Upcoming: AMD's New Trinity APUs On Linux

[jrch2k8]

well to defend AMD a bit here, in windows is true Intel sb+ > AMD bd by a medium margin in most apps[i mean don't be ridiculous 1:15m vs 1:45m is not a huge difference] and bit more in games.

on the other hand on linux i got in the end[after some issues with amazon] an AMD FX 6100 with a nice ASUS mobo and i have to say is a beast if you take your time to tune it[for nerds at least], i can say my old phenom II is faster in ubuntu than my bulldozer but on gentoo after carefully enable every flag known to man[graphite, pgo,lto,avx,fma4,aes-ni,etc] in my gentoo install i can say is wicked fast and is almost always faster than my old phenom II 955 in ubuntu.

software that i found behave better in BD

1.) ffmpeg/mplayer <--- the load average went down drastically with my hunger games 60gb test movie and as always totally fluid, i would say my load is maybe 10% each core tops
2.) KDE/Qt <---- i still have issues with openvg/opengl renderers but everything is freaking instant with raster, i mean in kubuntu kde is fast but in my gentoo it takes longer to click than most things to open and with heavy apps like scribus/calligra the loading time was heavily reduced but ofc not instant like smaller things like gwenview or dolphin
3.) Mesa <--- well i noticed small changes in xonotic/regnum FPS especially in heavy populated area/etc. i suppose gcc is finding some low hanging fruits here and there that help to keep the gpu a bit more busy, in gallium i noticed 1 thing loop optimization fails 99% of the time[too many nested structs]
4.) opus <--- i converted my 20 GB of music[ogg/mp3] to opus and with the optimized version i reached 90x[doesnt give time] against -O2 65x <---notice i just looked the logs and find the bigger X nothing too elaborated

so if you give BD some love is a really good processor with a nice hidden potential to exploit and is cheap, sure intel could still be faster im not saying it isn't but the distance is not that far away this way.

ill post my flags later so maybe michael can use them

[ownagefool]

Kind of fishy to me that they're only allowing gaming and power consumption benchmarks. No overclocking results until next week (after the processor has launched). We know the application performance is going to suck in comparison to anything Intel.

I hate that term.

The vast majority of applications will have no discernible performance differences between any of the new CPUs, and most of them will probably greatly benefit from better I/O than adding the best Intel CPU you can get.

The Intel CPUs are better, no doubt about it, but it only comes into contention when an app that actually utilises the CPU such as photoshop, compression tools, video processing applications and of course gaming with a discrete GPU, assuming none of the above can be offloaded to the AMD GPU.

Nothing wrong buying Intel (I have one), but for your gran, the APU will probably be the best buy assuming its the cheapest system you can build.

[jrch2k8]

I hate that term.

The vast majority of applications will have no discernible performance differences between any of the new CPUs, and most of them will probably greatly benefit from better I/O than adding the best Intel CPU you can get.

The Intel CPUs are better, no doubt about it, but it only comes into contention when an app that actually utilises the CPU such as photoshop, compression tools, video processing applications and of course gaming with a discrete GPU, assuming none of the above can be offloaded to the AMD GPU.

Nothing wrong buying Intel (I have one), but for your gran, the APU will probably be the best buy assuming its the cheapest system you can build.

agreed and considering windows apps normally are poorly threaded/use Intel compilers and most lack SIMD optimizations let alone GPU offload, so is not exactly the best plataform to test this new concepts in cpu architectures

now is 110% true that Mr, joe doe won't notice the difference between a core2 and a 1000$ ivy bridge let alone trinity/ivy, but somehow seems "intel do it 0.00040055032 pico seconds faster OMG AMD sucks" is the new "it play crisis"

[CFWhitman]

We're talking about APUs here. The point of them isn't overall best CPU performance. The point is 'bang for the buck' or perhaps 'bang for the watt.' These are the comparisons that will be relevant to APU performance. I'll expect them to compare pretty favorably with Intel's integrated solutions on that basis. Now if only AMD could make the fglrx drivers not tear when playing video. I always have to set the output in movie playing apps to OpenGL as a workaround for this. It's not a terrible workaround, but some apps don't have the ability to be set to OpenGL output for video playback.

[jjmcwill2003]

I would be very interested to hear what flags, and what compiler you are using.

.....
ill post my flags later so maybe michael can use them

[psycho_driver]

It seems I touched a nerve. I'm not even anti AMD. Over the past 13 years I've probably assembled 3 times as many AMD based systems as Intel. I just find it lame that AMD is not letting review sites do a full review until after the processor launches. I guess I should have said "raw integer performance" rather than application performance. AMD processors have been gettings smoked by Intel for a while on this front and that gap is only widening.

That being said, I think Trinity is the one good thing AMD has going for it right now on the CPU front. Unfortunately due to a few factors it's going to have competition even in the segment it could potentially dominate. AMD used to be the best bang for the buck hands down within the value to mid range segment. Now there is no segment where they do not have serious competition from Intel. If you plan on adding a discrete gfx card then an i3 is obviously the better choice over anything in the AMD lineup. If you plan on running integrated graphics, but in linux, do you trust AMD drivers and support enough to provide you with a stable experience when intel is known to be very linux and open source friendly?

The only clear cut win for AMD right now is if you intend to use integrated graphics and you intend to do so in windows. The other niche that AMD wins is for budget minded overclockers. This scores high in my book. I can't stand Intel's decision to lock down budget parts and cost people upwards of potentially 30% better performance "just because".

Of course, with AMD's refusal to allow review sites to post overclocking results, my hopes aren't high at all for Trinity's headroom.

[ownagefool]

It seems I touched a nerve. I'm not even anti AMD. Over the past 13 years I've probably assembled 3 times as many AMD based systems as Intel. I just find it lame that AMD is not letting review sites do a full review until after the processor launches. I guess I should have said "raw integer performance" rather than application performance. AMD processors have been gettings smoked by Intel for a while on this front and that gap is only widening.

You realise that almost every vendor does the exact same thing? Intel has previously paid software vendors to optimise code for their CPUs, using Intel compilers to maintain a performance advantage, or even parity, white listing such software as what they deem acceptable for early benchmarking. They've even went as far as pushing superior AMD processors out of the market by pushing PC vendors into deals to not carry AMD CPUs. Its not that you're touching a nerve, its that you're being hypocritical, which is fairly anti-AMD if you're suggesting supporting the competition which is worse.

For the most part thats neither here nor there, and you should buy whats best for you, though if AMD dies because of the incessant propagating of being unworthy when in reality any morder CPU will do, it'll be a damn shame for them to dominate the market with no competition.

That being said, I think Trinity is the one good thing AMD has going for it right now on the CPU front. Unfortunately due to a few factors it's going to have competition even in the segment it could potentially dominate. AMD used to be the best bang for the buck hands down within the value to mid range segment. Now there is no segment where they do not have serious competition from Intel. If you plan on adding a discrete gfx card then an i3 is obviously the better choice over anything in the AMD lineup. If you plan on running integrated graphics, but in linux, do you trust AMD drivers and support enough to provide you with a stable experience when intel is known to be very linux and open source friendly?

You need to remember that you also have to buy that discrete GPU, you also need to buy a generally more expensive (or inferior quality) motherboard to go with all that, thus likely you're going to come in more expensive with the Intel kit. That said, if you need the processor performance, by all means get an Intel as I did, I wasn't raising objections to that, just against that silly statements that make it should like your firefox or word would be noticeably faster with the Intel.

The only clear cut win for AMD right now is if you intend to use integrated graphics and you intend to do so in windows. The other niche that AMD wins is for budget minded overclockers. This scores high in my book. I can't stand Intel's decision to lock down budget parts and cost people upwards of potentially 30% better performance "just because".

The first point isn't really a niche though, its 90% of the market. To the last point, Intel don't only lock out overclocking features, but they'll cut out CPU features such as virtualization or ECC RAM, which some of us would like to use.

Of course, with AMD's refusal to allow review sites to post overclocking results, my hopes aren't high at all for Trinity's headroom.

Again, overclocking would only matter if you're doing work that benefits from the CPU a great deal. This is a miniorty of work, and the majority of people doing real work wouln't run their CPU out of spec anyway. I do agree though, for a gamer on a budget, it would be nice to see AMD challenge.

I'm running an Intel CPU here and I'll continue to run whats best for me, I just don't particularly think anti-AMD FUD is particularly helpful. On the other hand given GPU offload applications (and better linux support, which is comming) and virtualization support, trinity might actually make a decent server cpu for the home or smaller offices and I wouldn't mind picking one up for my NAS assuming it follows through on all the particulars.

[smitty3268]

If you test the open source driver, please make sure to run at the full clock speed if it doesn't automatically do so.

[Adarion]

loosley related: AMD released the beta of their CodeXL their development kit for working code in conjunction with their GPUs, CPUs, APUs. It can be used to diagnosis and display of bottlenecks in code performance you might encounter.

http://developer.amd.com/tools/hc/Co...s/default.aspx

(read that on the German heise.de)

[psycho_driver]

You realise that almost every vendor does the exact same thing?

Judging by the reaction of techreport.com to AMD's policy for this products release, I don't think this exact sort of thing happens very often.