Revisiting The Trinity: AMD's APU Card

Revisiting The Trinity: AMD's APU Card

So I feel as though I should revisit my post from last night. I feel like it is going to be construed as biased against AMD. The fact is I've been a bit of an AMD fanboy for the last couple years. Looking for any processor that offered the best price to performance, you were looking at AMD. Both Intel and Nvidia had some shining examples but AMD pretty much had it on lock until recently. So what happened? What is AMD putting out now? Are they simply playing catch up? Or is there an AMD product that manages to satisfy the holy trinity?

The answer is a bit complicated. AMD's processors have failed to hit a single point, they're neither cheap, nor power efficient or low power, nor do they perform that great. Their GPU's at least have hit on the performance front, but use a ton of power, run hot, run loud, and are still not priced well enough to make up for these other short comings. So what does AMD have? They have their APUs. To understand APUs and what they are really you have to go back and look at iGPUs of the past.

Integrated GPUs have really never been any real good. Their only purpose was to be powerful enough to power a monitor and basic 2D images. For anything more any self respecting person would purchase a dedicated GPU. For years the iGPU was part of the motherboard, AMD had a different idea and felt a decent GPU could be fused with a CPU on one die. Intel beat them to the punch in a way with the first generation of core i3/5/7 processors featuring the intel HD graphics. Of course it still was pretty worthless. 

AMD gave us our first taste of what could be with their first gen A series APUs. For the first time ever we had a decent CPU melded with a decent GPU all in one. On the CPU side the A8-3870K wasn't about to beat any benchmarks but it performed solidly. The GPU was the first time we saw something integrated that could perform as well as some mid-range cards, albeit on the low end of the mid-range, but still it was impressive. It all came in a package with a 100w TDP and under $120. Overall it hit all the marks. It's value was relegated to niche market of people looking to have some gaming and 3D ability but did not want to use a dedicated card. It really was great for small form-factor HTPCs.

The next/current generation was a minor improvement, but was able to bring the performance of the previous gen down to 65w TDP in the case of the A10-5700. It definitely shows promise in this field, and will probably continue to be the only field where AMD manages to hit all the points of the trinity so it's a bit ironic that they code named it Trinity. The prospect of a APU where you have a decent CPU mixed in with a mid ranged GPU coming in around $100 with a TDP under 90w (hopefully closer to 65w and below) is very exciting in the desktop market.

Even more exciting is the prospect of seeing this in laptops. Most laptop CPU's that are worth a damn come in with a 35-45w TDP, while most GPU's come in at 45w, this doesn't serve too well in a laptop which is why most laptops that can do any sort of gaming are either big and loud, have poor battery life, run hot, or all of the above. If AMD can work its magic and give us a decent APU under 70w we could see that all change. We have the possibility of seeing thin and cool laptops that have pretty good battery life, that can also game fairly well.

Anyways I just felt like I should give AMD a fair shot because they're not entirely out of the running. They just have their focus in another direction and it is exciting. Keep an eye on them to see what comes out next, in particular in the mobile field.

The Price/Power/Performance Trinity: Processing Units

The Price/Power/Performance Trinity: Processing Units

When it comes to computer processors there are three specific important parts to it's impact. The price of the processor, the amount of power it uses, and it's performance. Usually these three things are at odds with each other. You can have a processor that performs well but it's going to cost a lot and it'll use a lot of power. You might get a processor that's low powered, but performance will suffer or the price will be sky high. However some companies have shown it doesn't always have to be this way.

Let's start with the Nvidia 600 series of cards.  Nvidia kicked things off in March of 2012 with the GTX 680. Hitting a price point of $500 it came onto the scene to great reviews. Featuring Nvidia's new Kepler architecture, it showed a different direction for Nvidia, a company not previously known for it's price to performance ratio, nor it's low power offerings. It replaced the previous flagship single processor card, the GTX 580 and managed to not only show significant gains in performance, but also remaining at the same price point and managed to use less power. It was unfortunate that the significance of this was lost on the tech world who cried foul, simply because Nvidia identified the core as the GK104 a designation usually reserved for their midranged cards and not their flagship. Not only had Nvidia managed to better themselves, beating their previous high performance card by about 25%, but also managed to beat AMD's HD 7970 by about 5%, came in at $50 cheaper, used less power, and also was cooler and quieter to boot.

It was a significant accomplishment, usually you would have to wait for the mid range offering for something like this. Previous flagships, especially from Nvidia, performed well, however they used a ton of power, produced a lot of heat (even enough to cook an egg), and were usually very loud. Enthusiasts usually made excuses that these things were worth it for the performance, but personally I never saw the draw. I have always bought midranged cards, be it Nvidia's GTX 560 Ti or AMD's HD 5850, because I prefer to have a balance of all those elements. The GTX 600 series marked the first time that all these were in check. Nvidia has only improved on this hitting with the GTX 670 which came in performing almost as well (within 5%) as the GTX 680 for $100 less, using even less power. Most recently they came in with the GTX 650 Ti BOOST, a card that at a price of $170 performs as well as the previous midrange flagshig the GTX 570 a card that cost more than twice as much about a year ago. Nvidia has shown that making a product that uses a limited amount of power, performs brilliantly, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg, is very possible.

The next big player is Intel. Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture showed a significant improvement in performance and power savings. It was a huge step up from the previous generation and not a single chip came in with over a 95w TDP. Then Intel hit with their second generation called Ivy Bridge. Ivy bridge all clocked in at 77w. A significant drop in power all while advancing performance and while keeping prices down. It made AMD's offerings seem even more disappointing. Their flagship processor, the 3770K performed roughly 5-10% better than the previous 2700K with a lower TDP and even cost slightly less. They even managed to pop in a quad-core high performance chip at 69w with the i5-3350P by disabling the integrated GPU, that still was under $200.

My point with all this is that it should not longer be acceptable for companies to release processors for any use that sacrifice any of the three for another. We should as consumers demand this. Nvidia and Intel have paved the way for a world where flagships are not hot enough to cook on and don't use enough power to shut down the national grid. It is a bit ironic that both Intel and Nvidia would have been on the opposite end of this post just a few years ago. Also interesting to note is the mobile world is truly heating up especially with the explosion of tablets within the last year or two, even more so with Windows 8 tablets. It's going to be an exciting next few years for anyone interested in tech. Long live tech!

Windows 8: Why the Hate?

Windows 8: Why the Hate?

I'll be the first to admit, when I saw Windows 8 and the Metro (or whatever they're calling it now) interface, I almost laughed. I thought they were joking, or at least that it couldn't possibly be the final design for the new Windows. After it was made final, and after its release, I hesitated in buying it. When I say hesitated I mean I refused to partake. It was different and it seemed awful. It looked so unintuitive, it looked so amateur, it seemed like every new idea it had was pointless and a step backwards. The final straw when when in every comparison it wasn't any faster than Windows 7. Why would anyone switch to this? It made sense for tablets, especially if it meant running real applications on a mobile slab, but for a desktop, there was no draw.

Then I bought a new laptop. It came with Windows 8, and I actually bought a Windows 7 disk to 'downgrade', but I figured I'd give it a shot for a few weeks. I do tech support I figured it would help me help my customers if I could navigate it. So I started playing around with it. I started learning it. Slowly my opinion turned around. I never expected it, I only thought I'd keep it for a few weeks. Now I don't really see why I had such animosity towards it, I've since installed it on my main desktop as well.

I guess I can see where a lot of the hate comes from, in regards to it's a big change that's 'forced' upon people. The start menu as you know it is gone and instead is replaced by the tiles of a start screen. Sometimes when you just want to find a simple program you use often, it seems counter productive compared to clicking the start button and accessing a list of programs. When you really get down to it though, you're still doing the exact same thing, with the exact same steps, but just doing it a different way.

The start menu seems to get the most amount of disdain. The fact that you can't natively boot to the desktop has a lot of people in arms, there's already a ton of apps that allow this function. There's even word that Microsoft is planning on allowing this in Windows 8.1. To me it's really not a big deal, in fact I actually like it. I know that's almost blasphemous to say around the technosphere. Here's the thing, often times I boot my computer just to check my email, Twitter, and Facebook. All of these things I can do right from the start screen without ever having to go to the desktop. In fact if Steam ever makes a Windows 8 app, when I want to game I won't ever need to go to the desktop.

This is something that really shines on the tablet side of things, but even for desktops it works well in a lot of circumstances for general use. Now anytime you change something, there's going to be backlash, and I get there's a lot of reasons people have to boot straight to the desktop, but I do not understand the overwhelming amount of hate it receives. People are calling it a failure and the worst Windows ever, and using all of this hyperbole which seems so misplaced. Now Microsoft could have made this launch smoother on themselves and everyone else by offering a choice and not forcing the Start screen on everyone, but to deem it a disaster is just going over the top.

If you actually look at Windows 8 there are some improvements over Windows 7. In particular the notifications are a lot easier to dismiss, which may sound trivial, but it makes the whole thing seem smoother and more refined. It is also a lot easier to manage the personalization options, which are expanded. This is personal but to me another improvement is the sounds and presentation in general. It feels like a more mature OS and it sounds it too. It's warnings and notifications sounds are much more pleasant an no where near as abrasive as in the past. It's a very welcome change.


If I have any real complaints about Windows 8 it's two things. First the lock screen that automatically appears before the login screen is pointless in a non-tablet environment. That is one thing that gets annoying fast. The other is the charms bar and the corners are too sensitive sometimes. Often when I'm trying to close a program and I put the mouse in the upper right I end up with the charms and have to move the mouse and start again.

I really think people need to start giving Windows 8 a try, and go into it with an open mind. If you go into with the mindset that Windows 8 is worthless, you're probably not going to change your mind. It needs some improvement yes, but let's be real, it's not Vista, it's not ME. It is structurally and mechanically sound. It doesn't offer performance upgrades per se, but it does offer at least the same performance as it's predecessor. It's not bad by any measure, and I feel like the industry needs to cool it. Give Windows 8 a chance.

Thoughts on the Future: Consoles

Thoughts on the Future: Consoles

It's now 2013 and we've seen one new console from Nintendo, the WiiU another repeat of the Wii in the sense that it packs what we can now call last-gen specs riding on the dream of what will either go down as an innovation or as a gimmick. Nothing has been shown by Sony nor Microsoft, yet we should at least hear an announcement soon. Some specs and ideas have been through the rumor mill and come out to public, but not much to go on. Yet not too early to speculate what we can expect to see.

Safe Bets/Probable

• Blu-Ray - For both consoles, Blu-Ray seems to be the standard for movies and games since it allows for enough storage to fit a whole game or two. With drive speeds increasing and prices dropping there's little reason to suspect Microsoft won't hop aboard and that Sony won't continue on.
• 1080p 3D - It's being done now (sort of) so it's sure to be at least supported in the future
• Non-Custom hardware - Designing custom hardware is going the way of the do-do, it costs way too much and, it can end up alienating developers (here's looking at you Cell). Both companies will most likely look to source something from AMD or Intel on the CPU side and AMD or Nvidia on the GPU side, with VIA being the wild card for the CPU. I'm willing to bet either a Nvidia TEGRA like design or a AMD APU.
• Standard Large Storage - With digital downloads starting to gain traction in the console arena more than likely we'll see storage drives (I say storage drives and not HDD's because they may use SSD's) that are over 500GB.
• Adequate amount of memory - The biggest complaint from developers this generation (outside of difficult to program hardware) was the lack of sufficient memory. Even for a closed system with low overhead like the consoles, 256-512MB of memory was hardly enough. It shows in most games having to be designed with those restraints. It's likely we'll see at least 6GB (2GB for the GPU and 4GB for the system or a pool shared is probable) in each system. What will be interesting is the type used and how it is actually set up.
• Less heat/lower power - YLOD/RROD need I say more?
• A cheap model - The 4gb 360 seems to be working, not to mention even Nintendo released a cheaper stripped down version of the Wii. As is the case with this gen, the next gen consoles will be serving double duty as media servers/streamers. It's probable to give consumers who simply want to watch some movies and play the games. The people who don't want to spend $300-400 on a game console. Chances are it'll have less storage and stripped down functionality and probably hit at a $100-200 range. Doubtful it'll be at launch, though it should come soon after.
• Support for multitasking and apps - something carried over and expanded from this gen.
• Voice control/Motion control - see above

 

So just some thoughts on what we will see next generation, which will hopefully be announced soon. Who knows we may even get a huge surprise.