The World's First Professional Tablet, Nvidia's GK110 is Geforce GTX 780, ASUS AERES II - The Ace is Back!

There are rumours floating around regarding a new professional FirePro Tablet, the world's only x86 Windows 8 Tablet with Professional Graphics. Not only will this allow AMD to get into a position no other company has, as professional graphics solutions are currently strictly in desktop / notebook form factor.

More information of AMD's FirePro tablet can be found here

In other news, we see that Nvidia is preparing for their Geforce GTX 780  card based on the older GK110 architecture  which is said to bring only a 25% increase in performance when compared to the Geforce GTX 680. It will be interesting to see how AMD's 8970, which is said to bring a 30-40% increase in performance over the 7970, stacks up against this card from Nvidia.

 More information on AMD's future 8970 flagship card can be found here and Nvidia's future flagship the GTX 780 here

Currently the 7970 is the World most powerful consumer single GPU solution, with the introduction of the performance aggressive drivers Catalyst 12.11 and now 13.1; and the ARES II (7970x2) is the worlds most powerful consumer dual GPU solution, pulling 13% ahead of  the GTX 690.

Its interesting to see that the ASUS ARES II is only a two slot card, not shown by this fake picture floating around

More info on the ASUS ARES II can be found here

New AMD Roadmap! Temash Q3 2013/ Steamroller Cores Q4 2013

Jan 07 2013 AMD Roadmap

We see some interesting new information through this brand new roadmap. Not only will AMD's new flagship 28 nm Temash Tablet SoC sport four Cores, yes FOUR cores (not two as previously reported), but it will be released in the end of Q2 beginning of Q3 2013.

Another interesting note is to see that steamroller is alive and well and is said to be released in its APU form later this year in Q4.

Good to see K10.5 still kicking with an even more tweaked core known as Jaguar, which is said to bring over 15% increase in IPC performance, and over 10% higher clocks over previous Brazos core.

No Desktop Flagship Steamroller this year guys! We'll have to wait and see how AMD pulls this one off in Q1 2014, during which all Soc/APU/CPU's will move towards Steamroller/Excavator core design.

So which Tablet SoC will prevail in CPU performance, how about GPU?

Intel's Bay Trail 22nm 4 core Atom based on ivy Bridge Core 

HD 4000 

OR

AMD's 28nm Temash A Series 4 core based on the much improved Jaguar Core?

AMD 8270

You decide!

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AMD Temash : Microsoft Surface Pro 2? Cheaper, Better Battery Life, Better Performance!

So rumors say that Microsoft is ditching Nvidia and Intel for Qualcomm and AMD in their Surface and Surface Pro.

It seems that battery life and graphics performance is something consumers need over raw CPU on their tablets these days. Since Apple released their retina Ipad 3, resolution past 1080p on tablets will be the norm  by 2014.

We know that intel's HD 4000 - 6@350-1100 Mhz found in ULV intel i5/i7 parts cant be much better than future 7000/8000 series Temash GPUs, and they are said to last a measly 4 hrs, which is embarrassing compared to the ipad 4's 10 hours. 

We know the intel HD 4000 scores about 2564 in 3DMark 06. The Temash part will most likely sport a 7270m-8380m, or something of the likes. For comparison sake, a 6380m found in a low voltage mobile llano part has a score of 2639, and for desktop Brazos 2.0, the E2-1800's HD 6340 has a score of 2527. 

I estimate that the Temash GPU will have a score at least over 2200, but will perform better in modern DX11 games when compared to the ULV HD 4000. You can quote me on that.  

Temash will be AMD's first 28nm APU and will have clocks around 2 Ghz, with a 15% IPC advantage over current 40nm Bobcat cores found in Brazos and Brazos 2.0. Battery life will also be double intels, around 8 hours. 

We will have to wait until June until Temash products are distributed to the public, but its capabilities will be first shown at CES 2013 Jan 8-11. 

EDIT: Sea Islands 8000 series GPUs will have full support for Direct X 11.1. 

EDIT 2: It appears that Temash will only sport Two Jaguar Cores, but this is not confirmed. 

Tablet Battle : AMD Z-60 vs Nvidia Tegra 3 vs Intel Atom N2600/Z2670

Enter Hondo : AMD Z-60 Tablet APU

Graphics Performance

GLbenchmark 2.5.1

AMD Z-60 : 36 fps

Tegra 3 : 13 fps

Thats a 277% difference!

Round 1 : Tegra 3

3DMark 06

AMD Z-60 : 1701

Intel Atom N2600 : 373

Thats a 456% difference!

Round 2 : Intel Atom N2600 , Tegra 3

CPU performance

PCMark Vantage

AMD Z-60 : 1770

Atom N2600 : 1803

That's a tie!

Round 3: Intel Atom N2600

There is no doubt about it, that the extra graphics power costs more power. The intel atom Z2760 (1.7W) is the tablet variant of the N2600 (3.5W)

It doesnt seem there is a class of Windows 8 tablets out there even close to the Z-60, especially in graphics performance.  EDIT: i5/i7 tablets over 1000 USD will out perform the Z-60  but at a higher envelope (17W)

link

It will be interesting to see if AMD comes out with a FirePro DX 11.1 tablet for professional graphical tasks. (source)

Guess Who's Back

Whats in the news for AMD?

* Stocks have plummeted (Buy now?), but hopes are high for 2013! AMD will NOT be sold to other tech giants!

* AMD FX 8350 released ($ 195), and it overclocks very well (5.0 Ghz on Air, 5.2 Ghz on liquid)! For the price range, absolutely destroys the locked i5-3570 which is stuck at 3.4 ghz ($ 219)

* Trinity Laptop/Desktop Released. Graphics power is unmatched by intel offerings. A desktop i7 3770k's HD 4000 (77W) falls significantly behind the mobile 7600G found in a 14" ultrathin.(25W)

* Hondo Z-60 released, cant wait to see performance when compared to intel's tablet offerings

* The industry's first quad core 28nm APU,  ready to be demo'd (Tamesh and Kabini)

* Next Gen Mac Pro's will sport 7970 and workstation W9000 offerings from AMD (Nvidia lost this one)

* A10-5800k Overclocked to 7.87 Ghz, AMD FX 8350 Overclocked to 8.37 Ghz on L2N, set to break world record held by the former bulldozer core

* The AMD 7990 is the most powerful consumer graphics card in the world, with 12.11 beta drivers absolutley trounces the GTX 690.

* The AMD S10000 is the industries most powerful server graphics card, with two GPUs in one, at a price point well below that of Nvidia's less powerful single GPU GK110 Flagship the Tesla K20x.

More news and insight to come!

Here is a taste of mobile trinity's performance:

My 14" Samsung 3 series NP355V4C

AMD A10-4600m 7660G + 7670m dual graphics

Dimensions: 13.2 x 9.2 x 1.28 inches

Weight: 4.96 pounds

Price - $549

14" Lenovo Y480

i7 3610 Qm + Nvidia 650m
Dimensions: 13.6 x 9.4 x 1.3 inches

Weight : 4.5 pounds

Price - $1249

It looks like my budget gaming laptop has a noticeably higher graphics score than this thick beast. I challenge anyone to find a laptop for less than 549 with intel and nvidia parts that can achieve over 2249 GPU score.

Stay Tuned!

BRB ... Diablo 3

More Trinity Benchmarks! IPC on-par with Phenom II, ~43% better single core performance than Llano! (K 10.5)

Leaked Benchmarks! More to Come!

A10-4600m vs A8-3500m

+38% higher single core CPU performance. 

+23% higher multi core CPU performance. 

Remember 4 physical cores gives a scaling benefit over 2 modules.

+29% higher multi core CPU performance

+ 43% higher multi core CPU/GPU performance

+41% higher CPU/GPU performance

+220% higher CPU/GPU performance

Looks like Trinity is ready to hit Intel where it hurts! IPC looks great! This is great news for Vishera (FX 8350). Remember old bulldozer arch has significantly worse IPC than Llano. 

NOTE: Compare the single threaded performance to the Phenom II X4 940 in cinebench 10 found here. 

We see at 3 Ghz (even before turbo), the Phenom II X4 940 (scores 2626) actually falls behind the performance of a single core from the A10 mobile part (2792) also at 3 Ghz (with turbo). IPC is looking ahead of K10.5! (by over +6% in this case)

The only benefit older arch has is better scaling. Per core performance, however, is looking ahead of phenom II. This loss in scaling is more than made up for with higher clocks. Comparing a 6C/6T Phenom II X6 @ 4.2 Ghz to a 3M/6T Piledriver CPU @ 4.9 Ghz will be an even match when all cores are used, but for a single core, the Piledriver CPU will edge ahead of the Phenom II by a significant amount (~20%). 

(Gaming benchmarks will be looking much better for Piledriver) 

With current bulldozer arch (in the case of the FX 8150), both scaling and single core performance are lacking when compared to older phenom II processors, with only a max clock advantage. At least AMD has made up for one of these pitfalls. We will see just how much scaling increases with the newer architecture when official benchmark reviews are out tomorrow! I am guessing only ~5% or so. Overclockability will also increase roughly 5% when compared to the FX 8150. 

Phenom II X4 4C/4T - 3.96 x Scaling , 1.00 single core performance @ 3Ghz, hits 4.3 Ghz

FX Bulldozer 2M/4T - 3.28 x Scaling, 0.75 single core performance @ 3 Ghz, hits 4.9 Ghz

FX Piledriver 2M/4T  - 3.44 x Scaling, 0.97 single core performance @ 3 Ghz, hits 5.1 Ghz

Intel i5 3570k- 4C/4T - 3.56 x Scaling, 1.25 single core performance @ 3 Ghz, hits 4.9 Ghz

This of course this is a rough estimate, but you get the idea! 

For the 4M/8T FX 8350, I estimate @ 5.1 Ghz it will match Ivy Bridge i5 3570k single core performance @ 4.3 Ghz. But will scale roughly 85% higher when all threads are used. 

My cost estimate for the FX 8350 will be ~300 USD. 

EDIT: Given officially released clock-speeds (3.2 Ghz not 3.0 Ghz) IPC is looking on par or slightly below K10.5. 

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