Slashdot Mirror
AMD Launches New Richland APUs For the Desktop, Speeds Up To 4.4GHz
MojoKid writes "AMD recently unveiled a handful of mobile Elite A-Series APUs, formerly codenamed Richland. Those products built upon the company's existing Trinity-based products but offered additional power and frequency optimizations designed to enhance overall performance and increase battery life. Today AMD is launching a handful of new Richland APUs for desktops and small form factor PCs. The additional power and thermal headroom afforded by desktop form factors has allowed AMD to crank things up a few notches further on both the CPU and GPU sides. The highest-end parts feature quad-CPU cores with 384 Radeon cores and 4MB of total cache. The top end APUs have GPU cores clocked at 844MHz (a 44MHz increase over Trinity) with CPU core boost clocks that top out at lofty 4.4GHz. In addition, AMD's top-end part, the A10-6800K, has been validated for use with DDR3-2133MHz memory. The rest of the APUs max out at with a 1866MHz DDR memory interface."
As with the last few APUs, the conclusion is that the new A10 chips beat Intel's Haswell graphics solidly, but lag a bit in CPU performance and power consumption.
Accelerated processing unit. Basically a CPU with integrated graphics. Both AMD and Intel's recent CPUs have been APUs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Accelerated_Processing_Unit
APU is the only unusual acronym in the summary. It refers to a chip with both the CPU and graphics processor on the same die. It was previously called Fusion, but trademarks got in the way.
Bulldozer 8150. It rocks the house. Headroom still for a 8350 without having to change platforms- thanks AMD ! 189 bucks. Can't touch it for the price. Highly recommended.
Intel can get away with solder in components because they change the socket type so often that people are unlikely to be able to upgrade the processor anyways. AMD OTOH, has a tradition of not forcing you to do that every single time you upgrade.
Personally, I refuse to buy Intel parts, and quite frankly, the way I use my computer, I don't need the overpriced solutions that Intel is pushing.
I'm trying to figure out right now whether office PCs will see the difference between AMD and Intel. It seems like as long as you install plenty of RAM, pretty much anything should handle a moderately multitasking business PC for at least a few years. I keep seeing posts of Intel vs AMD benchmarks, but even with the benchmarks being what they are, how much difference will a nontechnical end user really notice in an office environment? I run an AMD A8 quad core laptop at home, but it runs Linux and does just fine. I don't want to judge Windows performance based on my experience with Linux though.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Yeah you're right. Fuck AMD. Let's support Intel, the anti-competitive market-abusing cocksuckers who had to secretly pay off Michael Dell to use their chips. That's a company I want to support with my money.
Huh? The front-side bus hasn't existed in years. AMD abolished it way back in 2003 when they moved the Athlon 64's memory controller on-die. Intel did the same thing with Nehalem in 2008.
Perhaps you just meant that there isn't enough memory bandwidth to use the GPU to its full potential with games? The good news is that AMD's upcoming Kaveri will have GDDR5 support, with a homogenous memory architecture similar to the new consoles.
P.S. --> the score in question from my previous post was for Cinebench 11.5, but there are many many others like it. And don't think that OpenCL holds any miracles for Trinity either, the 4600 is actually a better OpenCL part than it is a GPU.
Really? Because the one OpenCL benchmark I can find in TFA pegs the new chips at 2.5 times faster than the 4600 that comes with the i5-4670k. I wouldn't consider a part that is less than half as fast to be "better." Maybe that's just me? Could be. Also, I wouldn't say "at best" 20% faster when several benchmarks peg it at 30% or more. The Enemy Territory: Quake Wars high-res benchmark, in particular, is... hilariously one sided (and since most people are going to be playing at high-res settings, it's a benchmark that actually matters). Actually, all the high-res gaming tests are, with the new chips often coming in close to twice the Haswell chips. In fact, the Cinebench 11.5 tests peg the Richland at 60% faster than the i5-4670k, so I'm not sure where the hell you got any of your numbers from.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Richland's GPU is at best about 20% faster than the intentionally-midrange HD-4600 GPU in Haswell. Add in any form of desktop GPU, including midrange models from 2011, and Haswell wins by a landslide.
Yes, if you buy a $250-$350 CPU and then add a $100 video card, it will outperform a $150 all-in-one unit. No shit.
At CPU, I recall seeing delightfully hilarious graph where a 6800K overclocked to 5GHz had exactly half the score of the (stock clocked) 4770K. Before we get to the usual "But AMD is cheap!" argument, when you take into account the $150 price of the 6800K and the $350 price of the 4770K, AMD only wins on price/performance if you intentionally buy the most expensive Haswell model available and intentionally don't overclock it while also overclocking the crap out of the 6800K.
You're looking at this from an enthusiast perspective. But if I'm building a system for someone who mostly does web surfing, Office, and occasionally some light gaming like WoW and The Sims, then an AMD APU starts to look a lot better from a price/performance perspective. You assume that as long as the performance per dollar stays high, the buyer is willing to spend as much as necessary, but that's simply not true for most users. Probably 90% of users will never even hit the maximum limit of an A10-6800K, so for these people, Haswell is overkill.
In practice, how often do people upgrade a CPU in the same mobo these days anyway? Even in server settings it's not that common; it's more common to buy a CPU/mobo package, and keep it until it's time to replace both.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Richland's GPU is at best about 20% faster than the intentionally-midrange HD-4600 GPU in Haswell.
Yes, but what OpenGL features does the Haswell APU have compared to the full GL 4.3 found in the AMD version? How good are the Intel drivers? How many textures can I bind at once? What anti-aliasing modes does it support? What are the max number of shader varying/uniform attribs? How many shader instructions can I fit within my shaders? Back in 1999, comparing raw polygon speed may have meant something, but these days it's not really as interesting as the rest of the details....
If I buy $350 cpu and a discrete GPU it will beat the hell out of 150 cpu, did I get your logic right?
I think the point is that regardless of whether you buy Intel or AMD, you'll still probably be playing new games on the lowest graphics settings available. If you actually bought a PC to play games, you'll be buying a discrete graphics card, so the on-chip GPU is just a waste of space unless the OS is able to switch back to it for the desktop to save power when you're not running games.
solder in kills MB choice so you may not be able to get a board with what you need.
Say you need a board with lots of slots but so much in the cpu sorry the broads with lot slots only come with the high end cpus.
Need a lot of cpu power but not all kinds of OC and other stuff found in higher end MB no we don't have the mid range or lower boards with fast cpus.
The new consoles also have hUMA, which is a big step forward.
Good-bye
Intel provides rather extensive technical documentation of all their products. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/CoreTechnicalResources.html is the page with basic datasheets (basic in this case meaning a couple hundred pages, their more detailed ones are a thousand). If you truly are as interested in the technical details as you pretend, then go look them up.
However if you are just throwing out technical shit in an attempt to deflect the argument then knock it off. Particularly since much of what you are asking for are the kind of the things that would be of concern for high end dedicated GPUs for particular applications, not for an integrated controller for general use.
For most people, what matters is how fast it is at running the programs they want to use, like games. All the other stuff is for, as Tam McGleish would say "Specy wanks who get excited about fuckin' GPU clock speeds and hardware tessellation and all that shite folk who are actually interested in playing games dunnie give a stuff about." It's all well and good, and matters for certain markets and applications, but those markets are generally not the ones using an integrated GPU. Most people just care how fast it runs their stuff.
It's the same story every generation.
CPUs: AMD wins in the $/performance category but loses in terms of pure performance. For 2 generations AMD won the pure performance crown as well.
Onboard (or on-die) GPUs: Intel's implementation will get you moderate FPS on games released in [PurchaseYear - 1] at a sub-native resolution. AMD's implementation will at least run medium settings around 30 fps at native resolution. AMD wins in the $/performance category AND the pure performance category.
Discrete GPUs: AMD wins in the $/performance category but loses in terms of pure performance. If you want the top of the line, you spend big money on two of Nvidia's top-end cards every year.
CPU performance has been good enough for the vast majority of tasks that it's taking a back seat for me. I still need it for video encoding since the x264 kids don't want to do an OpenCL version.
If the DivX can get their HEVC encoder running on OpenCL (or if the x264 team does the same), then I'll see no reason to go with Intel in the near future. I'd rather spend the $ difference on more SSDs.
I'm not sure where the hell you got any of your numbers from.
It's CajunArson, he's a known fanboi/troll, and he loves to reply to himself with additional info to whore +1 Informative mods.
Well there's three things:
1) Ability to upgrade
2) Ability to mix/match motherboard/CPU
3) Replacement cost if it fails out of warranty
On the other hand, if you buy a new motherboard/CPU combo you have a working old machine to sell or re-purpose, if you upgrade just the CPU is a low end CPU with no motherboard will usually be a complete write-off. The BGA package is cheaper, which might offset the lack of choice and most the functionality is now on the processor or chipset anyway. The repair cost is pretty real, but if you found a cheap motherboard or CPU to repair with in the past now you'll be looking for a cheap combo instead.
Remember that PCs overall are seeing a slump, desktops have long been in decline, non-OEM desktops are a small part of the desktop market and people are not whining about this on laptops which by far outships desktops, nor or smartphones or tablets so most of the market is already used to this being one piece of hardware. If anything maybe you'll see a small revival of the expansion card market where you get "just" the standard CPU/chipset features on the motherboard and the rest as extras on daughterboards. Overall a lot of drama and not that much reality...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Also, consider things like smaller form factor cases, or even laptops. In many cases where space in a concern, a decent mobile APU is better than a CPU+GPU.
In other situations, well, good enough is good enough. I'm building a small luggable (basically suitcase-PC) for LAN parties, to replace a shuttle which I previously used to drag around.
Some people show up with *huge* Antec cases and dual CPU,capable of playing [latest shooter] resolution at >1080P at superhigh detail, and then we end up playing Starcraft 2, DOTA, and Left 4 Dead 2, possible BF3... which worked just as well on an older dual/quad-core AMD with a cheap GPU.
An upgrade to a APU would be more than enough for most of our needs.
Here is your Radeon HD7850: http://www.gpureview.com/Radeon-HD-7850-card-678.html
It has 1024 Shader Processors ("Radeon Cores" in the summary), and (stock) is clocked at 860MHz. The 8670D included in this new APU has 384 Shader Processors, and is clocked at 844MHz. So about 2/5ths of the computing power; presuming all other factors are equal.
So while for high-end gaming, it won't quite cut it (Turning on most of the shiny and enabling it across 3 monitors with Eyefinity would make it beg) - it should be plenty powerful for light/medium gaming on a single monitor, or any light/moderate duties across multiple monitors with Eyefinity.
I have a 2yr old core i3 laptop that runs office apps just fine. It'll do high def streaming just fine too. "Regular" office stuff just isn't all that strenuous.
There are scenarios where you would see a difference, but they tend to be more technical users...video editing or transcoding, source code compilation, database indexing, numerical simulation, etc.
If you feel the 7850 is needed then these will be too slow for you.
The GPU in the A10-5800 (the one currently on the shelves) is fairly accurately labeled a 6550d and requires settings to be turned down to Low@720p/1366x768 to get acceptable performance in a game like Battlefield3. The new APU is only incrementally more powerful and faster.
What these "APU" chips (which in my mind includes Haswell Chips) are obsoleting are the lowend budget cards with 64bitGDDR5 and 128bitDDR3 that get put in a lot of office desktops.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
If only people would stop measuring their penis sizes and focus on what it's used for. Can the CPU play games? without even breaking a sweat. If you need a CPU that is 75% idle while playing a game then that's your preference though.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I got an overclocked A10 Trinity original to 4.3GHz stable at a mere 127 Fahrenheit after 1 hour of 100% usage using an aftermarket $20 cooler. The GPU registered a 6.4 graphics rating with 1600 MHz memory and 6.9 with 1866MHz memory. So the more you make it look like a graphics card with GDDR5, the more performance you got out of the graphics. So cue the angry rantings over bad graphics performance from the Kingston value line 1333 CL10 RAM users on forums.
Anyway, that gaming grade computer was $575 retail at my shop and ran most modern games at medium to high settings. It blows away a GT430 and most GT440's so that's nice. Now if someone wants a doable graphics card with good video encoding speed to boot, boom, APU. These are amazing for that! Usually you're talking about a $500 computer going to $650 minimum to bump up the power supply to support a GTX640 or 650 minimum to even call it a gaming computer. Now you just swap an i3 out for a 4-core APU and tada, basic gaming computer.
And after the APU is done processing, it says in a catchy Middle Eastern accent, "THANK YOU, COME AGAIN!"
India is not in the middle east.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.