The AMD Trinity Review (A10-4600M): A New Hope
by Jarred Walton on May 15, 2012 12:00 AM ESTMeet the AMD Trinity/Comal Prototype Laptop
So I have to be honest: I’m a sucker for unique laptops. Not so much from the standpoint of actually using such laptops, but just as something cool to show my fellow computer nerds when they visit. The Trinity prototype is quite clearly a design that isn’t going to market without some changes, but unlike the Llano prototype (or the Intel SNB prototype), at least this one tries to stand out from the crowd a little bit. AMD has gone all-in on branding, with the AMD logo featured prominently on the cover, below the LCD on the bezel, and at the top-left of the keyboard. None of that makes the design any better from a functionality standpoint, but it’s still a cool tchotchke:
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The bottom of the laptop is full of the usual warning about how the laptop may not meet regulatory requirements (and if you think that sticker is bad, you should see some of the dire warnings in the documentation for another prototype I’ve got hanging about waiting for the NDA to lift!). There’s also a bold “Prototype System” label, and the Blu-ray drive is clearly of a not-for-resale nature, with a fascia that doesn’t line up with the laptop shell. None of this affects the performance of the laptop, but it’s a nice diversion for what is otherwise an unremarkable system. In terms of specifications, just for completeness’ sake here’s the full rundown of the system components:
| AMD Trinity Prototype Laptop Specifications | |
| Processor |
AMD A10-4600M (Dual-module/quad-core 2.30-3.20GHz, 4MB L2, 32nm, 35W) |
| Chipset | AMD A70M (Hudson M3) |
| Memory |
4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1600 Samsung 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 Hynix |
| Graphics |
Radeon HD 7660G (384 Radeon Cores, up to 686MHz) |
| Display |
14" WLED Matte 16:9 768p (1366x768) (AU Optronics B140XW02) |
| Storage |
128GB Samsung 830 SSD 240GB Intel 520 SSD |
| Optical Drive | Blu-ray Combo Drive (PLDS DS-6E2SH) |
| Networking |
Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek 8168/8111) 802.11n WiFi (Broadcom BCM4313 2x2:2 MIMO, 2.4GHz) Bluetooth 2.1 (Broadcom BCM2070) |
| Audio |
Stereo Speakers Headphone and microphone jacks Capable of 5.1 digital output (HDMI) |
| Battery/Power |
6-cell, 11.1V, >4.84Ah, ~56Wh 90W Max AC Adapter |
| Front Side |
WiFi On/Off Switch Headphone jack Microphone jack |
| Left Side |
2 x USB 3.0 HDMI 1.4a 1 x USB 2.0/eSATA Combo VGA Exhaust vent AC Power Connection Kensington Lock |
| Right Side |
Memory Card Reader Optical Drive 1 x USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Back Side | N/A |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
| Dimensions |
13.33" x 9.53" x 1.16-1.34" (WxDxH) (339mm x 242mm x 29.5-34.0mm) |
| Weight | 4.7 lbs (2.14kg) |
| Extras |
Webcam 86-Key keyboard Flash reader (MMC/MS/SD) |
Everything is pretty much standard fare these days, though it’s interesting that AMD chose to ship us a laptop with an SSD drive instead of a regular HDD. You’ll note that we list two SSDs as well as two sets of memory; the reason is that we performed additional performance testing with hardware that’s slightly different than AMD’s shipping configuration. We wanted to make our comparisons with other laptops more apples-to-apples, so we used the memory from the Ivy Bridge laptop we recently reviewed to see if doubling the RAM made any difference for our benchmarks—it didn’t. We also tested five different laptops with a 240GB Intel 520 SSD, just to level the playing field for tests like PCMark.
The PCMark scores for the Samsung 830 and Intel 520 are within 1% of each other, and for most systems it’s really going to come down to a question of whether you have an SSD or not rather than what specific SSD you’re using. You may (or may not) be surprised to hear that the bigger impact from the SSD came in the area of battery life. The ASUS N56VM battery life remained essentially unchanged with the Intel 520 instead of the original 750GB 7200RPM Seagate HDD, so if you expect any SSD to improve battery life you might be surprised by that result. The other surprise was just how much of a difference there was between the Samsung 830 and Intel 520 SSDs in the Trinity laptop: the Samsung 830 improved battery life by nearly 10% in two out of three tests (and by 3% in the H.264 playback test). A quick look at the idle power consumption results from our SSD Bench provides the answer, of course: the 128GB Samsung 830 uses just 0.38W at idle compared to 0.82W for the 240GB Intel 520. For a desktop, it’s hardly worth mentioning, but for laptops that nearly half a watt definitely shows up.
We could complain about the usual items like build and LCD quality—neither one is particularly impressive for this test laptop—but they really don’t matter since this isn’t a retail sample. For the intended purpose, the laptop works fine—fix the optical drive bezel and I’m sure there would even be some enthusiasts interested in owning a piece of genuine AMD laptop kit. But since that’s not going to happen, let’s move on from the laptop and run some actual performance tests.
Test Setup
Before we get to the charts, let’s quickly discuss the list of laptops we’ve selected for this review. There’s always some debate and outcry over what we include/omit in the charts, which is one of the reasons we have Mobile Bench—you can perform any head-to-head comparison there if you’d like. With well over 100 laptop results in our Mobile Bench database, sifting through the complete charts can be a bit of a nightmare, so for our articles we try to prune things down. I settled on ten laptops for the majority of our charts, with an attempt to represent most of the interesting data points.
Naturally we have AMD’s Trinity prototype (highlighted in red), and to go along with the newest and latest hardware we’ve also included results from Intel’s quad-core Ivy Bridge notebook (in dark green). It’s important to consider that these two laptops do not target the same market: we expect the ASUS N56VM to sell for around $1200 with the tested configuration, whereas AMD’s Trinity laptops will hopefully be closer to half that price—obviously, without shipping hardware we really don’t know what OEMs will end up charging for Trinity. To fill in the rest of the charts, we have two AMD Llano laptops (orange)—one the original AMD prototype, only this time equipped with an SSD, and the second a standard Toshiba Satellite P755D. We’ve also got two primary Sandy Bridge comparisons (light green): one is the prototype quad-core i7-2820QM, and the second is a retail Dell Vostro V131 with i5-2410M; the only catch is that we retested both systems with the Intel 520 SSD.
Rounding out the rest of the selections, we have three ultrabooks: the Acer TimelineU with NVIDIA GT 640M graphics, a Dell XPS 13 with i7-2637M, and a Toshiba Z830 with i3-2367M. All three of these come with SSDs, and we thought it would be interesting to show where Trinity falls relative to the low and high marks set by Sandy Bridge ultrabooks. The last laptop in the list is Sony’s VAIO SE, which has switchable graphics with AMD’s HD 6630M. Given the i7-2640M CPU, the VAIO SE should give a pretty clear look at the maximum performance you can get from the discrete Radeon HD 6630M GPU, so we’ll be able to see if/when Trinity’s HD 7660G comes out ahead of previous generation mobile GPUs. All four of these laptops are in blue—our default “don’t pay too much attention to me” color.
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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.