AMD Fusion Info Thread

[DEagleson]

@ abaddon4180

Bet your notebook with quad core AMD cpu and ATI gpu was cheaper than the Intel counterparts at same price point?

Here i could get a nice dual core Athlon II and ATI Radeon 5470m at the same price as a Intel Celeron 900 and Intel GMA 4500m.

[GENETX]

Fusion is a pretty neat concept, but AMD needs to clean up their act and come out with more powerful solutions on the mobile market.

I applaud them for being energy efficient and all, but being a generation behind behind Intel in performance is a bit discouraging to say the least.

I would love for AMD to make a comeback with solutions that will rival Intel at least to a degree (even if the Intel solutions are still say 10 to 15% faster in contrast, it would be a worthy competition for a much lower price tag).

They will. For 2011 Llano will be in the line up for notebooks. This will be a 2,3 or 4 core Fusion APU with the Phenom II Stars-core. The GPU will basically an HD5650. About the CPU itself. No, it won't be a big improvement as we already see these cores in todays products. But, Llano will have some cool extra's:

1. First of all, it will ofcourse have some improvements in the architecture.
2. Its on 32nm, so more energy efficient and maybe higher clocks will be available
3. They will feature a Turbo-boost option, just like intel.
4. It has power gating

And point 3 is where Intel actually wins. Sure, Arrandale is great and ofcourse has its benefits. But the Turbo shows the real improvement. The nasty thing is that you see the Turbo results in benchmarks. My i5 430M is an 2,53GHz CPU as it is constant in Turbo...

Power Gating makes it possible to disable parts of the chip, making it way more energy efficient. Bobcat will feature Power Gating as well.

Sure, Llano won't win from SandyBridge, but the Turbo Mode and Power Gating are great improvements. If the battery runtimes will equal Intel solutions and the Turbo Mode and clockspeeds will be comparable to the Core i5 series (i7's are rare), AMD really does a great job.

I also have a nice quote about Zacate:

Auch zu einer neuen Aussage zur Performance konnten wir AMD hinreißen. So soll die Zacate-APU merkbar schneller als ein Intel Pentium Dual-Core (Core-Basis) sein, mit Intels kommendem Sandy Bridge-Line-Up wolle man sich aber nicht messen,

IFA - Spezifikationen und Bilder von AMDs Fusion - News - Hardware-Infos

It's German where AMD said that Zacate will be faster then an Intel Pentium Dual-Core (Core architecture). I don't know what Intel Pentium they are talking about. But chances are there that they are hinting to the T4xxx (eg T4200, T4300, T4400, T4500) series rather than the 1,3GHz SU4100 culv. Based on AMD's current ulv solutions (1,7GHz, 15W TDP (Neo K665)) I give it a good shot at the T4xxx-series performance. Bobcat has 90% of the performance clockwise, while the die shrink and 50% die size would lower the energy consumption dramatically.

The HD5430, which will be the basis of the GPU consumes 7W according to notebookcheck. That probably will be tweaked as the memory controller and maybe some other logic kan be shared with the rest of the APU.

That could leave 11W-13W to spend on the clockspeecs of the bobcat cores to maintain the 18W TDP. 1300MHz is achieved by AMD today at 12W, 1700MHz at 15W and 2100 at 25W.

When looking at the 50% die size, 40nm production, I think that these cores could hit 2GHz or even more (maybe 2,4GHz). In that case, AMD's Zacate performance will be very close or on par with the Pentium Dual-Core processor.

[abaddon4180]

@ abaddon4180

Bet your notebook with quad core AMD cpu and ATI gpu was cheaper than the Intel counterparts at same price point?

Here i could get a nice dual core Athlon II and ATI Radeon 5470m at the same price as a Intel Celeron 900 and Intel GMA 4500m.

Yep. I paid $680 for it during a 25% BCB and even now the same thing goes for $730 at Newegg

[Prydeless]

I also have a nice quote about Zacate:

IFA - Spezifikationen und Bilder von AMDs Fusion - News - Hardware-Infos

It's German where AMD said that Zacate will be faster then an Intel Pentium Dual-Core (Core architecture). I don't know what Intel Pentium they are talking about. But chances are there that they are hinting to the T4xxx (eg T4200, T4300, T4400, T4500) series rather than the 1,3GHz SU4100 culv. Based on AMD's current ulv solutions (1,7GHz, 15W TDP (Neo K665)) I give it a good shot at the T4xxx-series performance. Bobcat has 90% of the performance clockwise, while the die shrink and 50% die size would lower the energy consumption dramatically.

I find it a little disheartening that they're even comparing it to Pentium dual-cores. They could at least contrast it with a comparison to Core i UM processors.

[Changturkey]

I find it a little disheartening that they're even comparing it to Pentium dual-cores. They could at least contrast it with a comparison to Core i UM processors.

Pretty sure the T series of Pentium processors are faster than the Core i ULVs

[GENETX]

Well, an i5 520UM has a pretty fast turbo. But that chip is expensive, leaving most notebooks with an i3 330UM of even a Pentium Arrandale or Celeron Arrandale without Turbo Boost. The 520UM can be faster when boosting, but the other chips won't stand a chance.

And the i3 330UM and others aren't that great. 3 hours less battery time compared to the Core 2 Duo culvs, while the performance isnt better as well...

[Althernai]

Pretty sure the T series of Pentium processors are faster than the Core i ULVs

But they won't be faster than Sandy Bridge chips with the same TDP. For the past few years, AMD has always been fighting the last-gen Intels (and generally losing, forcing it to sell at lower prices).

Incidentally, the Llano release date now appears to be "Summer 2011" -- so basically a year from now. They will begin shipment in H1 2011 and the first laptops based on these should show up around the start of the back-to-school season.

Thus, AMD's 32nm process is 18-20 months behind Intel's (Arrandale was released last January and Zacate is 40nm). AMD needs to step up the pace -- unless Intel stumbles, Llano will only be around for a few months before the release of the 22nm Ivy Bridge.

[Jayayess1190]

Llano in the flesh:

[Jayayess1190]

Videos on Ontario:

[Jayayess1190]

AMD Benchmarks Zacate APU, 2x Faster GPU Performance than Core i5