AMD Fusion Info Thread

[weinter]

It'll would be really good if AMD could make Turbo recognize when on battery and turn it off, when plugged in max Turbo would be fine.

You can always set Max Proc State Manually in Windows Vista/7.

[Helios22]

Unfortunately I think there is all this interest yet vendors are not releasing quickly enough or competitive in pricing

It seems to be AMD's fault by not delivering enough apus before Q3 but still
Where are all the 12-13" road warrior laptops announcements?
with 9 cell batteries and SSD?

Where is the big push for driver updates?
Not to mention Australia has been once again left on the backburner

[swaaye]

Yeah I am interested primarily in a 12-13" notebook with some decent gaming capabilities and Llano sounds like a good solution for that. But the 14-17" budget junk that they're putting out isn't enticing.

Regarding Turbo Core being fixed by a BIOS update - if that is even possible the fact that they let the CPUs be reviewed with such a critical feature broken puts a damper on the likelihood. Honestly I don't think it is broken. I think the mobile CPUs have so little TDP headroom that the Turbo is unable to do much at all.

[soguxu]

I think the 35W CPUs have so little TDP headroom that the Turbo is unable to do much at all.

They actually have the TDP room based on power measurements but AMD assumes you're using your laptop in Death Valley instead of properly measuring it. They are just being very conservative probably because this is their first effort.

[swaaye]

It's their second fusion APU (Brazos) and their second CPU with Turbo (X6) though. So I'm not convinced that their Turbo implementation isn't just not so great.

Consider that the top desktop Llano lacks Turbo entirely. Why not still have Turbo work in one to two core usage scenarios? Also, this is a 100W CPU. Taking that down to 1/3 is not a trivial requirement.

The leaks about Bulldozer are sounding like its Turbo mechanism is far superior. So maybe we'll have to wait for Trinity, the BD+GPU chip, for some real Turbo.

[Jayayess1190]

AMD: APUs Falling Flat, Says JMP; Pushed Out By ARMH?

JMP Securities chip analyst Alex Gauna cut his rating on shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to Market Underperform from Market Perform, writing that the company’s “Accelerated Processing Unit,” or APU, chips in the “Fusion” family, with integrated graphics circuitry, are falling flat.

“Our view stems from interviews with various computing retailers and OEMs where representatives are not only unsupportive of new APU offerings but are also discontinuing offerings, such as in the case of Dell (DELL) where we were surprised to learn we could not even purchase an AMD model on-line.”

Gauna notes reviews of the chip family are “sparse and lackluster.”

“We believe many investors have been gravitating to the name [AMD] on the view that APU offerings could close some of the gap [with Intel], when in fact it appears the reverse is happening as Intel ramps its Visibly Smart 2nd Generation Core offerings.”

“OEMs could pull the life support from AMD, as other ARM-based second source alternatives to Intel emerge with the Windows 8 transition expected to emerge around year-end. We see this leading to market share erosion in 2012 where we now see sales of $6.1 billion versus our prior expectation for $6.4 billion.”

[gdansk]

I'm so very confused by that analyst. I think it'd be more clear if he said ARM was competing with Atom and Bobcat based products, in the future. Where as Intel's "Visibly Smart*" Sandy Bridge-based offerings are expected to erode at the Llano based "Fusion" offerings.

* I nearly choked saying that.

[invisible]

It's very plain to see where that analyst's loyalties lie. He's obviously one of those corporate butt huggers that never have anything bad to say about their favorite company.

Edit: I need to say this, because it is the truth. AMD has been the underdog for quite some time, but people seem to have a short term memory. AMD was the first to release a 1GHz processor to consumers. AMD was the first to release a 64-bit processor to market. AMD was doing quite well for themselves during the Intel pentium 4 days. AMD is doing quite well this year in the graphics arena, not only with their new "APU", but also in the desktop graphics segment. AMD is also the first to integrate official USB 3.0 support into their chipsets. We wont see that from Intel until haswell, which is at a minimum of one year away from market.
Yes there were a lot of delays in bringing fusion to market, but it was a huge leap for AMD, it was no small undertaking. AMD are no slouches. Their integrated graphics in the APU chips trumps anything Intel currently has to offer, and will until haswell at the very earliest. To be perfectly honest, I'd say AMD is doing quite well for themselves.
So if anyone thinks that AMD is that crap second-rate company that can't compete with Intel, remember their past (and current) accomplishments and see what an "underdog" can do. That's all I have to say on the matter.

[Helios22]

It's very plain to see where that analyst's loyalties lie. He's obviously one of those corporate butt huggers that never have anything bad to say about their favorite company.

Edit: I need to say this, because it is the truth. AMD has been the underdog for quite some time, but people seem to have a short term memory. AMD was the first to release a 1GHz processor to consumers. AMD was the first to release a 64-bit processor to market. AMD was doing quite well for themselves during the Intel pentium 4 days. AMD is doing quite well this year in the graphics arena, not only with their new "APU", but also in the desktop graphics segment. AMD is also the first to integrate official USB 3.0 support into their chipsets. We wont see that from Intel until haswell, which is at a minimum of one year away from market.
Yes there were a lot of delays in bringing fusion to market, but it was a huge leap for AMD, it was no small undertaking. AMD are no slouches. Their integrated graphics in the APU chips trumps anything Intel currently has to offer, and will until haswell at the very earliest. To be perfectly honest, I'd say AMD is doing quite well for themselves.
So if anyone thinks that AMD is that crap second-rate company that can't compete with Intel, remember their past (and current) accomplishments and see what an "underdog" can do. That's all I have to say on the matter.

Well said.


I also think AMD needs to advertise their products more. I always and only see Intel.

[invisible]

Well said.


I also think AMD needs to advertise their products more. I always and only see Intel.

I've been seeing a lot of AMD ads on Newegg, and two boxes I recently recieved from them both had fliers advertising AMD fusion processors.