razers edge pro; perfect usecase for an amd apu?

[monstercameron]

engadget review
the razers egde is impresssive, laptop/ultrabook specs crammed into a tablet formfactor albeit a thick one with massive vents. The specs are healthy ivy i5/i7 with a nvidia gt640m le, meaning medium to high quality gaming -for 768p reso- is possible. Their are a few things that I feel detract from it: the battery, weight, size and ultimately the price.

When I think about it this kinda situation would have been better served by amd's more integrated solution. The i5/i7 is a 17W part, the gt640m le is a 20W part, not to mention the extra 2gb gddr3 just for the gpu among other pieces that support the gpu. And I know there is optimus so the nv gpu isnt always running and falls back to the capable hd4000 but I am sure that most will agree with me that multichips solutions arent the greatest for small formfactor and portable devices.

The way I see it an amd a6-4455m 17W, amd a8-4555m 19W, a10-4655m 25W or even the big daddy a10-4600m 35W would have been cheaper, have longer battery, be smaller, produce less heat and play most every game medium at 768p.

If I missed anything, it was more ignorance than fanboism but let me know what you think, also I would like to know what role/niche to you think apus address(I know it has been discussed before, humor me)

 

[NTMBK]

Ideal use case for both an AMD APU, and for a Haswell with GT3e graphics.

 

[monstercameron]

Ideal use case for both an AMD APU, and for a Haswell with GT3e graphics.

Don't Mean to be combative but Amds apus are available now, haswell with that gpu not so much and we havent got benchmarks on it yet. It also seems gt3e will be available in 47W packages and not ulv 17W

 

[Torn Mind]

I would suspect that superior performance is driving the Razer's choice in components.

The difference in graphics processing power between APU levels is substantial in of itself. An A6 ULV part only has 256 shader cores compared to the 384 in an A10 or A8 part. There is a smaller difference between the A8 and A10 parts in their clockspeeds Not to mention to get the most out of a Trinity part, you must have faster clocked RAM.

But the main reason is that gamers would sacrifice a little more battery life and price to get more performance. An APU would hit the "limit" in demanding setting sooner than with an Ivy Bridge part and the GT640M LE because both its CPU and graphics cores are slower. .
The discrete Nvidia GPU should level the APU graphics better than a bulldozer.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

But the main reason is that gamers would sacrifice a little more battery life and price to get more performance.

Unfortunately, you're sacrificing a LOT more battery life, so an APU does make more sense.

With only two hours of usable battery life in a best-case scenario, the Edge fails to meet the needs of a mobile gaming device

 

[frozentundra123456]

Unfortunately, you're sacrificing a LOT more battery life, so an APU does make more sense.

Then why didnt they use one?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Don't Mean to be combative but Amds apus are available now, haswell with that gpu not so much and we havent got benchmarks on it yet. It also seems gt3e will be available in 47W packages and not ulv 17W

Remember AMDs mobile chips, and specially very low power is a whole other ball game GFX wise. The HD4000 is quite competitive there to say it mildly.

 

[ShadowVVL]

doesn't look like it would be comfortable to play.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Then why didnt they use one?

Marketing. Sacrificing usability for performance.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Marketing. Sacrificing usability for performance.

I don't think they did sacrifice usability for performance. My definition of usability, coming from a desktop, is "okay graphics with any portability." In other words, performance is usability, and battery life takes a second seat. 2-hour battery life coupled with low/medium graphics at 60 frames per second is superior, in my eyes, to a four hour battery life with only low graphics at 30-40 frames per second.

It definitely looks bad coming from a tablet: more expensive, much, much lower battery life, and because the games aren't optimized, not even consistently good performance. But from a desktop user's or gaming laptop user's prespective, it isn't too bad.

 

[Enigmoid]

Well, look at it this way, a10-4600m is 35 watts. i5 ULV +640m LE is 37 watts. Same power consumption but the ULV + 640m LE is much more powerful (at the cost of being more expensive).

 

[frozentundra123456]

I don't think they did sacrifice usability for performance. My definition of usability, coming from a desktop, is "okay graphics with any portability." In other words, performance is usability, and battery life takes a second seat. 2-hour battery life coupled with low/medium graphics at 60 frames per second is superior, in my eyes, to a four hour battery life with only low graphics at 30-40 frames per second.

It definitely looks bad coming from a tablet: more expensive, much, much lower battery life, and because the games aren't optimized, not even consistently good performance. But from a desktop user's or gaming laptop user's prespective, it isn't too bad.

Agreed. Obviously the makers didn't think igpu performance was sufficient. Seems some want to promote a apu for every situation. Battery life doesn't really matter if the performance isn't there first.

 

[monstercameron]

here are some basic metrics for some perspective. mostly sourced off wikipedia so salt and grains and whatever.

core i7-3517u/hd4000 is ~200 gflops(according to intel pdf) | passmark 3814 | 3dmark 06 4650 | 17W

the gt640m le is ~390 gflops | 3dmark 06 8801| 20W

amd a6-4455m is ~167 gflops | passmark 1255 | 3dmark 06 4427| 17W

amd a8-4555m is ~245 gflops | passmark 2494 | 3dmark 06 3403?| 19W

amd a10-4655m is ~275 gflops | passmark 2632 | 3dmark 06 6067| 25W

amd a10-4600m is ~380 gflops | passmark 3189 | 3dmark 06 7317| 35W

as you can the the i7ulv&gt640mle isnt all that better, it compares pretty well to the a10 line and the a10-4600m is very competitive, helluva lot cheaper and easier system to build.

crysis 2 gt640m le http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujbQqDwyQV8

crysis 2 a10-4600m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEgh4ADFkYQ

edit added 3dmark 06 avg scores and links to crysis 2 videos.

 

[Sleepingforest]

The GFLOP argument is nice, but if you look at actual gaming performance, you'll see that the 640m pushes at least 20% more frames, usually more like 50-100% more (with the exception of CPU-bound Civ V). This bonus is usually from a less-than stellar 30-40 frames per second and into the standard 60+ range.

I'd pay both extra in money and in battery life to get 50-100% more performance.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Gflops is abit of a joke to determine gaming performance. As we already have seen with nVidia vs AMD previously.

 

[monstercameron]

Gflops is abit of a joke to determine gaming performance. As we already have seen with nVidia vs AMD previously.

added 3dmark 06 scores
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2310880#13

 

[Sleepingforest]

Why don't we look at actual frames per second rather than synthetic benchmark numbers?

 

[monstercameron]

I fully understand that the intel&nv combo is faster than any mobile amd apu available, but:

is it worth the extra power/lower battery life?
can you really appreciate fine detail on a ~10" display(I know you can hook it up to a tv but that kinda negates the mobile aspect)?
is it worth the extra money for the intel processor(~$350+ when an apu is probably less than $100)?
is it worth the board complexity for the nvidai gpu for a ~20-60% perf advantage(40fps to 80fps on a device with a panel that can only refresh at 60Hz)?

 

[NTMBK]

Don't Mean to be combative but Amds apus are available now, haswell with that gpu not so much and we havent got benchmarks on it yet. It also seems gt3e will be available in 47W packages and not ulv 17W

I'm fairly confident that Haswell GT3e will impress. We know that it's the same shader design as Ivy Bridge, we know that it's got 2.5x the number of them (40 vs 16), and we know that it's getting eDRAM to fight the bandwidth issues that would have otherwise crippled it. Ivy Bridge is already pretty close to playable performance, and a 2.5x boost will make all the difference. As for wattage- 47W is still a nice number compared to a current Ivy Bridge quad core plus a discrete GPU, which is what system builders like Razer are plumping for at the moment.

Of course, the elephant in the room is cost. Rumour is Intel is asking for seriously big bucks for Haswell GT3e, i.e. more than it would cost to integrate a superior discrete GPU. But we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I fully understand that the intel&nv combo is faster than any mobile amd apu available, but:

is it worth the extra power/lower battery life?
can you really appreciate fine detail on a ~10" display(I know you can hook it up to a tv but that kinda negates the mobile aspect)?
is it worth the extra money for the intel processor(~$350+ when an apu is probably less than $100)?
is it worth the board complexity for the nvidai gpu for a ~20-60% perf advantage(40fps to 80fps on a device with a panel that can only refresh at 60Hz)?

If you look at the vast majority of mobile PC gaming options, you will seem a common thread: low battery life and strong performance. This is the choice that the market has made, so I would say that for most people, the tradeoff is worthwhile.

It's not about detail--in this case, it's about framerates. I personally can easily notice the difference between 30 frames per second and 60 frames per second. Really, it doesn't even matter that the games are capped at 60 frames per second, because even with that cap in place, the 640m still beats the APU by 20-50% in non-CPU bound games, which again, is noticeable improvement for most gamers as it is often a jump from 40-60 frames per second. Additionally, the numbers are averages--thus the higher, even above 60, the better, as it gives some cushion during more GPU-intensive moments. The extra cushion also means you'd be able to bump the details up in some games.

Is it worth the extra money? Well, it is to some. I cannot answer that question for every person here. I'm sure that some would rather get a Trinity-based tablet at say $700 versus the current tablet at $1000, because they are willing to take 20-40 frames per second on low. I personally can't stand it--I'd rather have nothing at all, because 20-40 frames per second starts to look like a choppy slideshow to me.

As for your final question: I have no idea how board complexity matters to the end-consumer. If you can give a concrete reason that board complexity matters in a tablet to the average consumer, I'll give more of an analysis, but it doesn't seem to matter much.

 

[Jovec]

I fully understand that the intel&nv combo is faster than any mobile amd apu available, but:

is it worth the extra power/lower battery life?
can you really appreciate fine detail on a ~10" display(I know you can hook it up to a tv but that kinda negates the mobile aspect)?
is it worth the extra money for the intel processor(~$350+ when an apu is probably less than $100)?
is it worth the board complexity for the nvidai gpu for a ~20-60% perf advantage(40fps to 80fps on a device with a panel that can only refresh at 60Hz)?

The power advantage doesn't seem to be there either. Trinity comes in lower than Llano, which itself is lower than the Razor.

from:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6871/a-comment-on-pc-gaming-battery-life

 

[monstercameron]

The power advantage doesn't seem to be there either. Trinity comes in lower than Llano, which itself is lower than the Razor.

from:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6871/a-comment-on-pc-gaming-battery-life

you might be right if if we only compare the a10-4600m(closest match) but if we go down 1 step to the a10-4655m 25W part, would lose 20-80% performance but better battery life.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I honestly think that you're getting pretty desperate once you're talking about 20-80% performance hits in exchange for a 10% battery boost, unless you happen to highly prioritize battery life over everything.

 

[monstercameron]

I honestly think that you're getting pretty desperate once you're talking about 20-80% performance hits in exchange for a 10% battery boost, unless you happen to highly prioritize battery life over everything.

it is strange that you think a "mobile" device doesnt need decent battery life. and 2hrs with a huge 80WHr battery is horrendous...what I am debating is the compromise between performance and battery life.

 

[AnonymouseUser]