Models, Platforms, and Motherboards
Models and Speeds
The top end Trinity is the A10 5800K. This is an unlocked part at 100 watts TDP and runs at 3.8 GHz with a 4.2 GHz Turbo. It features the fully enabled 384 stream unit GPU at 800 MHz and the chip should cost around $122. The lowest is the A4 5300 which is a dual core/single module affair with 1 MB of L2 cache, running at 3.4 GHz and a max Turbo of 3.6 GHz. It features ½ the stream count of the 5800K and runs at a slightly slower 724 MHz. This 65 watt TDP part will go for around $53.
The APUs in this group can all be matched with a discrete graphics card from AMD to enable “Dual Graphics” functionality. This is essentially a CrossFire solution using the onboard graphics and the discrete card. The HD 6670 and below cards for the 6000 series and the HD 7670 and below for the 7000 series can all be matched with an APU. This should in theory double performance in graphics heavy applications, and in reality it seems to work pretty well. The only issue that we really see is that for a few dollars more a user can get a 7750 (which will not work in Dual Graphics mode) and outperform a DG enabled A10 5800K + HD 7670.
Virgo and the A85X
The FM2 platform featuring the Trinity processor is known as Virgo. There is a new chipset being offered with FM2 though, and it is actually pretty impressive considering all the extras that it brings to the table. The A85X is a single chip solution and features a whopping 8 ports of SATA 6G connectivity. It also features 4 USB 3.0 ports as well as 10 more USB 2.0.
The A85X is still being made on TSMC’s 65 nm process, and these I/O chips are still not very large. So it does not actually pay to make them on a smaller process without first integrating a whole bunch of features. The chip itself runs around 7 watts TDP when fully configured. AMD has again tweaked performance of the SATA controller, as well as adding another two ports. While they may not match up well against the native Intel units in pure speed, the ability to use upwards of 8 SATA 6G drives is a big step forward.
FM2 is a socket that AMD plans on keeping a long time. While FM1 was really only out around a year and a few months, AMD plans on introducing future processor families on FM2. We know that Steamroller will be one of them, as it is being introduced sometime late next year. AMD has committed to using FM2 throughout 2014.
The older A55 and A75 chipsets are still compatible with Trinity and FM2, and they will be offered for sale as lower level products. A55 does not support SATA 6G and USB 3.0, while A75 does. While FM1 will die a slow a death, at least the chipsets supporting it will have a long and healthy life.
The Asus F2A85-M Pro
The first wave of FM2 motherboards are actually quite robust and mature, for being a new product. I think that we can think the heritage of the FM1 platform, and the overall similarities of the A75 and A85X chipsets.
The F2A85-M Pro is a micro-ATX motherboard that is aimed at the budget enthusiast. It has higher end overclocking features, but does not approach products like the Maximus series on the Intel side. It features a more robust power circuitry than what may typically be required by a 100 watt TDP part. The EUFI based BIOS is chock full of overclocking and power saving features, and nearly any setting can be accessed through the BIOS.
Overall build quality seemed good. The pack in materials were adequate, but not exactly over the top. The board felt fairly roomy, even though it was a micro-ATX form factor. Seven SATA 6G ports are available on the board, and the last is on the back as an e-SATA port. The A85X has four native USB 3.0 ports, and the final two are provided by a ASMedia controller. The back of the board features four of the said USB 3.0 ports, while a header on the board provides front panel USB 3.0 support.
The video outputs on this board are actually quite impressive. There is a DVI-D port (single link), DB-15 (VGA), HDMI, and finally a DisplayPort 1.2. The DP can drive a 4K monitor, once those are available. Again, this board can support Eyefinity just through the APU. To accomplish this though, either a DP hub is needed, or three different monitors with those above listed connections.
Trinity has the ability to split is 1 x 16X slot into 2 x 8X slots. Llano was unable to do this, so CrossFire was not officially supported. CrossFire does work perfectly fine with Trinity. SLI on the other hand is not licensed for AMD processors, only the AMD 900 series of chipsets support that functionality. Pity. Trinity is also “only” PCI-E 2.0 compliant. I suspect that the change from FM1 to FM2 does in fact encompass what is needed to run PCI-E 3.0 connections, but until Steamroller comes out we will not likely see PCI-E 3.0 with Trinity.
did you turn off turbo core
did you turn off turbo core in bios?
also I’m sure a bios update is on the way
also make sure you use a good heatsink cause it will throttle
Yea, Tigerdirect has them
Yea, Tigerdirect has them
I think the units for SiSoft
I think the units for SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth results should be GB/s, not MB/s.
so what was the power usage
so what was the power usage when OC’ed to 4.4ghz ?
I will be doing more testing
I will be doing more testing throughout the week of overclocked performance. Apparently there are a few settings which are deletrious to good overclocked results that we were unaware of (like the above mentioned Turbo Core). Apparently there are others as well. Once I get a better lock on overclocking, I will throw up some numbers here.
They need to drop these into
They need to drop these into some x86 tablets. That’s where the real advantage comes I think.
They also need to do a deal and get these in tv or tv boxes.
Agree
Agree
Great review, thanks again
Great review, thanks again Josh.
I was afraid this would happen again. I really want AMD to pull ahead or at least catch up.
Barely keeping up with an i3 isn’t keeping my hopes up. I would buy a new AMD CPU in a heartbeat if it could even come close to an i7. I want AMD to win dammit.
I realize that they are constantly working on the next CPU, i really hope somewhere down the line they just stop working on this architecture and go back the the Phenom II architecture (K10 I think) or at least re-release it along side bulldozer.
Is that possible? Or just too costly?
To this day they are still faster, just more power hungry. Not much of a down side IMO.
Why aren’t they pumping more cores in stuff? That would help a little wont it?
EDIT: oooh didnt see the tablet comment, that would be a great idea. Trinity Win8 tablets would be a huge advantage for AMD. I’m sure they can keep up with an Atom.
I don’t want to rain on your
I don’t want to rain on your parade, but i really have to disagree with a few things you said. Going back to the phenom II architecture = throwing in the towel and going out of business. AMD is NOT faster and more power hungry. It’s slower and more power hungry. Why aren’t they pumping more cores? They did do that with Bulldozer, and it has not been what people want as far as performance goes for MOST (some may still be appreciating 8 cores for small niche groups).
You misunderstood what i
You misunderstood what i meant. Sorry, to be clear. I was talking about the Phenom II architecture being faster and more power hungry, in relation to AMDs new CPUs (it still pulls far ahead in most of the benchmarks).
Its quite obvious they are slower and less efficient than Intels offerings.
I bring up going back to the Phenom II architecture so that AMD can actually compete. Instead of being the “Affordable” CPU manufacturer, and not competing at all.
I was thinking more along the lines of 10 cores minimum (Clearly 8 wasn’t enough) or perhaps im being naive thinking that you can just throw more power at the problem.
For the record i wold be SO SOLD on a 10 or more core consumer part. Its just cool IMO, fastest or not.
This is my belief based off
This is my belief based off of their releases so far.
They knew where they were at in generalized ‘speed’ or processing power, and new their architecture could not continue scaling into higher clocks and higher core counts and keep up with hyperthreading. I really think AMD tried to make an architecture that scaled well for multiple cores and high clock speeds. I think their processor lines show they succeeded in this, it is almost arbitrary for them to include more cores.
Now they are optimizing that core architecture (increased Instructions Per Clock, etc.) and that is the effort that will bring them back into the performance game. Running more real cores, higher overclocks (5Ghz+ wooo!), and close to or better IPC, will make people wonder WTF Intel has been doing. They have licenced Intel’s 3D trigate patents so they can continue scaling down with their manufacturing processes too.
AMD chose the less risky route here by optimizing their core count scalability then optimizing core operation, but it is also the longer slow & steady route. If they had tried to create Optimized high clock high IPC cores it is MUCH riskier.
They would either be back to dual core counts with the possibility their design does not scale into high core counts in which case they have to scrap that work when trying to design a high core count processor.
Or they are try to design an archecture that does it all and the results of that all coming together for one processor design is very risky in terms of ready time and design performance, which has a high possibility to leave them with a mediocre architecture they are unable to build upon to continue competeing.
Just to complete the picture,
Just to complete the picture, it is rumored that AMD tried to solve the major bottlenecks of the Bulldozer with Piledriver: scheduling and L2 cache speed. There are some tests at xbitlabs AIDA64 memory benchmark – the results show that in most Bulldozer and Piledriver are similar, but L2 read bandwidth of Piledriver has risen dramatically, almost doubled: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-a10-5800k_4.html#sect0
This could be a major reason (along with double the scheduling queue) why the A10 that has no L3 cache managed to stick quite close to the FX 4170.
Anyway, this probably doesn’t bring that much of a performance benefit to make Piledriver look good, but as far as I remember this is the first time since Clawhammer (anyone remembers that one?) that AMD hasn’t degraded the speed or latency of the cache on a next-gen CPU. Let’s hope the L3 in Vishera continues on this route.
Another great review from a
Another great review from a great man.. Well close enough 😛
Still as the review goes, I do wonder how much lack of L3 cache has on performance. I know AM3+ Piledriver is still a few weeks away, I just hope it will make an upgrade from my 1090T worth it.
Still any speculations how much L3 cache could improve in terms of CPU performance? 5-10%?
Is there a way to test Buldozer cores with L3 disabled and enabled to see how much performance hit there was?
Now back to Trinity. New socket is a killer for me, but it is nice that AMD accnowledged this and stated that there will be at least one more CPU architecture (steamroler?) for the socket before AM3+ and FM2 fuse into one socket.
If only Blender3D would support OpenCL rendeirng on AMD GPUs, I would be inclined to think of this setup. For now only mobile Trinity seams to make sence at this point.
the results of you cinebench
the results of you cinebench r10 for the i3 2105 are MUCH, MUCH LOWER than the normal score…
please re run the benchmark, make sure to test it in 64bits.
We are redoing tests here and
We are redoing tests here and will look into it.
Thanks!
This is a very narrow product
This is a very narrow product line – nothing more than quad-core? The price varying only from $71 to $122? No part less than 65W? Aimed almost only at gamers.
Obviously the objective here was to get the FM2 socket exactly right so it can remain stable until late 2014. By that time, Thunderbolt has either replaced all these various nasty display ports, or it has not. Also by that time, PCIe 3.0 x32 devices will be more common and the full 52GB/s of the HTX bus should be available at the DDR3, DDR4 or DDR5 RAM interface. And, 10 gigabit ethernet will either have come down in price (thanks to Thunderbolt) or be irrelevant to desktops and NAS (thanks to Thunderbolt). By 2015, with these existing buses all maxed out, and the IEEE P1905.1 standard settled so that things like powerline networking’s interface to the PSU can be settled, and Thunderbolt vs. DisplayPort vs. 10 gigabit Ethernet settled somehow… FM3 or whatever can be stable from 2015 to 2018.
Maybe longer. The desktop will be dead by then, and the mainboard is going to be sitting in your wall near your electrical box or cable head, and talking to your refrigerator as much as to your TV.
Expect some ARM cores (for very low power idling) in the very next FM2 processor release. That’s the only way to respond to Haswell. Expect also some X6 X8 X10 and X12 processors in that lineup, and a few low-power options below 50W (with the ability to rely on ARM core to respond to routine network and device events to keep that power draw much lower in practice). Much more price variations, perhaps from $50 to $200 or even $300.
Given the graphics performance of these October 2012 chips though, it’s entirely reasonable to rely on the embedded graphics and use the PCIe x16 slot for a PCIe SSD – basically equivalent to slower RAM given the FM2 direct chip connection. Imagine 100GB RAM or 250GB RAM for a few hundred bucks (some OCZ PCIe SSDs sell for as little as $2/GB so that’s $200-$500, same as a good video card).
Given the excellent multi-core performance of database engines, and the very low price of these chips, it’s possible you could see lots of FM2 processors used in database hosts. Especially if there is a way to use OpenCL to do the processing on all those shader cores…?
This is a good preview for
This is a good preview for Vishera Piledriver. When that time comes, can see see the desktop Piledriver Vishera review with a Core 2 Duo (like Q6600), i7 920, 2600k, 3770k, and Phenom 2 quad and hex (and of course old FX).
AMD’s Trinity platform is a
AMD’s Trinity platform is a good platform, yes it trades blows with the i3 with Intel’s chips hitting hard when it comes to single threaded applications. However AMD hits Intel hard on entry level gaming.
When it comes down to Power Consumption I feel that the whole story isn’t being published. Intel’s HD 4000 just doesn’t cut the mustard to games and basically requires a ext. video card to edge out the AMD APU. With that said I have yet to see a power consumption table to show what the i3 or i5 have with an ext. video card. AMD’s APU already has a full blown video card on die and reflex it in it’s power consumption. Intel’s on die GPU is to show lower power consumption on the charts but knowing full well no one in there right mind would would run it that way.
true sad thing of these
true sad thing of these tests, fact that no one in their right mind uses intergraded cpu graphic’s to play games. Yet AMD seems happy to beat intel in these, since its only thing they can win in.
All kinds of people in their
All kinds of people in their right mind play games with integrated graphics. My children can play all their DC Universe, Roblox, Hero-Up, and all kinds of other 3D games which run perfectly fine on integrated graphics. They don't play Crysis, or BF3, or Skyrim, but the games they play are designed from the ground up to be played comfortably on integrated grahpics. I'm actually impressed by how DC Universe looks on an APU. Plays pretty smooth, looks good, and it is a cheap platform for users.
keep us updated on the
keep us updated on the overclock hunt
have you tried a better cooler?
cpu OC? igpu OC? memory OC?
how does it perform when overclocked?
be cool to do a video review of the overclock 😉
Looks like Llano 3870K is a
Looks like Llano 3870K is a much better buy at this stage. One can just clock its gpu to 900Mhz and blow away all the Trinity A10-5800K benchmarks above!. Llano does not seem to perform as well in the CPU side when clocked to 3.6Ghz from 3Ghz. The fact the Trinity is so highly clocked means that the K parts are pretty useless as the OC headroom is very small. Shown here only 4.4Ghz max which is really poor. This shows that AMD is putting a small headroom “buffer” in their Trinity chips. Intel , however, can be clocked to such frequencies fairly easily!.
Hi,
I own an AMD A8 5600k
Hi,
I own an AMD A8 5600k and i want to ask you what video card to choose from these:
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R5770-Hawk.html
http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/EAH6770_DC_SL_2DI1GD5/
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R6670-MD1GD5.html#?div=Specification varianta dual fan
http://ro.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/EAH6670DIS1GD5/
I want to know if i can use all of them in dual graphics mod, AMD recomends HD6570 and HD6670 for this processor
THX!
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