Trinity, Llano on steroids

It looks like after the unfortunate performance Bulldozer came out with, there is at least some good news coming out.
The 7000 series radeons should be out before christmas, which would be a nice addition but in this article i'm focusing on Trinity, the successor to Llano.
As a bit of a back story, Llano used the K10 architecture from the Phenoms, capable of a decent workload and with graphics on die it was a very good budget desktop.
Trinity is hoping to expand on this by making it more powerful, the x86 cores are going to be 2nd Generation Bulldozer cores. (Here's hoping it's the B2 stepping at least)
On the graphics side of things, AMD are hoping for a 30% increase in the performance, which seems odd considering the original quote was 50%,  but we're going to assume that AMDs engineers aren't going to be as optimistic after the release of Bulldozer.
A main concern of these particular chips is that if they're going to be using the Bulldozer modules then are put into laptops, they better have sorted the power consumption for the power consumption were seeing from the full Bulldozer chips is outrageous if you're planning on putting that into a mobile unit.
It'd be nice to see how this chip would perform in comparison to the Llano, I won't be buying one but it's good to see AMD continuing with some products that will have a market.
My next blogs will be on Ivy Bridge, and then who knows.
Hope you enjoyed the post.
Until next time.

Bulldozer: The Aftermath

Since all the official benchmarks have now been released, we know about how Bulldozer has been competing. Unfortunately, it's not great.
After all this time it's still having to compete with the i5 2500k, sure in some places it gets ahead but it general it doesn't balance out as a great chip, the IPC is even beaten by the Phenoms, which is never a good sign. A new stepping, B3 should be coming out soon, not soon enough if you ask me.
We need to know more about this stepping to see what kind of improvements it could make, there have been claims that a registry fix is also necessary to improve Bulldozer, improvements of 40% have also been claimed, but you'd expect that such an improvement could not be entirely down to the registry.
I'm sure new benchmarks will come out with the stepping, hopefully affecting that huge power drain and the TDP, people are still buying the chip regardless of it's current problems, if there is such an improvement with this second stepping.. I wonder how those people will feel, they've been through a lot already if they're still willing to by the chip.
That's all for now, more ranting and raving at a later date.
Have a nice day.

Bulldozer took it's time.

Looks like the bulldozer modules are finally here, Zambezi has arrived.

The unfortunate point is that the benchmarks may not be as promising as previously expected, this being let down in some amount by the architecture of the chip, for even in the FX-8150 there are only four FPU schedulers, which is even less than the 1100T, the highest rated Phenom. Where the FX does begin to pull back some ground is when rendering, video compression and conversion are involved, the multiple modules and cores really having an impact on the performance.

I've been waiting all this time to see what I should build my new pc as, I expected more from the Bulldozer, considering this is the flagship chip, and to see it lose out to the i5 2500k and even the 1100T in tests isn't good. In the end it comes down to what you want to do with the chip.

Although in the future, the sound of bulldozer modules housed in an APU does sound promising, as long as they put a few more FPUs in there and keep the prices down, i'm sure we'll all be happy.

I'll be updated a lot more regularly, keep posted.

Until next time.

AMDs comeback.

The new release from AMD are coming into fruition, APUs, Accelerated Processing Units.
Their releases are for june, in which Llano for the laptops and desktops are available.
The Llano is the only new release hanging on to the original K10 architecture which was shown with the Phenoms beforehand, both the Zambezi and the Bulldozer will be composed of a new architecture.
Although this being said, the Llano is which has an on chip graphics die, the chips being focused more on balanced gpu usage with our ever changing ways of using computers.
The Llano are being released at Computex on June 1st, and the on the 7th for the desktop.
With the ever prominent AMD ethics of chip pricing, you can expect a Llano to cost approximately $300-350.
AM3+ compatible motherboards are already on the market, AM3 chips are compatible, so investing in a motherboard now and waiting is possible, just not advised.
In my opinion I cannot wait until these hit the market, how they take on SandyBridge will be very interesting to watch.
I'll probably be buying one relatively soon after release, i'm very excited.

Until about later on today when I update once again!
Goodbye.

Bulldozer? Sandy Bridge? ATI?

With the recent release of Sandy Bridge, Intel seem to have taken a leaf out of AMDs book.
These cpus are benchmarking much higher than the processors that Intel would usually sell for this price, for $320 you can purchase the i7-2600k. This benchmarks only slightly lower than the i7 970, which is almost three times the price.
In saying this AMD are going to try to regain some grounds with the introduction of Bulldozer, and Bobcat.
AMD are hoping that this will be the success that Opertron was against Intel in the server sector.
Again, as a blog i'm trying my best to be impartial so we'll just have to see.
I just hope that AMD sticks to its guns and continues to offer very effective processors.
Unfortunately with the recent problems AMD has had with its ATI graphics cards they are going to be trying hard to keep their market share and possibly increase it with the impending release of the GTX 560.
What is ATI going to do? They are going to be lowering the price of all 6XXX series graphics cards, and with an impending driver release for all of these to attract a serious amount of attention back to themselves (after the unfunctional drivers for newly released cars and the fan/component conflict which ended with having to sand down the corner inside so the fan would fit) but other than that we can only hope that ATI continues pushing forwards in its endless fight with nVidia.

For now I say goodbye, until next time.
Thank you for reading.