[Kaotik]

Not to mention that these aren't really reviews, but previews

[Alexko]

Right, and the NDA over everything else will be lifted when the products are actually launched, so it's not as if AMD were trying to trick people into buying them, they can't be bought yet (except for some pre-orders, perhaps).

They're just trying to highlight their strong points, that seems fine to me.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by Kaotik

Not to mention that these aren't really reviews, but previews

I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that if somebody else had done this there'd have been hell in a hand-basket. Why AMD gets a free pass for doing something dumb beats me (there are about a trillion ways in which this could have been handled better, one of the main ones being not leaving a burning trail leading right back to themselves). Also, if this is the game they'll play going forward, they definitely won't win - NV pulls this off with class, and you never hear about it overtly, Intel doesn't need it, they have far better knobs to tweak.

[ninelven]

Yeah, I was reading the Anandtech review and wondered were the H2H gaming comparisons with discrete cards were. I'm surprised Anand gave them a pass on that to be honest...

It also strikes me as unnecessary. The numbers speak for themselves, and anyone who is interested enough in the topic to be reading the reviews in the first place is going to be able to put 2+2 together.

IOW, the vast majority people who would be manipulated by this tactic are not going to be reading the reviews in the first place.

If no-gaming: Intel
If gaming & discrete-gpu: Intel
If gaming & no-discrete-gpu: AMD

That seems to be the result for now anyway. I think AMD does have a good opportunity if they can get their APU performance above intel + entry level discrete cards. Trinity is OK, just not very compelling. With 512 SPs, they probably could have beat an i3 + 640 and commanded a premium for the chip.

Overall, it just leaves me looking forward to Kaveri more than anything else, which is probably not they had in mind...

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by ninelven

Yeah, I was reading the Anandtech review and wondered were the H2H gaming comparisons with discrete cards were. I'm surprised Anand gave them a pass on that to be honest...

Huh? There's several discrete cards from both nVidia and AMD in the Anand preview/review/whatever in the gaming tests

[ninelven]

Yes there are discrete cards there, but no H2H CPU comparison. There is no A10 + 640 vs i3/i5 + 640 comparison to make.

[Alexko]

VR-Zone did that: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-trin...e/17272-1.html

After all, AMD just said "gaming benchmarks" they didn't say reviewers were restricted to the integrated graphics. I guess most just assumed they were.

Anyway, it's not super-thorough, but it looks like some games are almost as fast on Trinity as they are on Ivy Bridge, while others present serious framerate nosedives. Then again, the top SKU is probably going to end up cheaper than the i5-3470 to which it's being compared.

[ninelven]

Yeah, it is close in GPU limited scenarios which is what you would expect. Looks like the quad core Ivy Bridge has ~50 to 70% performance advantage in non-gpu limited situations, which is not as bad as I was expecting.

But... if the A10 is going to retail for ~$150 and the i5 gets you that much more performance for a 33% cost increase ($199), then the intel chip is still going to be the better overall value. I have a feeling the pure CPU comparisons are not going to be kind...

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by ninelven

Yeah, it is close in GPU limited scenarios which is what you would expect. Looks like the quad core Ivy Bridge has ~50 to 70% performance advantage in non-gpu limited situations, which is not as bad as I was expecting.

But... if the A10 is going to retail for ~$150 and the i5 gets you that much more performance for a 33% cost increase ($199), then the intel chip is still going to be the better overall value. I have a feeling the pure CPU comparisons are not going to be kind...

That's true of the i3 processors too though.

[ninelven]

Originally Posted by cal_guy

That's true of the i3 processors too though.

Yes... the i3 is a dual core CPU. That Intel is able to charge what they do for them says it all really. I wonder how it will compare vs the A10?

[cal_guy]

Tomshardware has CPU benchmarks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-apu,3241.html

[swaaye]

I think AMD really wanted these (p)reviews to only display their chip's strength as a low end gaming solution. They are better than the Intel IGP, and these APUs are GPU limited in games so the CPU isn't closely examined.

[Acert93]

What will it take for AMD to have a serious turn around? What markets need they target? What do they need to drop? What partnerships do they need to foster? What emerging markets are they primed to leap on, if not turn into a profitable business? Worse case, what kind of buyout do they need from a different player to become relevant long into the future?

I was never an "AMD fanboy" but I have purchased some AMD hardware in the past and quite like the ATI products I have had (not to mention the Flipper and Xenos GPUs in my consoles) so from a nostalgia perspective and someone who likes the GPU division the swift spiral AMD is on is kind of sad. I would like to see them succeed because some of their ideas, like Fusion, are nice concepts. It just seems they have been slow to execute and don't have the market clout to make a big splash with some of their advantages (e.g. what if 2 years ago they were pushing out HSA with beefier GPUs).

I dunno, the thread is depressing! Especially since the folks at AMD (just like those at Intel and NV I have talked with) are sincerely nice people and I wish them all the best.

[nutball]

Originally Posted by Acert93

What will it take for AMD to have a serious turn around?

Same as it's always been - they need an mis-step from Intel. If Intel are executing properly and not playing silly buggers, AMD will only ever get the scraps from the table.

[eastmen]

What will it take for AMD to have a serious turn around?

I think the xbox and ps4 could turn it around , we have to wait and see if either of them are really using amd cpus. However if they are then amd should be able to get alot of optimised software for their hardware and it could really help them out.

Other than that , I don't think its the chip designs that are the problem but the fabs . They are over a generation behind intel on that front and i'm not suer what they can do. Trinity is a great all around chip , I have no doubt in my mind that on 22nm it would be the victor over ivybridge

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by eastmen

I think the xbox and ps4 could turn it around , we have to wait and see if either of them are really using amd cpus. However if they are then amd should be able to get alot of optimised software for their hardware and it could really help them out.

Other than that , I don't think its the chip designs that are the problem but the fabs . They are over a generation behind intel on that front and i'm not suer what they can do. Trinity is a great all around chip , I have no doubt in my mind that on 22nm it would be the victor over ivybridge

On 22nm, Trinity could afford a much better GPU, but it wouldn't do wonders for its CPU, just a 15~25% clock boost, maybe. It wouldn't help with memory bandwidth either.

[ninelven]

Well, Trinity has appeared at newegg. $129 for the A10, which is fairly competitive. No idea why they were so secretive about it.

[Raqia]

If AMD is smart, they're not going to use Jim Keller to improve Steamroller, they'll use him to improve Jaguar. The contraction in the PC market seems to point to this as being the better move.

[3dilettante]

Keller is heading the group, so he's not playing the role of a widget that gets applied to a specific project. His most recent experience seems to be a best fit for Jaguar's successors, but the products AMD has in the 20-130 W realm are in need of attention and direction as well.
It doesn't appear AMD is situated such that success in Jaguar's successors is enough.

[Alexko]

And the PC market is not contracting. Plus, the lucrative server market, which mostly relies on relatively high-power designs, is still growing quite healthily.

[Raqia]

It may not be contracting in absolute terms, but it seems like it will be contracting in its revenue share of total computing devices, especially consumer devices. Trends seem to point to this:

http://www.informationweek.com/hardw...ally/240008326

AMD is serious about servers as evidenced by its purchase of SeaMicro, but consumer devices are a still a very important part of both Intel and AMD's revenues. Yes, I was referring to Jim Keller's experience from designing the A6 for Apple.

[eastmen]

i miss high end amd parts. Why can't we get a newer cpu without the gpu in the high end desktop area. I'd love to replace my bulldozer with a much cooler trinity that is clocked higher and doesn't have a gpu wasting space.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by Raqia

It may not be contracting in absolute terms, but it seems like it will be contracting in its revenue share of total computing devices, especially consumer devices. Trends seem to point to this:

http://www.informationweek.com/hardw...ally/240008326

AMD is serious about servers as evidenced by its purchase of SeaMicro, but consumer devices are a still a very important part of both Intel and AMD's revenues. Yes, I was referring to Jim Keller's experience from designing the A6 for Apple.

Let's see what those figures look like at the end of the year, after the release of Windows 8 and Christmas.

Originally Posted by eastmen

i miss high end amd parts. Why can't we get a newer cpu without the gpu in the high end desktop area. I'd love to replace my bulldozer with a much cooler trinity that is clocked higher and doesn't have a gpu wasting space.

It's called Vishera and it's coming this month. I don't know if it's really going to be a meaningful upgrade over Bulldozer, but I guess if you can sell the latter, you might get a nice performance boost for a fairly small amount of money.

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by Raqia

It may not be contracting in absolute terms, but it seems like it will be contracting in its revenue share of total computing devices, especially consumer devices. Trends seem to point to this:

http://www.informationweek.com/hardw...ally/240008326

AMD is serious about servers as evidenced by its purchase of SeaMicro, but consumer devices are a still a very important part of both Intel and AMD's revenues. Yes, I was referring to Jim Keller's experience from designing the A6 for Apple.

Ultrabooks aren't representative of the PC market as a whole. Otherwise in the past one could have said the PC market was rapidly dwindling due to the lackluster sales of Windows slate/tablet devices.

The PC market is still in growth mode. Overall share will obviously decrease depending on what other devices you add to it.

For example using completely made up numbers with no relevance to reality...

If PC's sold 900 million units while Apple computers sold 100 million units then PC's would have 90% share. Throw in mobile devices into the equation at say 200 million units and suddenly the PC share is only 75%.

Share is interesting but rather meaningless is determining whether a market sector is growing or shrinking.

Let's take that above example again and say the year after PC sales rise to 1.2 billion. Apple computers rise to 150 million. Mobile devices rise to 500 million.

Growth in all segments, but PC shares dropped further to ~65% despite strong growth.

Regards,
SB

[Ethatron]

Yeah, it's like saying the chinese population shrinks because of a baby-wonder in India, which is ridiculous. And it'd be rather pointless to make a growth program to secure your relative rank - there is really nothing constructive and meaningfull you can do to "stop" relative contraction - and I'm not sure there exist a sane motivation to do so (just wanting to be the biggest seller in X belongs into my quote category).