though.
Exactly. These articles and benchmarks are a joke. The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value, that I can't help but feel embarrassed for AMD.
Yes... we should reward Intel's shady, unethical business dealings in nearly putting their only competition out of business so that we can finally pay massive premiums for a product from a company that has no competition. So much for rooting for the underdog... AMD should just close their doors so we can finally give all our money to Intel, and reduce their pressure to provide advanced chips at reasonable prices.
The Admin and the Engineer
Since Intel has comparatively worthless GPU designs...
Lets not forget what powerhogs Intel's little heat factories are, and how anemic their low power chips are compared to AMD's energy efficient offerings.
The Admin and the Engineer
please realize that AMD and Intel TDPs can not be compared apples to apples. My understanding last time i looked was that Intel was a bit optimistic about how low their TDP was.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
I think this really depends on what the server is doing. More cores is actually really good for a web server. Most languages used for web applications don't favor multithreading for a single request. In fact, it often doesn't make sense to do it. But handling 16 requests at the same time for medium to large sites is very useful.
Similarly, for certain types of database use it is better to have multiple cores. Queries run on a distinct core on many RDBMS so as long as there are no locking issues, you can handle more. It's also quite useful with virtualization.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Don't forget that a CPU with HD4000 graphics is in a different price class, at least $100 more.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Rough language but you nailed it.
Tomorrow is another day...
Scroll down a bit: there's a 7970M, a mobile GPU.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
"Intel has little to gain by cutting its own margins in order to chase AMD down a hole(since lower margins are bad, and killing AMD would mean becoming antitrust scrutiny case..."
This. Look at the history of Intel and AMD, and it become absolutely apparent that Intel is aware of the danger of landing in the government's anti-trust sights. They have always left just enough room at the bottom end for AMD to barely survive. When AMD gets uppity (like in the Athlon days), Intel pulls out the stops for a couple of years and squashes AMD back into (near) irrelevance.
Interesting times ahead with mobile devices, where Intel is far from dominant. Who knows, Intel may finally decide to kill off AMD, so they can concentrate on new areas...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Whoops, you lose ten points for lack of foresight.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope
That's the reason they are adding GPUs to CPUs.
Roll on the day when compilers automatically spit out OpenCL code when useful.
Then x86 performance will mean bugger all.
While Intel is evil and we got used to it, the new AMD marketing bullshit has reached Apple level. Sorry, but I can't have sympathy for a company doing that. But I agree, no competition is terrible for consumers.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
the thing is, an cheap Intel CPU + cheap dedicated GPU is faster and cheaper then anything AMD can provide. Oh, it does use less power too. The thing is, this new CPU+GPU is already dead.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
The Intel CPUs are so far ahead, in performance and value
"Performance"? Sure. "Value". Not so sure. If you want a top Intel CPU you'd better be prepared to pay big $$$ for it.
No sig today...
I'm going to retract that.
I just looked at the latest CPU hierarchy charts and the conclusion is: "...we're almost-shockingly left without an AMD CPU to recommend at any price point".
Strange times, indeed.
No sig today...
Yep, at the highter end products AMD offers a much highter bang for your buck (on both single threaded and paralel speeds), maybe at the cost of some extra electricity and heat (I was never able to calculate that, so I don't know who wins).
Rethinking email
I just built a 3.3 ghz (slightly overclocked) quad core AMD system with 16 GB. Got the motherboard, cpu, graphics card (MSI GTX570 2GB, also overclocked), and memory for $600. The damn thing can compile practically anything from scratch in no time flat. I play all the latest games at the max detail settings. The system is fast as hell all around; if I had an SSD it would just be ridiculous. Why the hell would I want an Intel chip again?
My experience is that hardware of that vintage runs into issues playing back flash video nowadays. Which is more Adobe's fault, but they don't seem to care. You could try upgrading the GPU, but the AGP bus limits your choices. Kind of a shame, as it'll be powerful enough for most anything else on the web.
Whoops...
(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler)
A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code written in a programming language (the source language) into another computer language (the target language, often having a binary form known as object code). The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program.
The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a lower level language (e.g., assembly language or machine code). (snip) A program that translates from a low level language to a higher level one is a decompiler. A program that translates between high-level languages is usually called a language translator, source to source translator, or language converter. A language rewriter is usually a program that translates the form of expressions without a change of language.
I'm sorry, would you have preferred me to use the term language translator? ;)
Anyway, you know what I mean. One day compilers will take your high level source code, produce some intermediate form, and the JIT compile it for CPU+GPU, utilizing whichever is most appropriate.
All it has to do to keep me happy is to keep trailing along behind Intel at a close enough distance to run all the same software at an acceptable level of performance, and meanwhile at far less cost. When I built my Phenom II system I could get more CPU at the same price but the motherboard cost $200 instead of $100... and I got a Gigabyte board with all the IO I can eat. Intel chips with good performance are incompatible with my ethic of not spending more than a hundred bucks on any one part. And it looks like Phenom II X6 will be $100 shipped used soon so maybe I'll upgrade from my X3 after all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you'd go to the next page on that review, where they then compare the two GPUs across 16 different games (also a much more relevant sample than the 7 for the "value" benchmark), Trinity wipes the floor with the HD 4000 on 13 out of the 16 titles. Also, the games that the HD 4000 beat Trinity on are games that AMD GPUs typically to badly at (nVidia and AMD both exert quite a bit of influence on getting game engine makers to "optimize" for their hardware, but honestly it just seems like they cripple the competitors' gear). Trinity is an extremely persuasive proposition for value laptops that are expected to be jacks-of-all-trades. Prospective buyers could include students of all stripes and wallets, and budget conscious laptop buyers who want competent graphics and for whom middling x86 performance (middling for 2012 that is) is not a big deal. Remember that better graphics in a laptop package come with reduced battery life (or in the case of switchable graphics, linux unfriendliness).
the thing is, an cheap Intel CPU + cheap dedicated GPU is faster and cheaper then anything AMD can provide.
The thing is, this new CPU+GPU is already dead.
There is a reason that AMD is releasing these things as laptop parts before they get to the desktop parts, and that's because while you are quite right about desktop use cases, for laptops these things are very persuasive. Near discrete performance (in Trinity's case, VERY near discrete mobile performance) for much better battery life and a much lower price than a discrete solution.
Hmmm... Those are desktop parts, and AMD is focusing their APUs primarily as a mobile part. While it's dismaying that AMD can't seem to stand up to Intel in performance OR value on the desktop front, the APUs are definitely changing how laptops are priced/targeted. Decent gaming (and battery) performance on a sub USD$500 laptop? It couldn't be done before Llano and Brazos arrived. OK, this is the last post I shall make on this article... I'm beginning to sound like a fanboy. I'm just trying to give people used to hugely powerful workstations and towers a different perspective when it comes to mobile gear. Aarrgh, I'll shut up, I promise.