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Can Trinity be good for MMORPG gaming?
Rumors say that AMD's next generation APU, code named "Trinity", should arrive tomorrow, at least for laptops. Like it's predecessor Llano, Trinity is primarily aimed at laptops. Trinity will have four "Piledriver" cores split into two modules, as well as a 384 shader graphics engine, together in a single chip.
On the processor side, Piledriver is the next generation version of Bulldozer cores. That means AMD can take what they learned from what went wrong with Bulldozer and try to fix it in Piledriver. Architecture improvements of the sort that we saw when moving from the Phenom to the Phenom II are entirely plausible. The transition from the Phenom to the Phenom II also included a new process node. Trinity is on the same process node as Llano, but it's a now mature process, rather than the inaugural product on what was then a rather troubled process.
The problem for Llano was that the processor was rather slower than you'd want. At launch, the top 35 W bin, the A8-3500M, had a base clock speed of only 1.5 GHz, and even with turbo core, only went up to 2.4 GHz. Moving to 45 W bins only pushed the latter number up to 2.6 GHz. If you needed good single-threaded performance, Llano simply didn't deliver it.
Rumors say that the top 35 W bin of Trinity, the A10-4600M, will have a stock clock of 2.3 GHz and a max turbo boost of 3.2 GHz. IPC matters, too, but if Trinity matches Llano's IPC, then that could realistically offer processor performance good enough for everything on the market. Trinity isn't likely to catch a Core i7-2630QM in performance, but might not be all that far behind. That's Sandy Bridge, not Ivy Bridge--but recall that Sandy Bridge was genuinely good enough for gaming, not merely the best available that gamers could afford.
Llano had the problem that, if you didn't want the integrated graphics, then you didn't want Llano, period, as the processor just wasn't fast enough to justify buying. Trinity will still have the integrated graphics as a major selling point, but if it can match or beat Llano IPC with those clock speeds, then Trinity+Cape Verde will make a ton of sense for a ~$1000 gaming laptop. Trinity+Pitcairn could even make some sense as a high end gaming laptop.
Speaking of which, Trinity has integrated graphics onboard, and that's also a major upgrade from Llano. Trinity is VLIW4, like Cayman, so 384 shaders in Trinity means 6 SIMD engines, whereas 400 shaders in Llano meant only 5 SIMD engines. The A10-4600M is rumored to clock the GPU at 686 MHz, too, as compared to only 444 MHz for even the 45 W A8-3530MX. That should bring huge improvements in graphical performance, provided that there is adequate memory bandwidth to feed it.
And that's a huge caveat. Llano was pretty sensitive to memory bandwidth. With a much stronger GPU and the same memory bandwidth available, Trinity will likely be far more so. And OEMs did a horrible job of supplying memory to Llano. Not only did they pretty much never use 1600 MHz memory, but sometimes, they'd only use 1066 MHz. Often, they'd mismatch the memory channels. Sometimes they'd even leave one vacant entirely. That's fixable by an end user, but still, they shouldn't have to.
I think that AMD ought to come up with some marketing buzzword that means a Trinity APU with high clocked memory and the channels properly matched, and then have a marketing campaign trying to tell people, this is what you want. Tell OEMs that they can only use whatever the sticker is if they do the memory configuration right (say, properly matched channels and at least 1333 MHz for lower bins of Trinity, and 1600 MHz for the top bin). That would be more meaningful than their spider platform or dragon platform or whatever they're on now. Maybe they could reappropriate their "Vision" marketing blather to actually be meaningful.
While Trinity is very much focused on laptops, it will come to desktops as well. Rumors say that tomorrow's launch is laptop-only, with desktop parts to come later. Will Trinity make sense in desktops?
On the processor side, rumors put the top bin at 3.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz turbo. With probable IPC improvements over Bulldozer cores, that should mean a processor that handily crushes an FX-4100, even if the IPC difference is small. The odds that Trinity catches a Core i5-3570K in processor performance are very slim, however. So you won't want Trinity in a high end gaming desktop.
But that still leaves two desktop markets potentially open to Trinity: people who will use a discrete card and want something cheaper than Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge, and people who will use the integrated graphics for gaming. Llano had only the latter available to it.
Will Trinity plus a discrete card make sense? Unlike in laptops, being able to shut down the discrete card and use the integrated graphics to save power while you're not gaming doesn't matter much. Indeed, losing several percentage points on gaming performance because you have to copy everything the discrete card does over to the integrated graphics frame buffer in order to display it would make this undesirable, even if you can do it.
But here, it depends on how Trinity is priced. If top bin desktop Trinity plus a decent motherboard costs just as much as an Ivy Bridge quad core, then no. You want a Core i5-3570K, not an A10-something or other. If it's the same price as an FX-4100, then yes, Trinity would make a lot of sense. You want Trinity, not an FX-4100. Exactly how high the price on Trinity could go and make sense in this market depends on precisely how good it is, but I'm guessing that the highest that it would make sense is somewhere around $130 or $150.
I would like to see some desktop Trinity APUs with an unlocked processor multiplier and crippled graphics. There was a bin of Llano that disabled the graphics entirely. I hope that AMD doesn't take the approach of, much of the graphics didn't work, so we're going to cripple the processor, too. If the processor side of the chip is perfectly fine, but the graphics side is problematic, then sell it to someone who wants it for a desktop where he won't use the integrated graphics, anyway.
There's also the market for ultra-cheap gaming desktops with integrated graphics. While you could do this with Llano, it had the problem that the processor wasn't terribly powerful. Upgrading the processor later would mean replacing the graphics (because it's in the same chip) and motherboard (Trinity is Socket FM2, while Llano was FM1), which wasn't a good option. Trinity will let you get a far more viable processor, which should give the system a lot more longevity.
But for a part to go in the low budget market depends tremendously on how it's priced. Furthermore, you don't necessarily need the top bin of Llano, but you do want a pretty high bin with everything fully functional if you're going to rely on the integrated graphics for gaming. Can Trinity with 1600 MHz memory come in cheaper than a cheaper but otherwise comparable processor, 1333 MHz memory, and a $60 discrete card? That depends on how AMD prices it, but I think it will.
Trinity could also be a very nifty part for small form (e.g., Mini ITX) "desktops". The trouble with a small form factor is that it's hard to dissipate the heat. With only one major heat source, Trinity could fit into a small space and make it easy to clear out the heat. If you're comparing Trinity to a cheaper processor plus a $60 video card, Trinity could end up an easy winner in small form factors just on the basis that it's easier to cool.
Comments
Er, you are like a rocket scientist or something right?
You didn't address this to me, it's beyond my ability to comprehend all the fine details.
So the only question I can ask (since I'm in the market for a new gaming laptop) is, have you heard plans for any manufacturers to start employing this new processor and if so, any timelines for seeing it in the marketplace?
(also, being a MMO nerd, I thought the title referred to trinity combat mechanics, which is how the riff raff found his way here)
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As long as Trinity is wearing black latex...yeah.
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Even though you get on the back of the Llano APUs, AMD sold 20 million of them and they are the reason AMD still has something to hang their hat on, and a future to hope for.
The slowness of the Llano CPU is primarily a benchmark trait. Even if a Sandy Bridge is twice as fast, when you click on a program or a browser, the computer needs to start with the harddrive, and alot of factors all work in to determine the time it takes before the program is up. And as such, a twice as fast processor ends up only increasing the time it takes to open a browser by 10-20%, as the harddisk is the slow variable in the equation.
So you see people buy SSD drives, and they write that this is the best improvement they have put into their computer yet, and they are right. A twice as fast processor would hardly be noticable had they chosen that instead.
So that is why you can go on Newegg and read feedback on Llano machines, and all these kids are describing a "Beastly processor" and how much better this is than their former laptop. Reason being, they felt it ran the OS pretty well, then they got courageous and tried one of their games, and it was awesome. And so the Llano is a superstrong CPU in the eyes of this usersegment. They aren't incorrect, they are users and they are right, with regards to what they use their laptop for.
News and rumours seem to know that the next gen APUs will increase the GPU power considerably, going from being on par with a 525M gpu, to being on par with a 540M/630M GPU.
Thats pretty good in a 15 inch laptop with a 1366 x 768 resolution. And I suspect the Trinitys will become the heavy contenders on the cheap laptop market, which is the big market. Intel suspects that too, shown clearly by their urgency to suddenly have decent graphics on their cpus.
But right now they are behind. News even tell stories of how AMD Sleekbooks with Trinity ( And an article on Toms too)will be priced at 500$, while Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks with a corresponding graphicscard will be starting at 999$. Not mentioning the heatproblems and whatnot tied in with dedicated GPU + ultrathin laptop. So even on their own invention, the Ultrabooks, Intel might be facing a good beating.
The customer is always right.
I'm not saying that Llano was bad. If it's not for gaming purposes, then a Llano A4 is a nice choice for a cheap laptop that will do everything that most people would want it to do.
For gaming, Llano was very nice if you were on a tight budget. But it wasn't a viable choice in higher end machines, as the processor just wasn't fast enough to be a credible alternative to Sandy Bridge. Higher end gaming machines would have a discrete card, anyway, so awful Intel integrated graphics weren't such a crippling problem there.
Trinity will still dominate the budget gaming laptop segment, just like Llano did. The question is whether it can be a good alternative further up the chain, unlike Llano. And it might. We should know shortly.
Trinity will never be good for high end gaming desktops, though. Even if you prefer AMD, that's what Vishera is for.
That's hard to predict. Adoption of Llano was hampered by poor yields, which meant that AMD couldn't provide enough good chips to laptop vendors. Rumors say that yields of Trinity are much better.
For lower end laptops in the $500-$700 range, I'd say it's all but guaranteed that HP will offer something very soon. A number of other laptop vendors will probably offer Trinity laptops, too, since they offered Llano.
The bigger question is whether there will be higher end Trinity laptops with a discrete card worth using for gaming in a ~$1000 laptop. I'd expect to see some Trinity+Cape Verde laptops from a few vendors, but I have no idea how soon. They might launch tomorrow, or it might take a couple of months.
As for Trinity+Pitcairn in a ~$1500 gaming laptop, I'm guessing that no one will even offer that. Last generation, Clevo and Alienware were the only vendors to offer high end gaming laptops. Alienware is Dell, which has traditionally been hesitant to offer AMD processors. Today, Dell doesn't offer any AMD processors at all, not even Llano or Brazos. I don't think Clevo offers any AMD processors, either.
Trinity is out, at least for laptops. Is it able to hang with Sandy Bridge in processor performance? Nope. Not even Sandy Bridge dual cores, and while two cores with hyperthreading is more than two cores, and two Piledriver modules is less than four cores, Trinity still effectively has more cores than a Sandy Bridge dual core. Still, Trinity does beat Llano at pretty much everything.
Is it able to beat Intel's latest and greatest HD Graphics 4000? Yes, usually--and sometimes by a lot. And Trinity graphics handily beat Llano graphics as well.
But it's not entirely a clean comparison here. The Ivy Bridge quad cores are 45 W, while Trinity is 35 W. Llano had both 35 W and 45 W parts. While Trinity is clearly better than a 35 W Llano, would it also perform better than a 45 W Llano? Maybe, but that's far less clear. And while Trinity gets clobbered by Ivy Bridge on the processor side, the margin would surely be less if the parts had the same TDP. That Trinity wins on graphics even with the smaller TDP is surely notable.
So in one sense, this is just a continuation of how it's been for a while: AMD wins on graphics, and Intel wins on processor performance. If you compare this generation to the previous one, then AMD's margin on graphics has perhaps shrunk, while Intel's processor lead has grown. But gains for Intel shouldn't be terribly shocking when Intel gets a full node die shrink and AMD is on the same process node as before.
So at the high end, you still want Ivy Bridge. But in a budget gaming laptop that uses integrated graphics, you'd prefer Trinity to Ivy Bridge, even if you ignored power consumption and price tags--both of which will surely be additional advantages for Trinity. And even that's assuming you get the Intel HD Graphics 4000, not the 2500, which will get completely slaughtered by Trinity.
Does a Trinity+Cape Verde gaming laptop make sense? If the price is right, then I think so. But so does an Ivy Bridge dual core+GK107 laptop, which will be the natural competitor. Who wins that comparison? It's not obvious, on performance or price tag. I expect that we'll find out once laptops actually launch. Remember that Ivy Bridge dual cores aren't out yet, and Nvidia has a severe shortage of all Kepler parts.
And what about desktops? Laptops use turbo so aggressively that it's hard to get a clean IPC comparison. Trinity is only launching for laptops today, not desktops. Once you get Trinity in a desktop and can disable turbo and compare it to Llano, Phenom II, etc., we'll have a better idea of how the processor architecture shapes up.
One notable thing about Llano is that, even with turbo, power consumption was still very low. It's as if Llano's turbo simply wasn't aggressive enough to use the full TDP when it should have. It's plausible that Trinity's gains over Llano are simply more aggressive turbo usage to get higher performance by using the full TDP. More aggressive turbo is surely a good thing, but if that's the cause, then "it beats Llano at everything within the same TDP" doesn't automatically mean that Piledriver cores are so great.
Even so, Bulldozer was a major power hog. If Piledriver can beat Llano handily in the same TDP, then it demonstrably isn't a power hog akin to Bulldozer. An FX-4100 had the same 95 W TDP as a Core i5-2500K, while offering far less performance. Bulldozer cores in a laptop would have been a disaster. But Piledriver works in a laptop, and fixes whatever went awry with Bulldozer. Given desktop TDPs, can AMD ramp up performance to be much faster than Bulldozer? We'll have to wait for Trinity to launch for desktops first.
I've been saving up so I can get a Trinity APU to have something for work. I was not expecting much, just need it to have an ethernet port, boot quickly, and have a long battery life. So having such a low benchmark I am really liking how the APU is turning out. Also only took me a week to save up enough to buy one which is great considering each major component in my PC cost about as much as this Trinity laptop will cost me.
I didn't know budget laptops still had a decent market. I thought tablets and their mini-games were dominating to the point where if anyone wanted to game on a laptop it would be high end. I'm curious to see what the market looks like for budget laptops actually.
Great post as always Quizz
When talking about Intel's dual core processors, I probably should have mentioned their market segmentation. I'll make up some model numbers and clock speeds for upcoming Ivy Bridge dual cores (not acutal predictions, so they're hypothetical processors) to illustrate.
Would an AMD A10-4600M beat a Core i5-3520M with a stock clock speed of 2.7 GHz and turbo boost up to 3.5 GHz on one core or 3.3 GHz on both at once? Not if processor performance is the only thing that matters. Trinity would lose that comparison, whether it's single-threaded programs or programs that can scale well to several cores. And Trinity would often lose by a lot.
Would an AMD A10-4600M beat a Core i3-3320M with a stock clock speed of 2.3 GHz and no turbo boost? In programs that only test processor performance, it probably would pretty often, though not always. And if graphical performance matters, then Trinity wins.
Would an AMD A10-4600M beat an Ivy Bridge Pentium dual core with a stock clock speed of 2 GHz and no turbo boost or hyperthreading? Yes, at nearly everything, and often by a lot. And that's even if you ignore graphical performance, where Trinity would have a bigger advantage yet.
So it's not a simple matter of an Ivy Bridge dual core beating a Trinity quad core in processor performance. It depends on which bins you're comparing. And for now, I'm keeping the comparison to 35 W processors.
can a trinity be good for mmorpg..simple word yes
UO top dog everyons momma played it..greatest evar at that time
AC fell in between these two ..still good
EQ "old style" top dog everyones momma played it..greatest evar at the time
what im saying these titles rly set the standerd of mmorpgs..imo at their time of shine..you could lable em as "trinity of mmorpgs"
then came along wow
wow top dog everyones moma played it..greatest newer type mmorpg at that time
wether you like it or not..its true..then it became very very bland because they had to appeal to the masses..wich were younger..very younger crowd..so now you see title after title after title being pumped out with "wow like features" to make that $$ for their IP
hopefully sooner or later this type of wow genra will pass..but i think not..if theres a younger crowd..theres more money to be made seeing they dont rly see nor care whats behind the curtain
a trinity is good for the mmorpg community ..but only if it changes the way the game is totally played..tweeking something or adding something to a themepark / sandbox rly wont do it ..it needs to be fresh and offer something new and innovated
this game is what rly got me started playing mmo's then lead to the green / black screen apple mmo's that played sorrta like D&d ..UO / AC / EQ / SB / WOW ..now its soo outragious and never nuttin new iv seemed to given up ..yes iv played many / MANY others...still waiting on arche age but even then im not holding my breath
HAHA SRY WRONGE POST..DELETE EEAT! HOW I GOT HERE ILL NEVER KNOW! SOOOORY LOL
A lot depends on which games you want to play. One important thing that Trinity does is to bring a given level of performance into smaller form factors with lower price tags.
Suppose that you want a 14" laptop that is $600 and under 5 pounds. That's reasonably portable as laptops go. Get such a laptop based on Trinity and you can get one that, in addition to being portable, can also run every single game listed on this site, nearly all of them smoothly, and many of them at high graphical settings (though not most recent AAA releases). It wasn't very long ago that getting a laptop with passable gaming performance meant it would be big, heavy, hot, and expensive.
Most tablets can't run any of the games listed on this site. They can run simple games, but if that's all you want, then Trinity can do that, too. And even apart from gaming, tablets aren't a viable replacement for laptops. Ever try to type on a tablet?
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In a related thought, Alienware recently discontinued their M11x R3. I don't know if they're abandoning the 11" form factor entirely, or if they've got an M11x R4 upcoming. But imagine if they made the M11x R4 based on an A10-4600M. As compared to the M11x R3, Trinity would typically offer better performance, and sometimes a lot better. Meanwhile, it would use less power to offer that performance. It would require a lot less hardware inside, and that means skipping a lot of the custom engineering. The Trinity laptop would likely be lighter, though probably not thinner. But Dell could probably charge hundreds less for it than they did for the M11x R3, and still make a larger profit margin.
That would be an improvement in virtually every way imaginable. Will Dell go ahead and offer that? They might, though given their historical hesitance to offer anything AMD, I'm guessing that they won't. But if they don't, then someone else might, and that would make the Alienware M11x R3 so thoroughly obsolete as to be laughable. No wonder they had to discontinue it, whether it was to make way for a next generation replacement or not.
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Trinity isn't just for gaming, either. Intel has recently been pushing "ultrabooks", basically to compete with the MacBook Air. The problem is that the thin form factor means ULV processors, and a discrete video card is a no-go. That means that for an ultrabook, you have to go with Intel integrated graphics. Ivy Bridge integrated graphics are less bad than previous generations, and might allow for ultrabooks that aren't completely terrible.
But if you're getting a ULV processor, you want Trinity (dual core with some of the SIMD engines disabled), not Ivy Bridge. Ivy Bridge will offer better processor performance in a 17 W TDP, but few people would notice the difference outside of gaming. ULV Trinity graphics will be a lot better than ULV Ivy Bridge, which means you could get a 3 pound laptop that will run most of the games on this site smoothly at suitable graphical settings. Oh, and Trinity will be cheaper, too.
HP has already announced some upcoming "sleekbooks" with Trinity, that are basically ultrabooks with an AMD processor and graphics instead of Intel. (They can't call them "ultrabooks" because Intel has that trademark, and insists that "ultrabook" means certain specifications that include an Intel processor.) In addition to offering performance, HP's sleekbooks will also be cheaper than their ultrabooks. So why buy an ultrabook? You shouldn't--even once Ivy Bridge arrives.
Rumors say that the next MacBook Air might be ULV Trinity, too. Rumors say that the last MacBook Air would have been Llano, except that AMD just couldn't provide enough chips, as Llano yields were terrible. Trinity won't have that problem.
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LOL SRY DUDE SOME HOW I MUSTA LANDED THE WRONG WAY..JUST GET MOD TO DELETE HAHA MEHBAD
I hate the trinity. Tank, healer, DPS is so 2004.
Wait
Wrong Trinity?
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Well this review is out.
Dirt 3 on high detail and 4x AA running at 720 hd gets 36.6fps so thats pretty friggin good o.o Its an AMD Trinity A10-4600M but theres no price yet. If we can get these for like..500-700 then Im pretty sure its going to sell out extremely fast o.o
Heck Id save up and send one or 2 to my cousins who have no laptop to game with .
Edit : Toms Hardware review is out too.
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I should add that, even though the Ivy Bridge dual cores will probably be "Intel HD Graphics 4000", that doesn't mean that it will perform as well as the "Intel HD Graphics 4000" of Ivy Bridge quad cores that are used for comparison in some Trinity reviews.
One reason is simply the difference between a 45 W TDP and 35 W. A 35 W TDP likely means less aggressive turbo boost for graphics. That reduces graphics performance. Another is the difference in L3 cache. In Sandy Bridge, the graphics would use L3 cache for some purposes; I haven't read that Ivy Bridge graphics still do that, but I'd assume that it does. An Ivy Bridge quad core has a lot more L3 cache available than a dual core. I don't know whether the difference in graphical performance that makes will amount to anything more than a rounding error.
If you dig around in reviews, you'll probably find a few games where Ivy Bridge edges out Trinity when both are using integrated graphics. This doesn't automatically mean that the Intel graphics are outperforming the AMD graphics; it could easily be a processor bottleneck in Trinity.
Quite an improvement on the graphical side of things. This gotta make AMD the goto for decent gaming laptops.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22932/10