Kaveri, Gaming and Synergies.

[R0H1T]

The thing is those people that buy laptops with an iGPU are fine with a Intel HD 2000 or worse. Using facebook, email and word doesn't require any special GPU at all. The best APUs are actually fairly expensive, about the same as an i3 with dedicated. They get better battery life but worse performance.

That is because most people don't know about AMD's strength in the iGPU dept, lack of OEM support also doesn't help them(AMD) besides its not like they'll spend 100$ more for an APU. Now wrt to prices are you talking about the mobile segment here cause AFAIK the top end A10(which btw isn't sold as a standalone solution) is cheaper than an i3+GT650M

Yes, AMD has a bad brand name. Actually here it's better for them. i guess 99% of people here would have no clue if i asked them what a company called AMD produces.

There you go, that's the root of all evil, lack of knowledge for most part is what's behind this trend !

 

[lagokc]

The thing is those people that buy laptops with an iGPU are fine with a Intel HD 2000 or worse. Using facebook, email and word doesn't require any special GPU at all. The best APUs are actually fairly expensive, about the same as an i3 with dedicated. They get better battery life but worse performance.

Yes, AMD has a bad brand name. Actually here it's better for them. i guess 99% of people here would have no clue if i asked them what a company called AMD produces.

They only see them for gaming, because HSA is still a dream of amd supporters. The CPU performance is not there. For the vast majority of users any igp is more than enough, while those that want strong graphics performance will get a discrete card anyway.

That's a problem for both AMD and Intel. For the majority of users, the next generation of ARM chips will be 'enough' for facebook and email. Given that the next gen consoles have decided APUs are the way to go and the desktop market is shrinking it makes me fear a little for the future of PC gaming. Not a lot, but a little.

 

[Enigmoid]

That is because most people don't know about AMD's strength in the iGPU dept, lack of OEM support also doesn't help them(AMD) besides its not like they'll spend 100$ more for an APU. Now wrt to prices are you talking about the mobile segment here cause AFAIK the top end A10(which btw isn't sold as a standalone solution) is cheaper than an i3+GT650M

There you go, that's the root of all evil, lack of knowledge for most part is what's behind this trend !

Well i3 + 650m blows the a10 to pieces.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834215615

$700 and you get an i7 + 640m. To say intel + nvidia can't compete pricewise is nonsense. (There is an i5 version that is even cheaper). The average a10 notebook with proper RAM (because single channel will kill trinity and cheap systems use cheap RAM) is about $500 (lowest price generally). For $200 more you get about 2.5-3x the cpu performance and about 50% more graphics performance.

Hybrid crossfire often doesn't work and is never better than a 640m in games when it does work.

 

[Piroko]

I don't believe that people care for IGP. They care for more performance. Here in germany i need to pay at least 105€ for the fastest Trinity processor.
For 10€ less i can buy a GTX650 or 7750 and get 50%+ more gpu performance.

And CPU performance is a no brainer because even AMD offered the same speed with their Athlon/Phenom line years before Trinity.

So I live in the same country and if I were able to get performance in the line of a i5 3570k coupled with a HD7770 in one neat single-fan mATX package I would seriously think about buying that as an replacement for my aging system, if only for the possibility to drop it into one of those Shuttle cases.

Granted, that's a moving target, but with current game development it's a slow moving one. As it is now we're not talking about if that'll happen, but when. And who will get there first.

 

[R0H1T]

Well i3 + 650m blows the a10 to pieces.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834215615

$700 and you get an i7 + 640m. To say intel + nvidia can't compete pricewise is nonsense. (There is an i5 version that is even cheaper). The average a10 notebook with proper RAM (because single channel will kill trinity and cheap systems use cheap RAM) is about $500 (lowest price generally). For $200 more you get about 2.5-3x the cpu performance and about 50% more graphics performance.

Hybrid crossfire often doesn't work and is never better than a 640m in games when it does work.

You've proved my point, though I'm not sure you understood what my point was ? Its just that OEM's aren't making such devices with top of the line trinity processor(standalone) in the mobile space !

The A10 on a notebook is certainly cheaper(probably around a couple of hundred bucks) than an i7+640M & consumes less power & does 90% of the work that most users would do on a portable computing device. Now as far as the performance numbers are concerned I'd like you to provide some hard evidence to back that highly exaggerated claim of ~3x performance of an A10 or else don't claim them in the first place !

As far as hybrid crossfire is concerned I haven't made a point in that regard till now !

 

[frozentundra123456]

So I live in the same country and if I were able to get performance in the line of a i5 3570k coupled with a HD7770 in one neat single-fan mATX package I would seriously think about buying that as an replacement for my aging system, if only for the possibility to drop it into one of those Shuttle cases.

Granted, that's a moving target, but with current game development it's a slow moving one. As it is now we're not talking about if that'll happen, but when. And who will get there first.

Kaveri for sure will not reach 7770 levels of graphical performance with only 512sp, and the cpu performance will be even farther away from a 3570k. More realistic at best is 7750 levels of graphical performance and i3 levels of cpu performance. Even that is stretching it, because of thermal limitations of the Apu compared to a discrete card.

Anything past that is conjecture/wishful thinking. It could happen, but I wouldnt ascribe the absolute certainty to it that you seem to. And you are also right that it is a moving target. If it is 2 or 3 years down the road, if at all, low/mid discrete cards will hopefully be more powerfu.

 

[Enigmoid]

You've proved my point, though I'm not sure you understood what my point was ? Its just that OEM's aren't making such devices with top of the line trinity processor(standalone) in the mobile space !

The A10 on a notebook is certainly cheaper(probably around a couple of hundred bucks) than an i7+640M & consumes less power & does 90% of the work that most users would do on a portable computing device. Now as far as the performance numbers are concerned I'd like you to provide some hard evidence to back that highly exaggerated claim of ~3x performance of an A10 or else don't claim them in the first place !

As far as hybrid crossfire is concerned I haven't made a point in that regard till now !

There are plenty of standalone a10 systems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834310645

$580

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-17.3-En...ows-8/21666187

$688

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...18e7eaf06b52a60a8adcc92en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$629

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...bda9906feaee0c379e90893en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$600

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...14ff58cdc74bbe70582e130en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$700

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...c6f302a2bfd6d627c8078feen02&SearchPageIndex=1

$630

i7 quad + 640m pretty much makes half of those irrelevant. The only computers that can really come close to competing in a perf/$ comparison is the lenovo or the $600 hp. Its nowhere near a couple of hundred dollars cheaper (on average seems to be around ~$70-80).

And look at this i5+ 640m for $650 (8GB ram and 750 GB HDD). This pretty much makes most trinity systems completely irrelevant.

Thats a 35 watt i7 so its not using more power than the a10 (disregarding gpu).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope/5

35 watt quad performs similarily to the sandy bridge quad there.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-4600m-trinity-piledriver,3202.html

Autodesk. We see that an a10 loses significantly to the i5 sandy. Compare it to an ivy bridge model with twice the cores, a higher frequency and a small IPC bump and you are looking at close to 2.5 times. Faster (45 watt i7) will be ~ 3 times.

Similar

Single thread performance will be almost double trinity

Edit:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V...id=1366918319&sr=1-11&keywords=acer+aspire+v3

$630 for i5 +730m.

 

[sm625]

If you really want to know how badly AMD screwed up, imagine an APU that processes frames in real time at 120 fps using just 8MB of cache. (No VRAM at all.) It is entirely possible, given smart enough engineers within a vertically integrated company. Yes, the game engine and AI and stuff like that would still use RAM, but there is no need for video memory. The game engine would store all the geometry, textures, etc. The cpu core itself would contain 64-1024 SIMD arrays. The gpu would be completely fused within the cpu, both from a hardware, and a software point of view. But they aint got none of that. AMD made a $8 billion bet, and then fell asleep at the wheel. RIP.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Edit: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V3...acer+aspire+v3 $630 for i5 +730m.

Further clarification: this is the 645M with the clocks bumped up slightly, and binned a little better for power consumption. It's more powerful than a 640M.

 

[AnandThenMan]

For the vast majority of users any igp is more than enough, while those that want strong graphics performance will get a discrete card anyway.

Then why is Intel even bothering to improve their graphics performance? I imagine you think Intel is wasting their time because only a small minority need a better GPU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Then why is Intel even bothering to improve their graphics performance? I imagine you think Intel is wasting their time because only a small minority need a better GPU.

Mainly it is directed toward mobile, I believe, including all areas: laptops/ultrabooks, tablets, phones.

I am talking about desktop here. I do see a better case for an apu in the mobile area. Otherwise, yes, on the desktop, I would much rather see intel emphasize increasing cpu performance than the igp.

 

[R0H1T]

Mainly it is directed toward mobile, I believe, including all areas: laptops/ultrabooks, tablets, phones.

I am talking about desktop here. I do see a better case for an apu in the mobile area. Otherwise, yes, on the desktop, I would much rather see intel emphasize increasing cpu performance than the igp.

But you like my other enthusiasts are only a niche & the rest of the majority of users don't feel this way otherwise how would you explain Intel pursuing this course of development ? It is indeed because the top tier(high performance) is rapidly shrinking & IGP's are still on the rise well atleast in terms of sheer volume & don't argue otherwise, not just for argument's sake, cause there is no evidence to back the contrarian view !

 

[insertcarehere]

Sorry but I'm not following you, what's the point you're trying to make ?

My point is, if you look at the laptop market now compared to say, 2 years ago, you would find that AMD had much more proportion of mobile discrete gpus in laptops before the introduction of llano/trinity apus. It may be seen that instead of taking market share from Intel/Nvidia, AMD may have actually cannibalized more of their own sales in discrete gpus with their apus.

 

[Sleepingforest]

But you like my other enthusiasts are only a niche & the rest of the majority of users don't feel this way otherwise how would you explain Intel pursuing this course of development ? It is indeed because the top tier(high performance) is rapidly shrinking & IGP's are still on the rise well atleast in terms of sheer volume & don't argue otherwise, not just for argument's sake, cause there is no evidence to back the contrarian view !

There actually is evidence to support the "contrarian" (actually, not contrarian, since it's not a stubborn minority that thinks this) view if we look at gaming. Observe: AMD APUs are all clocked between 2.1 and 3.8GHz. If we look at the Steam demographics (and pretty much every PC gamer has Steam), we see that those categories are, as a whole, down on market share and have been since November. Meanwhile, Intel CPUs--ones without a meaningfully powerful graphics core--are up.

 

[R0H1T]

My point is, if you look at the laptop market now compared to say, 2 years ago, you would find that AMD had much more proportion of mobile discrete gpus in laptops before the introduction of llano/trinity apus. It may be seen that instead of taking market share from Intel/Nvidia, AMD may have actually cannibalized more of their own sales in discrete gpus with their apus.

There is another reason for such a mess which is the fact that Intel IGP have basically killed off any low end dGPU market in this section, also AMD has somewhat retreated here as their CPU offerings are mostly underwhelming (even though the IGP is best in class) & I'm not aware of any other compelling stuff/products from them for this particular sector. They needed their CPU division to bounce back for obvious reasons but as an unintended consequence the GPU division has suffered alongside for better or worse !

There actually is evidence to support the "contrarian" (actually, not contrarian, since it's not a stubborn minority that thinks this) view if we look at gaming. Observe: AMD APUs are all clocked between 2.1 and 3.8GHz. If we look at the Steam demographics (and pretty much every PC gamer has Steam), we see that those categories are, as a whole, down on market share and have been since November. Meanwhile, Intel CPUs--ones without a meaningfully powerful graphics core--are up.

You're taking what ~5% (at best) of the total install base of x86 platform as sample size to justify your argument ? I am involved at the retail side of things & I can tell you frankly that an Intel HD4000 is more than enough for most people even on the desktop side, though dGPU costs here are proportionately much higher than the US which doesn't help their sale at all, so I can safely vouch for this data however if you believe me or not is totally upto you. Also less than 1% of the general population worldwide has access to high speed/volume network that STEAM requires so I'd suggest take these number with more than just a grain of salt

 

[R0H1T]

There are plenty of standalone a10 systems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834310645

$580

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-17.3-En...ows-8/21666187

$688

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...18e7eaf06b52a60a8adcc92en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$629

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...bda9906feaee0c379e90893en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$600

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...14ff58cdc74bbe70582e130en02&SearchPageIndex=1

$700

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...c6f302a2bfd6d627c8078feen02&SearchPageIndex=1

$630

Yeah nice, one model on newegg, walmart & less than half a dozen on bestbuy canada vs god knows how many for the i7 !

i7 quad + 640m pretty much makes half of those irrelevant. The only computers that can really come close to competing in a perf/$ comparison is the lenovo or the $600 hp. Its nowhere near a couple of hundred dollars cheaper (on average seems to be around ~$70-80).

And look at this i5+ 640m for $650 (8GB ram and 750 GB HDD). This pretty much makes most trinity systems completely irrelevant.

Thats a 35 watt i7 so its not using more power than the a10 (disregarding gpu).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope/5

I'm sure that's how you justify the ~3x performance numbers, multithreaded cinebench

Also you forgot the rest of the benchmark numbers, but hey don't let me wake you up from that dream ~

Spoiler

35 watt quad performs similarily to the sandy bridge quad there.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-4600m-trinity-piledriver,3202.html

Autodesk. We see that an a10 loses significantly to the i5 sandy. Compare it to an ivy bridge model with twice the cores, a higher frequency and a small IPC bump and you are looking at close to 2.5 times. Faster (45 watt i7) will be ~ 3 times.

Similar

Single thread performance will be almost double trinity

Edit:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V3...acer+aspire+v3
$630 for i5 +730m.

Did you miss this by any chance or as usual deliberately omitted it ~

Spoiler

One last thing, don't try to justify your false info with absurd stuff like power doesn't matter because it certainly does especially with mobile computing !

 

[frozentundra123456]

But you like my other enthusiasts are only a niche & the rest of the majority of users don't feel this way otherwise how would you explain Intel pursuing this course of development ? It is indeed because the top tier(high performance) is rapidly shrinking & IGP's are still on the rise well atleast in terms of sheer volume & don't argue otherwise, not just for argument's sake, cause there is no evidence to back the contrarian view !

Amds sales show the public's final verdict on whether their performance is a compelling purchase incentive.

 

[R0H1T]

Amds sales show the public's final verdict on whether their performance is a compelling purchase incentive.

I wasn't talking about AMD, processors with IGP's are probably the only major segment that are gaining overall in this declining market & certainly their overall market share is increasing, but if it wasn't clear enough last time I do hope this will be !

 

[Enigmoid]

Yeah nice, one model on newegg, walmart & less than half a dozen on bestbuy canada vs god knows how many for the i7 !

Thats not really the point. You said that

Its just that OEM's aren't making such devices with top of the line trinity processor(standalone) in the mobile space !

And I provided a number of examples (took only a couple of minutes) of standalone trinity system.

I'm sure that's how you justify the ~3x performance numbers, multithreaded cinebench

Also you forgot the rest of the benchmark numbers, but hey don't let me wake you up from that dream

I specifically said

about 2.5-3x the cpu performance

PC mark is NOT a cpu benchmark. It is a system benchmark (mainly CPU, GPU, HDD) that doesn't scale linearly with CPU performance. Look at the bottom of the chart. The i3 ULV sandy beats the SV i7 because it has a SSD (and most of the computers there that have SSDs have different SSDs). Despite that the ivy quad is still twice as fast. Vantage is likewise similar. Straight cpu performance wise an i7 mobile quad is 2.5-3x faster in multithreaded benchmarks. Look at the timeline and the xps 13, despite having a slower gpu it gets a higher score.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xps-one-27-touchscreen-all-in-one,3460-11.html

Look at the Clevo, it can compete very well with the desktop i5 chips (not overclocked) in the cpu tasks. Considering the much higher clocked a10-5800k can't touch the i5 and competes with the i3 (mostly very well) you can clearly see that intel's mobile flagships blow amd to pieces in cpu performance.

Did you miss this by any chance or as usual deliberately omitted it ~

Um yes, I did deliberately omit it. Why?

1) Thats sandy bridge, not ivy bridge.

2) Its harder to isolate variables on a mobile system (toms did a very good job though).

3) Looking at those graphs the two seem very comparable (and thats sandy bridge). Web browsing on battery (arguably the most important test there) is dead even. Video playback is a clear win to intel. Gaming is a clear win to amd (especially when you consider the a10 can pump out higher framerates). However, gaming is the least relevant because no one games on battery, we don't know how much clock rates will be reduced on battery (and this varies between laptops with the same cpu), and the fact that power consumption is so high a few watts doesn't really matter (outside of cooling problems and chassis size). On a typical 55 watt-hour battery, the amd system (which probably isn't running at 35 watt tdp because the rest of the system under gaming load is probably going to be using more than 9 watts--which is really good but unusual) will last 1:17 while the intel system system will last 0:59, a total difference of 18 minutes. Ideally you would want the numbers when running on battery because you don't really care about power consumption while on the plug.

4)If they are running high performance mode (which no one does when watching movies or surfing the web on battery) they can have a completely different result that what one would get on battery when the clock are lowered on power saving mode (the most important criteria because that's how most people will run their system). Run a laptop on high performance and the clocks will be the max turbo clocks, on power saver it will be the minimum idle clocks. For browsing you don't need any more power than idle speeds and so that is the power numbers you should be looking for.

One last thing, don't try to justify your false info with absurd stuff like power doesn't matter because it certainly does especially with mobile computing !

Oh power matters with mobile computing but AMD is hardly comparable to intel in cpu perf/watt. Look either at the cinebench numbers of the imprecise pc mark numbers. The 17 watt ULV sandy is giving the a10 a serious run for its money.

 

[R0H1T]

Yeah I guess I missed the part where the market, I didn;t mention it earlier so my bad, was supposed to be India not the US but even with the products you've listed it clearly shows how underwhelming the OEM support has been for AMD, what 6 models(standalone) vs probably a hundred for i7 ! As for Cinebench you've listed the mutlithreaded bench but I didn't follow up with the right set of numbers because all the benches on that page would've exceeded the 10 pics limit per post(yeah silly I know) anyways here you go & this should stop you from claiming that same thing over & over again ~

Spoiler

Oh power matters with mobile computing but AMD is hardly comparable to intel in cpu perf/watt. Look either at the cinebench numbers of the imprecise pc mark numbers. The 17 watt ULV sandy is giving the a10 a serious run for its money.

As for this I'll agree that Sandy vs A10 wasn't in the original equation but then why did you bring this up

Also richland isn't gonna be a cakewalk as most would like to believe but Kaveri is really gonna be the game changer as far as I'm concerned that'll perhaps make or break AMD in this segment once & for all !

 

[Enigmoid]

Yeah I guess I missed the part where the market, I didn;t mention it earlier so my bad, was supposed to be India not the US but even with the products you've listed it clearly shows how underwhelming the OEM support has been for AMD, what 6 models(standalone) vs probably a hundred for i7 ! As for Cinebench you've listed the mutlithreaded bench but I didn't follow up with the right set of numbers because all the benches on that page would've exceeded the 10 pics limit per post(yeah silly I know) anyways here you go & this should stop you from claiming that same thing over & over again ~

Spoiler

As for this I'll agree that Sandy vs A10 wasn't in the original equation but then why did you bring this up

Also richland isn't gonna be a cakewalk as most would like to believe but Kaveri is really gonna be the game changer as far as I'm concerned that'll perhaps make or break AMD in this segment once & for all !

Kaveri, if executed 'well' and on 'time' could be really good. I'm just concerned about those two things. The fact that amd is launching richland this late (hopefully it'll fix the turbo problems trinity has and the poorly implemented power throttling) is not good news for kaveri.

The i7 gets more support because its the top chip on the market and really the only chip suitable for high end systems. The fact that the a10 lives almost exclusively in the sub $700 market doesn't help it.

Anyway, cinebench single shows what I was saying about twice as fast for single thread (basically 1.9x).

I brought up sandy because the toms review was vs sandy for the power consumption and ivy made some significant gains in terms of perf/ watt.

The encoding is almost twice for the first pass and ~2.75x for the second pass.

I want AMD to succeed its just that they keep blundering around (they are actually doing very well from and engineering point of view considering their size and R&D budget).

 

[canadiantrex]

It wouldn't be stupid if AMD was eating Intel's face

So you're hoping AMD does bath salts? :|

 

[psoomah]

So you're hoping AMD does bath salts? :|

If that's what it takes.

 

[galego]

AMD wants to own x86 gaming across the boards. A logical synergy would be to introduce a line of killer gaming APUs concurrent with the console releases that excel on next gen games. The likeliest reason for Richland is as a stopgap APU while AMD takes some extra time to tweak Kaveri into a 400lb gaming gorilla.

AMD was perfectly positioned to rework and optimize Kaveri into an optimized gaming APU concurrent with and mindful of the finalized console architectures. Hardware, middleware, HSA/HSAIL, toolsets, game engines ... AMD is deeply involved with all aspects of next gen gaming and necessarily working with all the developers and publishers.

Why do all the current and upcoming AAA games carry the Gaming Evolved logo? - What happens if Kaveri totally blows intel out of the water on next gen games? A while back an AMD PDF showed up (rapidly pulled by AMD) that showed Kaveri with some 2014 roadmap system integration element features including context switching and extending to discrete graphics. That would make for a fully HSA capable APU + GPU system. That would make 8xxx cards fully additive to Kaveri APUs providing a gaming/value proposition neither Intel or Nvidia could hope to match. A Year from now could see AMD Kaveri as the overwhelming choice for PC gamers and AMD discrete GPUs the logical partner for those APUs.

A similar dynamic would also apply to the x86 laptop and tablet markets with Temash and Kabini.

AMD is ideally positioned to assist and urge developers to provide optimized code in their games for Kaveri/8xxx GPU combos which the developers are already doing for the consoles and in return game developers get to put a far higher quality gaming experience into the hands of entry level, budget and mid level PC buyers which will grow the AAA gaming market and increase game sales. What do the developers care if AMD takes market share from Intel AND Nvidia in the process? Kaveri would be the ideal PC hardware to port to, so the more Kaveri (and successor) APUs and GPUs AMD sells, the better for the developers. They have every reason to go with AMD, hence the overwhelming numbers that have chosen to go with AMD's Gaming Evolved vs. Nvidia's T.W.I.M.T.B.P. ... for the next several years AMD is very likely to own console and x86 gaming and the developers are in a position to understand that.

Added to the above is the AMD SKY boards and cloud gaming partnerships.

AMD has a lot of synergies and potentials in play with it's gaming focused strategy that, if well executed, could remap x86 gaming in relatively short order.

AMD building a game monopoly

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/a...monopoly-merges-pc-and-console-gaming-115142/

And AMD stock

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AMD&t=6m&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=

 

[frozentundra123456]

AMD building a game monopoly

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/a...monopoly-merges-pc-and-console-gaming-115142/

And AMD stock

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AMD&t=6m&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=

Well, zoom out that stock price graph to a full year and it doesnt look so impressive. Less than half the price of what it was a year ago while stocks in general have been going up over that period.

The article also should be more accurate and say amd is building up a "console" monopoly, not a gaming monopoly. There is a difference.