AMD announcing FX and A-Series APUs in June, performance estimates leaked

[Jos]

We had already heard whispers about AMD's plans to roll out Llano and Bulldozer by mid-2011 but today things got a bit more specific thanks to an internal schedule leaked to DonanimHaber. According to the slides, the APU salvo begins at Computex on June 1 with the announcement of the AMD A-Series "Sabine" notebook platform, as well as the AMD 900 Series chipset and the Vision 2011 branding under which the platform will be pushed.

On June 7, at the E3 conference, AMD plans to reveal the FX-Series brand and logo and the AM3+ platform. Following that the Sabine platform will actually launch in Asia on June 12 as AMD kicks off the Fusion Developer Summit.

Llano will then be formally announced for the rest of the world on June 14 at AMD's 2011 Client Launch Event. Both the Sabine (notebook) and Lynx (desktop) platforms for the A-Series will be announced at that date but wont see a release until the end of the month on June 26. Unfortunately, there's no mention of when the FX-Series and Lynx platform will launch but judging by the packed calendar and their announcement in June it probably wont be long after.

According to previous leaks the desktop version of Llano will debut on July 20 with five A-series models, sporting two or four x86 cores, integrated graphics with 160, 320 or 400 Stream Processors and 100W or 65W TDP ratings. The FX series should follow shortly and is expected to comprise eight models, though not all of them will be available at launch. These chips will pack 4, 6 or 8 cores, up to 8MB of L3 cache, and have a TDP of up to 125W.

June and July will undoubtedly be two very important months for AMD as it finally brings Fusion to its mainstream and high-end offerings. According to the company's own in-house performance projections -- if leaked slides are to be believed -- the A-Series is still behind its Sandy Bridge counterparts on the CPU front, but it makes up the difference in graphics performance. Meanwhile, AMD's 8-core FX series chip is said to match the Core i7 2600k in CPU performance.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/43631-amd-announcing-fx-and-a-series-apus-in-june-performance-estimates-leaked.html

 

[CamaroMullet]

Those are some interesting numbers. Can't wait to see benchmarks and pricing!

 

[Mizzou]

Unless the AMD FX processors are good overclockers or do more work per cycle it looks like Intel will retain a significant advantage with Sandy Bridge. Guess we really won't know for sure until we see some credible benchmarks.

 

[gwailo247]

So their CPU + GPU example is better than Intel's CPU alone? Uh...

 

[CamaroMullet]

So their CPU + GPU example is better than Intel's CPU alone? Uh...

I think AMD's new CPU's have the GPU on die like Intel's CPU's.

 

[madboyv1]

The APUs do. The top two marks skew the graph because they use dedicated video cards. Though, the AMD 8-core FX chip seems to match the 2600 pcmark wise on that corporate slide (lol, take with a handful of salt), so if that is remotely accurate in real life, it'll be nice to have AMD trying to close the gap.

 

[gwailo247]

madboyv1 said:
The APUs do. The top two marks skew the graph because they use dedicated video cards. Though, the AMD 8-core FX chip seems to match the 2600 pcmark wise on that corporate slide (lol, take with a handful of salt), so if that is remotely accurate in real life, it'll be nice to have AMD trying to close the gap.

That's true but with the 1100T costing $220, and the 2600 costing $300, the 8 core chip will probably end up costing the same amount as the 2600. True you get more cores, but for the average user, you're at best getting the same performance as with an Intel chip.

AMD should really concentrate on the average user market, IMO they just can't compete with Intel at the high end market, and it seems it may not be the most economically advantageous place for them to do so.

 

[Guest]

I'd rather have the AMD CPU with discreet ATi GPU and the Vision tech then an Intel with an estranged Nivida relationship any day. As well iv'e read that the initial FX series Q2-Q3 release will be somewhat detuned over the Q4 product release.

 

[veLa]

As long as Bulldozer is comparable to Sandy Bridge with a lower price, AMD is who I'll be going with.

Even if it's not, I just like AMD a lot.

 

[red1776]

Unless the AMD FX processors are good overclockers or do more work per cycle it looks like Intel will retain a significant advantage with Sandy Bridge. Guess we really won't know for sure until we see some credible benchmarks.

According to what I am reading, you are on the right track in addition to much higher clock speeds that SB. This is an overview about why they are saying BD will be faster. high level is much higher core efficiency.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/amd_announces_8-core_bulldozer_cpu

 

[CamaroMullet]

gwailo247 said:
AMD should really concentrate on the average user market, IMO they just can't compete with Intel at the high end market, and it seems it may not be the most economically advantageous place for them to do so.

Exactly, it would be a huge mistake if they launch bulldozer near Intel comparable prices. I'm hoping for some decent benchmarks, even if they don't take any crowns, close will be awesome!

 

[johndoe]

to be taken with not a grain or a handful of salt but rather a bag of salt.

ignoring the numbers from the top two AMD entities which use discrete grafx cards, if we follow the graph then AMD's 8 physical core APUs with Radeon grafx on die are still well behind the Intel core i7 with four physical cores + four virtual and on die grafx!!!

 

[ET3D]

We'll have to wait and see how the FX series works in real world situations, such as games. It would be interesting to see what kind of single threaded performance it can get. At least it has 8 cores, which will help folders get those big points only possible with 8 way SMP. I think that AMD will try to price it at Intel levels if it has the performance to compete.

The A series looks pretty slow, CPU-wise. It's meant to be budget APU's, so hopefully even the A6 will be under $100. I think that's a good price for a well rounded low end CPU/GPU.

johndoe, the A series tops at 4 cores. There are no 8 core APU's.

 

[Mizzou]

According to what I am reading, you are on the right track in addition to much higher clock speeds that SB. This is an overview about why they are saying BD will be faster. high level is much higher core efficiency.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/amd_announces_8-core_bulldozer_cpu

That's a good read; would of course enjoy seeing AMD give Intel some head to head competition on the higher end processors. Thought this comment was particularly interesting:

The single-core performance on some floating-point applications is going to be mind-boggling,” Brookewood says.

 

[Vicenarian]

I don't think the picture on the CPU is a true bulldozer. That's more of a general purpose scooper, if you ask me.

 

[red1776]

That's a good read; would of course enjoy seeing AMD give Intel some head to head competition on the higher end processors. Thought this comment was particularly interesting:

I did as well. I have a lot more articles on the architecture if you are interested in them. I was interested in what I have been reading about AMD's design on Hyper-threading' They were saying the Intel "powers their way through the existing inefficiencies of hyper-threading" and this is the reason that it is only up to a 25% increase in data throughput, and at times makes no discernible performance difference. The (supposedly) much more communicative pairing of cores with the BD architecture, and what he called "much more efficient asymmetrical caching and prefetch, decoding, ..etc...this is where the BD architecture really shines and is superior to Intel's version of Hyper-threading. how this translate to synthetics or real world productivity is anybodies guess.

I don't think the picture on the CPU is a true bulldozer. That's more of a general purpose scooper, if you ask me.

:haha:

I thought it was a back hoe

 

[dividebyzero]

We'll have to wait and see how the FX series works in real world situations, such as games.

I would have thought productivity apps would be more apropos. Unless you're benchmarking for fun and profit, most 45nm CPU's will fit the gaming job description. Unless the games are optimized for multi-thread execution that is...

It would be interesting to see what kind of single threaded performance it can get.

If it's better than Intel's SB architecture, do you think AMD might lobby for the criminalization of Photoshop CS ownership ?

I think that AMD will try to price it at Intel levels if it has the performance to compete.

Unless you have no competition at a set performance level or are offering a feature set that the competitior does not, I would say that you price according to what the competition is set at. Good for the consumer -unless AMD and Intel decide to collude on pricing, not so good for AMD's balance sheet ...
( Intel Sandy Bridge 4C : 216mm²...likely AMD BD die size 280-310mm²)
...though a much brighter future than soldiering on with K10 derivatives...

The A series looks pretty slow, CPU-wise. It's meant to be budget APU's,

...which is Llano is - call it Phenom II redux (and die shrunk). The silver lining being that AMD obviously has the architecture and the process down pat by now.

And as for the architecture....I hope BD makes hay while the sun shines, because it doesn't seem that Intel is waiting around for AMD to play catch-up judging by their 3D transistor tech announcement today (soon to have Emil's byline on the front page no doubt)

Personally, I don't see a whole lot in the slides. And as with any slide deck, it's what isn't being measured thats more telling than what is.

 

[red1776]

Personally, I don't see a whole lot in the slides. And as with any slide deck, it's what isn't being measured thats more telling than what is

I'm not so sure that slide has anything to do with the BD. That doesn't look like an AMD presentation.

If it's better than Intel's SB architecture, do you think AMD might lobby for the criminalization of Photoshop CS ownership ?

I don't think they would now Chef:

https://www.techspot.com/gallery/data/500/medium/x6_gaussian_blur.JPG

 

[Guest]

The future is Fusion !

 

[dividebyzero]

I'm not so sure that slide has anything to do with the BD.

What pray tell would be "AMD FX 8-Core CPU" be then? If the graph is designed purely as a measure of the HD 6670's greatness would there be point in having the top two bar of the graph only distinguished by 8-core and 1100T ? And why bench PCMark Vantage ?

That doesn't look like an AMD presentation.

It isn't. But then I thought it was fairly well known that Donanimhaber was AMD's preferred method of seeding information. Exhibit (1) (2) (3) and of course, the ever popular (4)

 

[red1776]

What pray tell would be "AMD FX 8-Core CPU" be then? If the graph is designed purely as a measure of the HD 6670's greatness would there be point in having the top two bar of the graph only distinguished by 8-core and 1100T ? And why bench PCMark Vantage ?



It isn't. But then I thought it was fairly well known that Donanimhaber was AMD's preferred method of seeding information. Exhibit (1) (2) (3) and of course, the ever popular (4)

Good questions both. if they are making things up....aim a little higher! haha

I meant "when it comes to this stuff I' am of the mind to believe half of what i see, and none of what hear. Not sure if this is just someone fabricating this 'graph out of whole cloth. It just smacks of the 590 charts from Gigabyte right before release. I didn't buy those either.

 

[dividebyzero]

Doesn't matter whether you buy into or not. The graph isn't made for people like you or me - it's made for people like post #9, #19 and to generate page hits and some good old PR buzz with a helping of spin. Of course that tends to attract comments from people like me who might have some fun scraping the varnish off a poorly constructed bar graph or two. All good- we all have our parts to play.

It amounts to a little tease -getting the name out there again (especially as Intel was known to be prepping an announcement for the day -the tri-gate transistor news) without imparting anything specific - that will be down to ChipHell, XS and Xpreview- as is usually the case to "leak" the bench results

 

[ET3D]

dividebyzero said:

We'll have to wait and see how the FX series works in real world situations, such as games.

I would have thought productivity apps would be more apropos.

Productivity apps, such as word processing, work well on Celerons. I think review sites reflect enthusiast interest well: games, video compression, folding. Of these games are greatly affected by single threaded performance, while the others are more affected by the number of cores. I'm not saying there's no market for high end image processing and rendering, it's just not as interesting to most enthusiasts and is probably much smaller.

As for CPU positioning and pricing, I'm glad that you agree with me.

 

[red1776]

=dividebyzero;1036836]Doesn't matter whether you buy into or not.

I'm well aware that what i think doesn't matter, about anything. But thanks for reminding me:wave: if I had a tie on , I would be pulling on it now. (we need a Rodney Dangerfield smiley.)

 

[dividebyzero]

Productivity apps, such as word processing, work well on Celerons.

Kind of depends on how you define "work well" I suppose (Pentium, not Celeron-same diff). BTW, productivity is a little more than word processing.

....I'm not saying there's no market for high end image processing and rendering, it's just not as interesting to most enthusiasts and is probably much smaller.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that most CPU's aren't bought to market to satisfy gamers and folders (since video compression/conversion are productivity app's I leave that in obeyance). Likewise I wouldn't underestimate the business/workstation sector.

I'm well aware that what i think doesn't matter, about anything. But thanks for reminding me:wave:

Sorry for ruining the imagery for you
I'm sure there is a PR agency that caters for people who make informed choices after poring over the available data from as many bona fide sources as possible.....if I ever run into one I'll PM you and declare a day of celebration.