Who Controls the User Experience? AMD’s Carrizo Thoroughly Tested
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2016 8:00 AM EST#5 The Lenovo Y700 (Carrizo, FX-8800P + R9 385MX)
The Y700 pre-release unit we had access to didn't have a battery, or a wireless module. But it did have a ‘neat’ trick compared to the other APUs in this test, in that it is the 35W model of the AMD FX-8800P, which adds a bit more frequency in exchange for some additional power draw. Moving to 35W affords some benefits we’ll go into in a bit, although for some odd reason Lenovo didn’t take them here.
| Lenovo Y700 (Carrizo) Specifications | |
| Size and Resolution | 15.6-inch, 1920x1080 IPS |
| Processor | AMD FX-8800P (35W) Dual module, 4 threads 2.1 GHz Base Frequency 3.4 GHz Turbo Frequency |
| Graphics | Integrated R7 512 Shader Cores 800 MHz maximum frequency GCN 1.2 AMD R9 385MX Discrete GPU with 2GB GDDR5 512 Shader Cores 900-1000 MHz Core, 1200 MHz Memory GCN 1.2 Dual Graphics Not Available in Drivers |
| TDP | Chassis: 15W CPU: 35W |
| Memory | 16 GB in Single Channel Operation 2 x 8GB at DDR3L-1600 C11 Single Channel ONLY |
| Storage | 256GB Sandisk |
| Battery Size | None in our model 80Wh with 4 cell Li-ion design otherwise |
| WiFi | None in our model 802.11ac M.2 otherwise |
| Optical Drive | Optional |
| Dimensions | 15.24 x 10.91 x 1.02-inch 38.7 x 27.7 x 2.60 cm |
| Weight | 5.72 lbs 2.6 kg |
| Webcam | 1280x720 with array microphones |
| Ports | Memory Card Reader HDMI 2 x USB 3.0 + 1 x USB 2.0 Ethernet |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Home |
| Website Link | link |
The Y700 here is paired with a discrete graphics card, AMD's Radeon R9 385MX, which offers 512 streaming processors. The FX-8800P processor also has R7 graphics and 512 SPs at 800 MHz, and in theory one might think that these two automatically work with each other in dual graphics mode – but this design is not set up that way. So for this design, the user is paying for almost the same graphics design twice (though the discrete card has access to much faster memory), but one is essentially disabled or only comes on when the discrete card is shut off. Arguably one might postulate that the active idle power of the integrated graphics is lower than that of the discrete, but it seems expensive just for the sake of a few hundred mW. There could be another reason in display support, but it still seems odd. The user can however manually choose to invoke whichever graphics solution they wish from the Catalyst menu.
Another element of the design worth questioning is the memory. Carrizo as a platform does support dual channel memory, but it shares a design structure with Carrizo-L (Puma+) which is single channel only. As a result, a number of OEMs have designed one motherboard for both platforms, which means all Carrizo under that design are limited to single channel operation, reducing performance for the sake of some PCB design. This is an aspect we’ll get on to later, but it means that the Y700 has access to 16GB of DDR3L-1600 CAS 11 but in single channel mode. The fact that it is DDR3L-1600, even though Carrizo supports DDR3-2133, is another angle to tackle on how such a design can have performance issues.
For the other specifications, the Y700 gets a 1920x1080 IPS screen, a 256 GB Sandisk SSD and some Wi-Fi in an M.2 form factor. I say ‘some’ Wi-Fi, purely because our pre-production unit didn’t have any.
This low quality image of the insides shows the dual fan design for the 35W APU and discrete graphics, and we can confirm we didn’t see any throttling during our testing. The two memory modules, despite being part of a single channel design, sit on the right below the slim hard drive which we replaced with the 256 GB Sandisk SSD. There is also an M.2 slot next to this, though I believe this is SATA only, supporting form factors up to 2280.
Next to the M.2 slot is the bass speaker. The Y700 has an extra vent at the bottom for better sound, rather than muffled in a chassis:
The keyboard we had in our model was a mix English/Japanese variant, though the red backlight was easy to see through.
Brett actually has the Skylake variant in for testing, so I'll let him mull over the design a bit more, but on the sides:
The left gets a charging point, a USB 3.0 port, a multi card reader and a headphone jack. On the right are two more USB ports, a HDMI port, an expanding Ethernet port and a Kensington Lock hole.
Y700 Specific Testing
In the case of the display, out of those we tested it actually comes best in terms of color accuracy. While I don’t have a spectrophotometer to show you exactly in numbers, the colorimeter graph does the business:
Here red and blue are pretty much dead on accurate, but green is straying too low. The panel gives a good 1032 contrast ratio, with 0.216 nits at low brightness and 223 nits at peak. The peak isn’t very high, which might be a bit concerning in bright lights.
One of the downsides to these configurable TDP processors is that the ‘max TDP’ string doesn’t change. It is up to the OEM to do the firmware adjustments, but chances are they won’t open it up to regular users in case someone wants to put 35W through a chassis only designed to handle 15W. The way to tell is in the peak frequencies, and this one goes to eleven 3.4 GHz.
For the discrete GPU, we get 2 GB of dedicated memory and, thanks to the use of GDDR5, much greater bandwidth than just relying on DDR3 alone. The ‘CrossFire available’ message means that GPU-Z recognizes that the CPU and GPU can be both put to work together, but for whatever reason the drivers did not allow it when we tested.
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MonkeyPaw - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
The cat cores exist to compete with Atom-level SOCs. Intel takes the Atom design from phones and tablets all the way up to Celeron and Pentium laptops. It makes some business sense due to low cost chips, but if the OEM puts them in a design and asks too much of the SOC, then there you have a bad experience. Such SOCs should not be found in anything bigger than a $300 11" notebook. For 13" and up, the bigger cores should be employed.michael2k - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
The cat cores can't compete with Atom level SoC because they don't operate at low enough power levels (ie, 2W to 6W). The cat cores may have been designed to compete with Atom performance and Atom priced parts, but they were poorly suited for mobile designs at launch.Intel999 - Sunday, February 7, 2016 - link
AMD hasn't updated the cat cores in over three years! It is a dead channel to them. They had a bit of a problem competing in the tablet market against a competitor that was willing to dump over $4 billion pushing inferior bay trail chips. Take a plane to China and you can still find a lot of those Bay Trail chips sitting in warehouses as once users had the misfortune of using tablets being run by them the reviews destroyed any chance that those tablets ever had at being sales successes.AMD was forced to stop funding R&D on cat cores as they were in no position to be selling them at negative $5.
In the time that AMD has stopped development on the cat cores Intel has improved their low end offerings, but still not enough to compete with ARM offerings that have improved as well. And now tablets are dropping at similar rates to laptops so it is actually a good thing for AMD that they suspended research on the cat cores. Sorta dodged a bullet.
At least they still get decent volume out of them through Sony and Microsoft gaming platforms.
testbug00 - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
If the cat cores didn't exist AMD likely would have died as we know it a few years ago.
BillyONeal - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
The "cat cores" are why AMD is not yet bankrupt; it let them get design wins in the PS4 and XBox One which kept the company afloat.mrdude - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
YoY Q4 earnings showed a 42% decline in revenue for computing and graphics with less than 2bn in revenue for full-year 2015 and $502m operating loss. You couldn't be more correct. The console wins aren't just keeping the company afloat, they practically define it entirely.Lolimaster - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
In that case simply remove the OEM's altogether and sell it at AMD's store or selected physical/online stores.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
10/10 would pay for an "AMD" branded laptop that does APUs correctly.Hrobertgar - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Since you are talking about use experience, AMD is not the only company with a bad user experience. I purchased an Alienware 15" R2 laptop on cyber Monday and it is horrible, and support is horrible. I compare my user experience to a Commodore 64 using a Cassette drive - its that bad (I suspect you are old enough to appreciate cassette drives). It arrived in a non-bootable configuration. It cannot stream Netflix to my 2005 Sony over an HDMI cable unless I use Chrome - took Netflix help to solve that (I took a cell-phone pic of a single Edge browser straddling the two monitors - the native monitor half streaming video and the Sony half dark after passing over the hdmi cable. It only occurs with Netflix). On 50% of bootups it gives me a memory change error despite even the battery being screwed in. On 10% of bootups it fails to recognize the HDD. Once it refused to shutdown and required holding the power button for 10 secs. Lately it claims the power brick is incompatible on about 10% of bootups. Yes, I downloaded all latest drives, bios, chipset, etc. Customer Service has hanged up on me once, deleted my review once, and repeatedly asked for my service tag after I already gave it to them. Some of the Netflix issue is probably Micorsoft's issue - certainly MS App was an epic fail, but much of even that must be Dell's issue. I realize it is probably difficult to spot many of these things given the timeframe of the testing you do, and the Netflix issue in particular is bizarre. I am starting to think a Lenovo might not be so bad.tynopik - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
"put of their hands"