Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
AMD Details Vishera
AMD will launch three eight-core processors led by the AMD FX 8350 but it also plans to launch two six-core processors for people who like to spend a bit less.
The AMD FX6350 is a 125W six-core with a 3.9GHz base clock and 4.2 maximum turbo core clock. It comes with 14MB of cache, supports DDR 3 1866 and comes in AM3+. Naturally this is a 32nm SOI product just as its predecessor as AMD is not ready for 22nm fun yet.
The runner up is a 3.5GHz clocked six core that turbos to 4.1GHz, all that while staying in 95W TDP envelope. The name is FX 6300 and these two boys should launch together. The rest of the specification is the same as with faster brother. These two processors will replace the Zambezi based FX 6120 and FX 6100. These parts as well as FX 6200 that is also a part of Zambezi legacy are all selling between $190 and $250 which is definitely not a lot of money for quite powerful processors.
AMD Cuts Radeon Prices
After the recent price cut back in July, that included a $50 price cut for HD 7970, HD 7950 and HD 7870 graphics cards, AMD has apparently decided to cut some of these prices even further taking the HD 7950 3GB graphics card down to $320, or just in line with Nvidia’s recently release GTX 660 Ti graphics card.
AMD has already dropped the HD 7970 from $479 to $429, HD 7950 from $399 to US $349 and the HD 7870 down from $349 to $299. The new price cut skips the HD 7970 graphics card but includes the HD 7950, HD 7870 as well as the 1 and 2GB versions of the HD 7850.
The most important is probably the price cut for the 3GB HD 7950 which battles it out with Nvidia’s recently released GTX 660 Ti. The HD 7950 3GB is, according to the report, will receive a $30 price cut placing it at $320. The HD 7870 2GB graphics card got another $50 price cut pushing it down to $250 which probably makes it one of the most interesting mid-range graphics cards on the market.
AMD also decided to drop price on 1 and 2GB version of the HD 7850 graphics card taking them down by $40 to $190 and $210, respectively.
AMD Officially Launches Trinity Mobile
AMD has finally and officially lifted an NDA veil off its mobile Trinity A-series APU lineup based on the 2nd-gen Bulldozer CPU core, aka Piledriver, and VLIW4 Northern Islands GPU squeezed together on a 32nm SOI die.
Architecture-wise, AMD’s Trinity combines two to four Piledriver x86 cores combined with up to 384 VLIW4 Radeon cores on a 32nm die which ends up as a 246mm2 chip with 1.303B transistors, slightly more than Llano’s 228mm2/1.178B. Since it is made in the same 32nm manufacturing process as Llano, the greatest win for Trinity are actual CPU and GPU performance improvements as well as impressive power consumption improvements when compared to Llano APUs.
Same as the FX-series desktop parts based on the Bulldozer architecture, AMD’s Trinity CPU part has a 2+1 integer/floating point design where you get two integer cores that share a single floating point scheduler. Although it appears to the OS as two cores, each Piledriver module actually has less resources than traditional core design. But with Piledriver, those Bulldozer kinks got ironed out as much as possible, improving IPC (instruction per cycle), reducing leakage, reducing CAC and giving it a slight frequency uplift.
As far as the GPU is concerned, we are looking at quite familiar Northern Islands VLIW4 part, a same one that was behind Cayman Radeon HD 6970 graphics card. Of course, the GPU has been cut down to up to 384 stream processors (organized in 6 SIMDs) with 24 texture units and 8 ROPs. The clocks have also gone down to 497MHz base clock that can “turbo” up to 686MHz.
Trinity Launching On Desktops This Summer
Comments Off on Trinity Launching On Desktops This Summer
AMD is expected to introduce its new mobile Trinity APU in a week or so and now we are hearing some timeframes for desktop parts as well.
According to Digitimes, desktop Trinity parts are coming in August, while Brazos 2.0 chips are expected in June. There is no word on Trinity ULV parts yet and we believe they will be the most interesting of the lot.
AMD Shows Off New Radeon Chips
AMD has now officially updated its HD 7000M lineup of mobile GPUs with HD 7700M, HD 7800M and HD 7900M GPUs that are all based on AMD’s 28nm GCN architecture. The first in line that should show up in notebooks is the flagship HD 7970M GPU.
As noted, the entire lineup is based on AMD’s 28nm GCN architecture, but as always, the naming scheme of the AMD mobile parts has nothing to do with the desktop ones. The HD 7900M, codename Wimbledon, is actually based on 28nm Pitcairn destkop GPU that features 1280 stream processors, 80 texture units, 32 ROPs and up to 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.
The HD 7800M series, codename Heathrow and the Radeon HD 7700M series, codename Chelsea, are both based on Cape Verde desktop GPU but with a slight twist. While Heathrow, HD 7800M series features fully enabled Cape Verde GPU with 640 stream processors, 40 texture units and 16 ROPs, the Chelsea HD 7700M series is based on a “crippled” Cape Verde core with 512 stream processors and 32 texture units. Both the HD 7800M series and the HD 7700M series will feature up to 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 128-bit memory interface. Of course, we expect at least two SKUs for both HD 7700M and HD 7800M series.
AMD also decided to ditch the PCI-Express 3.0 support on the HD 7700M series mainly as this one is aimed at lower-performance platforms that are all about power saving, and performance gain was simply too low.
For now, AMD has only shed precise details regarding the HD 7970M GPU that is based on the fully enabled Pitcairn GPU with 1280 stream processors that will end up clocked at 850MHz for the GPU and 4.8GHz for 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.
As you can notice, the HD 7970M has lower GPU clocks than its HD 7870 desktop counterpart, but AMD also decided to keep the memory at the same level resulting in 153.6GB/s of memory bandwidth. According to AMD slides, HD 7970M should end up to be anywhere between 30 and 60% faster than HD 6990M and anywhere between 16 and 76 percent when compared to Nvidia current high-end GTX 675M GPU.
AMD’s Trinity To Have Fewer Cores
AMD’s soon to launch A10 5800K is a 100W quad-core Trinity 32nm CPU with 3.8 GHz base clock and 4.2GHz maximal clock possible with AMD turbo core dynamic overclocking technology.
The A10 5800K has 4MB of L2 cache, supports DDR3 1866, dual graphics configurations as well as AMD’s new FM2 socket. The fun part is new HD 7660D GPU that works at 800MHz and comes with 384 shader units. The current APU market leader A8 3870K that works at 3GHz has HD 6550 graphics with 400 cores running at 600MHz.
AMD claims that new Radeon cores from Trinity CPU including A10 5800K are more efficient and this is the main reason why you have fewer cores that can deliver superior performance. The other reason is that with 800MHz core clock they can probably process more data, meaning that HD 7660D of A10 5800K should end up quite a bit faster than the Llano A8 3870K.
All these Radeon cores are a key feature of the Vision Engine that accelerates GPU enabled applications. AMD also tells the world that Trinity is DirectX 11 compatible, supports Direct compute and the new A series of processors, including the A10 5800K all the way to dual-core A4 5300, should not have any issues playing Blu-ray 3D. The GPU part of Trinity supports AMD V, UVD3 as well as Open CL acceleration.
Will AMD’s HD 7950 Debut Next Month?
AMD has decided to delay the launch of its HD 7950 graphics card to early February.
This comes after news that the HD 7970, which AMD ‘launched’ on 22 December, will not be available until 9 January. This wasn’t received too well by the media and customers as it does help to have some stock to sell on launch day.
To avoid another bashing for a ‘paper launch’ the firm will launch the HD 7950 in February when it will actually be available. Guru 3D had confirmed this but the article has since been taken down.
AMD has told us that it won’t comment on rumour, speculation or any unannounced products.
The upcoming HD 7950 graphics card will use the same 28nm Southern Islands Tahiti GPU as the HD 7970, with the latter the first to do so. According to AMD it has 4.3bn transistors, more on-chip cache and greater overclocking potential than previous cards.
.
AMD Ships One Million Llano Processors
It appears that AMD has successfully managed to ship one million Llano chips in the second quarter, which is weeks ahead of the official launch.
AMD released the news during its earnings conference call. Where interim CEO Thomas Seifert said demand for Llano was strong. “We expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp,” he noted.
If you look back at AMD’s Brazos launch, they managed to ship around one million units ahead of its scheduled launch, in the fourth quarter of 2010. Conversely, introducing Llano will be a bit more challenging, because AMD is planning to offer many varieties of mobile and desktop SKUs; including affordable dual- and triple-core processors. Therefore, Llano is expected to outpace Brazos very soon. AMD also made mention in their earnings call that total APU shipments for the quarter hit seven million. That said, so 6 million of them were Brazos processors.
It is believed that AMD Llano chip will take 50 percent of their total CPU shipments by the end of the year. In the first quarter of 2012, the Llano is expected to garner over 60 percent of their shipments.
AMD A75 Motherboards Economically Priced
Comments Off on AMD A75 Motherboards Economically Priced
It appears that AMD’s A75 motherboards have finally started to hit the streets. Furthermore, we were truly shocked to see these MB’s economically priced for about $60.00.
Do not get too over excited in reference to the pricing because this gets you a decent A75 micro-ATX motherboard with up to four USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 6Gbps ports matched with a FM1 socket. It’s also worth pointing out that you will not get these same features like USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps on a comparable Intel platform in the same price range; you’d pay more.
We noticed that online retailer Newegg.com has an AMD motherboard selling for $59.99 after the rebate; otherwise it will cost $72.99. We expect the more serious computer geeks to opt for more muscle in regards to their motherboards; so they can whet their appetite for a good A75 for about $150.00.
Gigabyte Debuts New Motherboards
July 14, 2011 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
Comments Off on Gigabyte Debuts New Motherboards
Gigabyte just announced their new slate of motherboards that will support AMD’s A75 series chipsets and the latest AMD A-Series APUs or Llano. The new A75 based motherboards are said to offer DIY PC builders and developers a higher level of 3D and multimedia performance that is scalable and said to offer the best value upgrade path imaginable.
Gigabyte’s VP of Service and Marketing Henry Kao is quoted as saying that the new boards were new and exciting as AMD new APU’s were “ground breaking” APU technology. As well as bringing AMD A-Series technology to DIY users who demand excellent gaming and multimedia performance on a budget, these motherboards also offer a compelling upgrade path that includes Dual Graphics configurations.
The A75 motherboards from Gigabyte feature an AMD A75 ‘Hudson’ chipset supporting the latest 32 nanometer AMD A-Series APUs. That said, these chips are the first ever to combine a DX11-capable, high performance graphics processor with the option of a dual or quad core CPU on one silicon die, offering a 3D gaming and multimedia experience which is similar to a discrete graphics configuration.