The AMD Trinity Review (A10-4600M): A New Hope
by Jarred Walton on May 15, 2012 12:00 AM ESTMobile Trinity Lineup
Trinity is of course coming in two flavors, just like Llano before it. On the desktop, we’ll have Virgo chips, but those are coming later this year (around Q3); right now, Trinity is only on laptops. On laptops the codename for Trinity is Comal. AMD has also dropped wattages on their mobile flavors, so where Llano saw 35W and 45W mobile parts, with Comal AMD will have 17W, 25W, and 35W parts. (The desktop Trinity chips will apparently retain their 65W and 100W targets.) There aren’t a ton of mobile Trinity chips launching today; instead, AMD has five different APUs and each one targets a distinct market segment. Here’s the quick rundown:
| AMD Trinity A-Series Fusion APUs for Notebooks | |||||
| APU Model | A10-4600M | A8-4500M | A6-4400M | A10-4655M | A6-4455M |
| “Piledriver” CPU Cores | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| CPU Clock (Base/Max) | 2.3/3.2GHz | 1.9/2.8GHz | 2.7/3.2GHz | 2.0/2.8GHz | 2.1/2.6GHz |
| L2 Cache (MB) | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| Radeon Model | HD 7660G | HD 7640G | HD 7520G | HD 7620G | HD 7500G |
| Radeon Cores | 384 | 256 | 192 | 384 | 256 |
| GPU Clock (Base/Max) | 497/686MHz | 497/655MHz | 497/686MHz | 360/497MHz | 327/424MHz |
| TDP | 35W | 35W | 35W | 25W | 17W |
| Package | FS1r2 | FS1r2 | FS1r2 | FP2 | FP2 |
| DDR3 Speeds |
DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDRU-1333 |
DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDRU-1333 |
DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDRU-1333 |
DDR3-1333 DDR3L-1333 DDRU-1066 |
DDR3-1333 DDR3L-1333 DDRU-1066 |
As a Bulldozer-derived architecture, Trinity uses CPU modules that each contain two Piledriver CPU cores with a shared FP/SSE (Floating Point) unit. From one perspective, that makes Trinity a quad-core or dual-core processor; others would argue that it’s not quite the same as a “true” quad-core setup. We’re not going to worry too much about the distinction here, though, as we’ll let the performance results tell that story. Compared to Llano’s K10-derived CPU core, clock speeds in Trinity are substantially higher—both the base and Turbo Core clocks. The top-end A10-4600M has a base clock that’s 53% higher than the 1.5GHz A8-3500M we reviewed when Llano launched, while maximum turbo speeds are up 33%. Unfortunately, while clock speeds might be substantially higher, Trinity’s Piledriver cores have substantially longer pipelines than Llano’s K10+ cores; we’ll see in the benchmarks what that means for typical performance.
The GPU side of the equation is are also substantially different from Llano. Llano used a Redwood GPU core (e.g. Radeon 5600 series) with a VLIW5 architecture (e.g. the Evergreen family of GPUs), and the various APUs had either 400, 320, or 240 Radeon cores. Trinity changes out the GPU core for a VLIW4 design (Northern Islands family of GPU cores), and this is the only time we’ve seen AMD use VLIW4 outside of the 6900 series desktop GPUs. The maximum number of Radeon cores is now 384, but we should see better efficiency out of the design, and clock speeds are substantially higher than on Llano—the mobile clocks are typically 55-60% higher. Again, how this plays out in terms of actual performance is something we’ll look at momentarily.
Looking at the complete lineup of Trinity APUs, it’s interesting to see AMD using a new A10 branding for the top models while overlapping the existing A8 and A6 brands on lower spec models. We only have the A10-4600M in for testing right now, but AMD provided some performance estimates for the various performance levels. The A10-4600M delivers 56% better graphics performance and 29% better “productivity” performance than the A8-3500M—note that we put productivity in quotes because it’s not clear if AMD is talking specifically about CPU performance or some other metric. The new A8-4500M delivers 32% faster graphics performance than the A8-3500M and 19% higher productivity, which appears to be why it gets the same “A8” classification. Finally, even the single-module/dual-core A6-4400M delivers 16% better graphics than the A8-3500M and 5% higher productivity. I suspect that the various percentages AMD lists are more of an “up to” statement as opposed to being typical performance improvements, as it seems unlikely that 192 VLIW4 cores at 686MHz could consistently outperform 400 VLIW5 cores at 444MHz.
If we consider target markets, the A10-4600M will be the fastest Trinity APU for now, and it should go into mainstream laptops that will provide a well rounded experience with the ability for moderate gaming along with any other tasks you might want to run. The A8-4500M takes a pretty major chunk out of the GPU (one third of the GPU cores are gone along with a slight drop in maximum clock speed) while maintaining roughly 80% of the CPU performance, so it can fit into slightly cheaper laptops but will likely drop gaming performance from “moderate” to “light”. The A6-4400M ends up as the extreme budget offering, with higher clocks on the CPU making up for the removal of two cores; the GPU likewise gets a slight trim relative to the A8-4500M, and we’re now down to half the graphics performance potential of the A10-4600M. All of the standard voltage parts support up to DDR3-1600 memory, with low voltage DDR3-1600 and ultra low voltage DDR3-1333 also supported.
The other two APUs are low voltage and ultra low voltage parts, which should work well in laptops like HP’s “sleekbooks”—basically, they’re for AMD-based alternatives to ultrabooks. The A10-4655M has about 87% of the CPU performance potential of the A10-4600M, with 70% of the GPU performance potential, and it can fit into a 25W TDP. The A6-4455M drops the TDP to 17W, matching Intel’s ULV parts, but again the CPU and GPU cores get cut. This time we get two Piledriver cores, 256 Radeon cores, and lowered base and maximum clock speeds. The low/ultra low voltage parts also drop support for DDR3-1600 memory, moving all RAM options down one step to DDR3-1333, low voltage DDR3-1333 and ultra low voltage DDR3-1066.
The final piece of the puzzle for any platform is the chipset. AMD is using their A70M (Hudson M3) chipset, which is the same chipset used for Llano. That’s not really a problem, though, as the chipset provides everything Trinity needs: it has support for up to six native SATA 6Gbps ports, four USB 3.0 ports (and 10 USB 2.0 ports), RAID 0/1 support, and basically everything else you need for a mainstream laptop. PCI Express support in Trinity remains at PCIe 2.0, but that’s not really a problem considering the target market. PCIe 3.0 has been shown to improve performance in some GPGPU workloads with HD 7970, but that’s a GPU that provides nearly an order of magnitude more compute power (over 7X more based on clock speeds and shader count alone).
That takes care of the overview of AMD’s Mobile Trinity lineup, and Anand has covered the architectural information, so now it’s time to meet our prototype AMD Trinity laptop.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
271 Comments
View All Comments
texasti89 - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
A10-4600M's TDP = 35W
I7-3720QM's TDP = 45W
I'm pretty sure that Intel's 22nm is more power efficient that any 32nm process available in the industry. The efficiency of Intel GPU architecture is what makes their graphic solution appears to be comparable to AMD fusion parts.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
As obviously with the biased reviewers.Yeah GJ. Compare a top of the line UBER-expensove IB quad core with the highest TDP and the highest frequency vs A10 Trinity wich costs 3times less(if not more) thant that i7 3720QM.
HD4000 performance is craptastic. Don't fool people with biased comparisons, at medidum detail and low res, cpu take advantage. For mobile each Mhz towards the 3Ghz and above improve performance.
BUT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT AN i7 IB 3x times MORE EXPENSIVE than Trinity with WAY HIGHER MHZ. It's not the pathetic HD4000 that is shining is just the cpu, you can put an HD6450M and it will appear "faster" than Trinity if you pair with a high end expensive cpu.
It's like the moronic reviews with a i7 3770K ($300+) vs A8-3870K ($120).
Everyone knows that the real competion are the dual core i5 and similar price.
And again, medium details when APU's prooved to offer high quality in most games.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/600?vs=580I've got Mainstream and Enthusiast performance results in there for the games, but there's not much point in running games at 1600x900 High settings at <30 FPS is there?
I have a whole section stating why we're including the systems we're including. Are you seriously delusional enough to suggest that we not show HD 4000 performance? There are no other HD 4000 results available for the time being, so either I use the i7-3720QM or I omit Ivy Bridge entirely. For you to imply its inclusion (with the note--italicized even!--that "these two laptops do not target the same market") is somehow biased is in fact far more bias than anything I've shown. And the pricing is twice as high for the ASUS system, not three times -- in fact I'd guess the Trinity laptop would be closer to $800 as configured, since it has Blu-ray and an SSD.
What's more, throughout the review, I've included dual-core i5-2410M results and discussed how AMD's Trinity stacks up. Judging by Sandy Bridge, dual-core Ivy Bridge will be within 10% of the quad-core scores for gaming--it's not like many games can use more than two CPUs, and so it's really just a matter of the HD 4000 clocks being slightly lower on i5 models. You fail to grasp this fact with your ranting and biased outlook, unfortunately.
In other words, I think your "moronic reviews" comment reflects your reading comprehension skills--or lack there of. Better luck next time. You might want to sign up for the remedial math and basic reading classes at the local community college.
kyuu - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
"I've got Mainstream and Enthusiast performance results in there for the games, but there's not much point in running games at 1600x900 High settings at <30 FPS is there?"Is that that the FPS you get? Did you actually test this or just assuming? Also, you can run 1600x900 without automagically turning up the detail settings to High at the same time. I, for one, am interested to see if the performance advantage increases over Llano/HD4000 when you shift more of the burden to the GPU side. At x768, it seems like the CPU would still be handling enough to make the CPU a substantial bottleneck.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
Yes, the scores in Mobile Bench are all actually tested -- including the 5 FPS average score of Trinity at 1920x1080 with 4xAA in Battlefield 3. (Yes, watching that made me feel a bit nauseous....) I could test 1600x900 at medium detail, but I don't expect any major changes from what the existing scores show.Denithor - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
Actually those facts are very interesting to some of us! It lays out what the system can/cannot handle in practical terms. Now, granted, BF3 @ 1080p/4xAA is kinda an obvious fail scenario, but 1080p medium detail might be good to know.One real question that I haven't seen mentioned yet - how come there were no Intel cpu + nVidia gpu systems included in this testing? That seemed like a no-brainer to me...
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
I thought the Acer TimelineU was a good choice. The only other recently tested laptops with Intel + NVIDIA are the Razer Blade (if people complain that N56VM is too expensive, what would they say about a $3500 laptop!?) and the Alienware M17x R3 (completely different class of hardware and again over $2000). The others like Dell XPS 15z came before we changed our game list, so we don't have some of the results for such laptops.vegemeister - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
CPU speed doesn't become significant at low resolution because the resolution is low, but because the frame rate is high. The CPU must create the scene to be rendered at much higher temporal resolution.bji - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
I think this was a well written article and that you laid out the facts about as clearly as could be laid out. I agree that Lolimaster has poor reading comprehension and needs some remedial education.raghu78 - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
OEM laptop pricing is what changes the discussion. Also the sandybridge stock clearing firesale is a crucial factor. Given that core i7 2630qm with nvidia GT 555M is at USD 800 and entry level core i5 laptops at USD 550http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
The A10 trinity laptops need to come at USD 600 with a max of 650 for the best designs, with the A8 at 500- 550 and the A6 / A4 at USD 400 - 450.Then they can clearly avoid competing core i7 with discrete GPU configs and be considered good alternatives for the low end Intel core i5, core i3 and pentium/ celeron dual cores with crappy intel HD 3000 graphics. Not to forget the the GPU drivers advantage which AMD has, very good image quality and a rapidly growing GPU accelerated apps ecosystem.