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Podcast #221 - Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!

Subject: General Tech | October 4, 2012 - 02:56 PM |
Tagged: trinity, TLD, ssd, Samsung, podcast, nand, clover trail, APU, a8, A10-5800k, a10, 830

PC Perspective Podcast #221 - 10/04/2012

Join us this week as we talk about Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom Allyn Malvantano, and Scott Michaud

Program length: 1:21:21

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:02:23 Intel Clover Trail Details
    2. 0:16:05 Why Scott still uses Windows
      1. Mike Capps on Games for Windows Live
    3. 0:25:30 Borderlands 2 PhysX Testing
    4. 0:32:30 AMD Trinity A10-5800K APU Review
    5. 0:39:50 Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Full Review
  2. 0:49:00 This podcast is brought to you by alxTech
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:52:00 4TB Western Digital Hard Drives
    2. 0:53:45 Apple A6 uses hand drawn ARM cores
    3. 0:57:00 Steam for Linux beta in October
    4. 0:58:45 AMD Vishera Info Leaks
    5. 1:00:20 ASUS Shows silent Trinity APU builds
    6. 1:01:30 Why you care that AMD can't keep up
    7. 1:04:45 Kickstart TINY PCs
  4. Closing:
    1. 1:06:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: Corsair Dominator Platinum Memory
      2. Jeremy: More gaming
      3. Josh: A fun, new combo!
      4. Allyn: Samsung SSD 840 - TLC, baby!
      5. Scott: Corsair HX 850W Power Supply
      6. Tim: Black Mesa: Source!
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro

Source: PC Perspective

Gigabyte Launches Flagship GA-F2A85X-UP4 Trinity Motherboard

Subject: Motherboards | October 3, 2012 - 02:52 AM |
Tagged: trinity, motherboard, gigabyte, fm2, APU

AMD’s latest Trinity APUs launched yesterday, and with that Gigabyte launched its flagship socket FM2 motherboard, the GA-F2A85X-UP4. This board was shown off earlier this year, but now we have all the details. This motherboard is packed with all the Gigabyte technology you would expect from an enthusiast board, and some of the more interesting features include the Ultra Durable 5 capacitors, a digital PWM array, single package IR3550 PowIRStage ICs, and dual APU clock generators to push overclocking of non-K edition processors as far as possible – at least in theory. Also interesting is the inclusion of Lucid’s Virtu MVP GPU virtualization technology, two EFI BIOS chips, switchable graphics, and the ability to crossfire certain 6000-series discrete graphics cards with the GPU in the Trinity APU.

6621_big.jpg

Internal connectivity options include the FM2 socket, four DDR3 DIMM slots (up to 64GB @ 1866MHz), seven SATA 6Gbps ports, one eSATA 6Gbps port, and support for RAID O, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD. Furter, the GA-F2A85X-UP4 supports three PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots. The first slot runs at x16 or x8 if there are two GPUs installed. The second and third slots run at x8 and x4 respectively. Gigabyte has also included three PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots for sounds and networking cards.

mb1002-4.jpg

Internal IO headers include one CPU fan, four system fans, one S/PDIF, one USB 3.0, four USB 2.0, one serial, one clear CMOS, and one TPM.

6623_big.jpg

Rear I/O on the flagship Trinity motherboard includes:

  • 1 x PS/2
  • 1 x VGA
  • 1 x DVI
  • 1 x HDMI
  • 1 x DisplayPort
  • 1 x S/PDIF
  • 4 x USB 3.0
  • 2 x USB 2.0
  • 1 x eSATA
  • 1 x RJ45
  • 6 x analog audio jacks

This board is packing a lot of hardware, and the price is right around $130 depending on the retailer. The GA-F2A85X-UP4 is available now. Interestingly Gigabyte has also announced the F2A85XM-D3H based on the same A85X chipset as the flagship F2-A85X-UP4 as well as some lower tier motherboards based on the A75 and A55 chipsets with new FM2 sockets. Unfortunately, these motherboards do not appear to be available yet. If you are interested in those boards (which should cost less), keep an eye out for the F2A75M-D3H, and F2A55M-HD2 – or simply watch PC Perspective’s homepage of course!

In the meantime, you can find more photos of the GA-F2A85X-UP4 on Gigabyte's website.

6675_big.jpg

Source: Gigabyte

Finally, the real Trinity reviews arrive

Subject: Processors | October 2, 2012 - 04:56 PM |
Tagged: vishera, trinity, Steamroller, piledriver, bulldozer, amd, a8, a6, A4, a10, 5800K, 5600K

The NDA is over and we can finally tell you all about the new generation of Trinity, especially the compute portion which we were not allowed to discuss in the controversial preview.  Part of the good news is the price, Legit Reviews found the highest MSRP is $122 for the A10-5800K and it is currently available, though at $130.  The performance increase from the previous generation is decent for multicore applications though not so much for single threaded applications, overall you can expect general computing performance in line with Core i3 but not Core i5.  Gaming on the other hand did show much improvement, especially with you compare the built in HD7660D to Intel's current HD4000 and HD3500.  You can catch Josh's review right here.

LR_a10-apu-fm2.jpg

"The internal testing from AMD that we can see above shows a 37% increase in the 3DMark 11 score between the first generation A-Series Llano and this generation of A-Series Trinity. While our numbers don't match their numbers exactly, our Llano system scored 1115 3Dmarks while the AMD internal testing showed 1150 3DMarks. Our AMD A10-5800K scored 1521 3DMarks while they scored 1570. The overall difference was remarkably similar, AMD is boasting an increase of 37% and we saw a difference of 36.4%..."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

Source: Legit Reviews

ASUS Shows Off Silent PC With AMD Trinity APU

Subject: General Tech, Systems | October 2, 2012 - 04:44 PM |
Tagged: trinity, silent pc, passive cooling, asus, APU, amd

AMD officially launched its desktop Trinity APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) today, and along with the new processors are a number of new socket FM2 motherboards to support them. One of the cooler motherboard and Trinity APU pairings was shown off today in a completely silent PC by ASUS and AMD in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, Japan.

The silent system is nested inside a Streacom FC5 chassis that does double duty as a case and heatsink for the AMD APU. Inside the system is an unidentified power supply, two DDR3 DIMMS, Corsair Force SSD, ASUS F2A85-M PRO motherboard, and – of course – the AMD A10-5700K APU that we recently reviewed.

AMD Trinity APU in Silent PC.jpg

The APU is covered by an aluminum and copper block that is then connected to the metal case via four heatpipes. Then, the outside of the case has a finned design to provide more cooling surface area (but likely just to make it look cooler, heh).

This passively cooled system would make for a really nice home theater PC case, and the GPU prowess of the Trinity APU is well suited to such a task. You can find more photos of the fan-less Trinity system over at FanlessTech.

What do you think of Trinity, and will you be using it in your next build?

Read more about HTPCs and Trinity APUs at PC Perspective!

Source: FanlessTech

AMD Trinity Review: The A10 5800K and A8 5600K Break Cover

Author:
Date: October 2, 2012
Subject: Processors
Manufacturer: AMD
Tagged: vishera, trinity, Steamroller, piledriver, bulldozer, amd, a8, a6, A4, a10, 5800K, 5600K

Trinity Finally Comes to the Desktop

Trinity.  Where to start?  I find myself asking that question, as the road to this release is somewhat tortuous.  Trinity, as a product code name, came around in early 2011.  The first working silicon was shown that Summer.  The first actual release of product was the mobile part in late Spring of this year.  Throughout the summer notebook designs based on Trinity started to trickle out.  Today we cover the release of the desktop versions of this product.

trin_01.jpg

AMD has certainly had its ups and downs when it comes to APU releases.  Their first real APU was Zacate, based on the new Bobcat CPU architecture.  This product was an unmitigated success for AMD.  Llano, on the other hand, had a pretty rocky start.  Production and various supply issues caused it to be far less of a success than hoped.  These issues were oddly enough not cleared up until late Spring of this year.  By then mobile Trinity was out and people were looking towards the desktop version of the chip.  AMD saw the situation, and the massive supply of Llano chips that it had, and decided to delay introduction of desktop Trinity until a later date.

To say that expectations for Trinity are high is an understatement.  AMD has been on the ropes for quite a few years in terms of CPU performance.  While the Phenom II series were at least competitive with the Core 2 Duo and Quad chips, they did not match up well against the latest i7/i5/i3 series of parts.  Bulldozer was supposed to erase the processor advantage Intel had, but it came out of the oven as a seemingly half baked part.  Piledriver was designed to succeed Bulldozer, and is supposed to shore up the architecture to make it more competitive.  Piledriver is the basis of Trinity.  Piledriver does sport significant improvements in clockspeed, power consumption, and IPC (instructions per clock).  People are hopeful that Trinity would be able to match the performance of current Ivy Bridge processors from Intel, or at least get close.

So does it match Intel?  In ways, I suppose.  How much better is it than Bulldozer?  That particular answer is actually a bit surprising.  Is it really that much of a step above Llano?  Yet another somewhat surprising answer for that particular question.  Make no mistake, Trinity for desktop is a major launch for AMD, and their continued existence as a CPU manufacturer depends heavily on this part.

Continue reading our review of the AMD Trinity A10 APUs!!

That's why it is called a preview not a review

Subject: Processors | September 27, 2012 - 07:53 PM |
Tagged: trinity, preview, papermaster launch, disappoint, amd, A10 5800K

By now you have probably realized that there is some commotion surrounding AMD's preview of their new Trinity chips.  As you can see below, many sites chose to post this preview as it is new information, regardless of the limits that AMD required reviewers to submit to.  Before you woke up this morning you did not have the knowledge you do now about Trinity's power consumption and gaming performance, for example Legit Reviews results, and on the 2nd you will get the rest of the results, which is not too far off in the future.

While limiting reviewers to a certain set of benchmarks for a preview is not a popular move for readers or writers, it is nothing new.  From Kyle's take on NVIDIA's reviewers guide to the driver wars which have gone on and on and on for longer than it is easy to find links for; there is a dirty side to reviewing.  Sometimes companies release new products and go out of their way to ensure that reviewers do not get their hands on before the products are for sale.  Of course reviewers occasionally go out and buy those products and once they get them on their test benches it becomes obvious why the companies did not send out review samples.  You don't have to like these practices, or accept them, but please realize that it is nothing new when you are lodging your complaints ... and do lodge complaints to the manufacturers if you find yourself upset.  Here at PC Perspective we want to give you all the information we can, even if it means we can only give it to you piecemeal, you do still get it.

apu.jpg

"So far, it appears that these APUs have an advantage over Intel's Ivy Bridge processors when it comes to graphics. The new AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU in these APUs is clearly superior to the GPU found in equivalent and even more expensive Ivy Bridge processors. Additional tests will have to wait until October 2nd, as that is when AMD is allowing full reviews of the new 'Trinity' APUs..."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

Source: Legit Reviews

AMD A10-5800K Performance Preview: Trinity for Desktop

Author:
Date: September 26, 2012
Subject: Processors
Manufacturer: AMD
Tagged: trinity, piledriver, llano, amd, A10 5800K, a10, A-10, 3870K

Trinity's GPU Performance

Editor's Note: Right before the release of this story some discussion has been ongoing at other hardware sites about the methods AMD employed with this NDA and release of information.  Essentially, AMD allowed us to write about only the gaming benchmarks and specifications for the Trinity APU, rather than allowing the full gamut of results including CPU tests, power consumption, etc.  Why?  Obviously AMD wants to see a good message be released about their product; by release info in stages they can at least allow a brief window for that.  

Does it suck that they did this?  Yes.  Do I feel like we should have NOT published this because of those circumstances?  Not at all.  Information is information and we felt that getting it to you as soon as possible was beneficial.  Also, because the parts are not on sale today we are not risking adversely affecting your purchasing decision with these limited benchmarks.  When the parts DO go on sale, you will have our full review with all the positives and negatives laid out before you, in the open.  

This kind of stuff happens often in our world - NVIDIA sent out GTX 660 cards but not GTX 650s because of lack luster performance for example - and we balance it and judge it on a case by case basis.  I don't think anyone looking at this story sees a "full review" and would think to make a final decision about ANY product from it.  That's not the goal.  But just as we sometimes show you rumored specs and performance numbers on upcoming parts before the NDAs expire, we did this today with  Trinity - it just so happens it was with AMD's blessing.  

AMD has graciously allowed us the chance to give readers a small glimpse at the performance of the upcoming A series APUs based on the Trinity processor.  Today we are covering the SKUs that will be released, general gaming performance, and what kind of power consumption we are seeing as compared to the previous Llano processor and any Intel processor we can lay hands upon.

Trinity is based on the updated Piledriver architecture, which is an update to Bulldozer.  Piledriver improves upon IPC by a small amount over Bulldozer, but the biggest impact is that of power consumption and higher clockspeeds.  It was pretty well known that Bulldozer did not hit the performance expectations of both AMD and consumers.  Part of this was due to the design pulling more power at the target clockspeeds than was expected.  To remedy this, AMD lowered clockspeeds.  Piledriver fixes most of those power issues, as well as sprinkles some extra efficiency into the design, so that clockspeeds can scale to speeds that will make these products more competitive with current Intel offerings.

 

The Lineup

The top end model that AMD will be offering of the socket FM2 processors (for the time being) is the A10 5800K.  This little number is a dual module/quad core processor running at 3.8 GHz with a turbo speed of 4.2 GHz.  We see below the exact model range of products that AMD will be offering.  This does not include the rumored Athlon II editions that will have a disabled GPU onboard.  Each module features 2 MB of L2 cache, for a total of 4 MB on the processor.  The A10 series does not feature a dedicated L3 cache as the FX processors do.  This particular part is unlocked as well, so expect some decent overclocking right off the bat.

 

trin_line.jpg

The A10 5800K features the VLIW 4 based graphics portion, which is significantly more efficient than the previous VLIW 5 based unit in Llano (A8 3870K and brethren).  Even though it features the same number of stream processors as the 3870K, AMD is confident that this particular unit is upwards of 20% faster than the previous model.  This GPU portion is running at a brisk 800 MHz.  The GPU core is also unlocked, so expect some significant leaps in that piece of the puzzle as well.

trin_perf.jpg

That is about all I can give out at this time, since this is primarily based on what we see in the diagram and what we have learned from the previous Trinity release (for notebooks).

Click to read the entire post here.

AMD teases us with their upcoming 2nd generation of APUs

Subject: General Tech | September 24, 2012 - 02:57 PM |
Tagged: trinity, A10-5800k, socket fm2

Apart from the model numbers the only solid information of when we will start to hear about AMD's second generation of Trinity APUs is the date, October 2nd is when the NDAs start to expire and we might see some results.  Many of the model numbers are relatively familiar, with the A10-5800K, A10-5700, A8-5600K, A8-5500, Athlon X4 750K/740, A6-5400K and A4-5300.  New to the chipset family will be the the A55, A75 and A85X, all with Socket FM2.  SemiAccurate posted the news here; keep your eyes peeled next week for the actual release.

AMD-Trinity.jpg

"Two more interesting tidbits appeared in the news letter, “…platform longevity with FM2 motherboards for future upgrades” and, “AMD Memory Profile Support for automatic performance.” You can read into these statements as far as you’d like, but it appears that AMD is planning on keeping its FM2 socket around for a bit longer than FM1 lasted. Additionally, AMD may finally be rolling out it’s own version of Intel’s XMP predefined RAM overclocking profiles next month."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: SemiAccurate

Podcast #219 - NVIDIA GTX 660 and 650, Luicid Dynamix technology, A85 Motherboards and more!

Subject: General Tech | September 20, 2012 - 02:57 PM |
Tagged: podcast, gtx 660, gtx 650, 660ti, lucid, dynamix, a85, gigabyte, fm2, trinity

PC Perspective Podcast #219 - 09/20/2012

Join us this week as we talk about the NVIDIA GTX 660 and 650, Luicid Dynamix technology, A85 Motherboards and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 1:13:13

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:03:00 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB
    2. 0:16:30 Corsair HX850 Power Supply
    3. 0:17:23 Lenovo IdeaPad U410
  2. 0:18:18 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:19:10 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
    2. 0:22:20 Trinity APUs to be binned as CPU only?
    3. 0:24:50 Lucid Dynamix adjusts quality in real-time
    4. 0:32:30 ASUS Skills Challenge contest
    5. 0:34:40 Intel NUC PCs coming soon
    6. 0:37:15 You missed our Borderlands 2 event Tuesday!
    7. 0:38:10 OCZ CEO heads out the door
    8. 0:44:10 Gigabyte A85 motherboard spotted
    9. 0:47:30 AMD Sea Island 8800 series leaks
    10. 0:51:35 ASUS Tablet pricing leaks
    11. 0:54:15 Helium in upcoming hard drives
    12. 0:58:05 Intel WiDi 3.5 with Miracast Launched
  4. Closing:
    1. 1:02:00 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: Apple Ear Pods
      2. Jeremy: Scotch tape, what can't it do?
      3. Josh: Still so cheap. Watch for Specials!
      4. Allyn: RushMyPassport.com
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro

 

 

Source: PC Perspective

Gigabyte Shows Off the F2A85X-UP4

Subject: Motherboards | September 17, 2012 - 11:09 PM |
Tagged: trinity, piledriver, fm2, amd, A85X, a10

Gigabyte lit the social media fuse and showed off some of the first pictures of one of the A85X based motherboards.  A85X is the successor to the original FM1 A75 chipset, and it had a rather robust featureset for a "budget" oriented chipset.  The original A75 was paired with the Llano APU, otherwise known as the A8/A6/A4 APU from AMD.  The A85 is pin compatible with the A75, but it offers two more SATA 6 ports than the previous unit.  Both share 14 USB ports, four of which are USB 3.0

f2a85x_up4.jpg

The board overall looks nice and robust.  The black PCB and accoutrements make it seem like it is a mean board.  There are 4 USB 3.0 ports on the back and a header for front panel USB 3.0.  All eight SATA 6 ports are used on the board, six + one on the board and one e-SATA.  We do not know all the details about the power delivery system, but it looks like it is using a variant of what we saw with the latest Z77 boards from Gigabyte.  Good stuff, Mainerd.

October certainly looks to be the month that Trinity arrives.  Everyone is very curious how it will perform against the latest Ivy Bridge processors from Intel.  While AMD still has a GPU advantage, it is slowly shrinking.  Now we wonder how well the CPU part will perform and how much power it will pull.  Stay tuned, gentle readers...

Source: Gigabyte

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