To be honest, the first test was kind of valid as well, in a fashion. AMD has better drivers than Intel, and it highlights that there can be serious problems with (especially Intel) mobile drivers.
While Intel performance may sometimes be decent, it's not always a given with respect to graphics. Sure it's not showing outright performance advantage, but it's showing system advantage through AMD having a better update system, like their easily available mobile drivers which work with most systems.
It's definitely worth noting that if you have to force a manual install of an unsupported Intel driver to get parity with the AMD platform, that's bad. Because most people (including many enthusiasts) aren't going to go around trying to install drivers they're not offered. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to start posting "as normal" and "as tweaked" numbers. Also, Anand, you should tell us who the OEM is, as well as notifying them that their drivers suck :)
I didn't disclose the name of the OEM at AMD's request. AMD didn't want to strain its relationship with this particular OEM, which I can understand. I will contact this OEM privately to notify them of the issue and that it should be rectified.
AMD can use all the OEM cooperation they can get, and indeed AMD laptops seemed to featured more than I can ever recall in electronics flyers this past back-to-school season.
Desktop is fading and mobile is a critical market. Seeing AMD make gains against Uncle Monopoly in this space (both in performance and market share) is very encouraging.
I can say from my own experience that the "unsupported system" is a problem on both sides of the fence. Toshiba, Sony, and Panasonic do not participate in AMD's mobile reference driver program. On Toshiba, I've found that if you can download the drivers from a *different* AMD-GPU laptop, you can install them (for now), but I don't know if that holds for the other two manufacturers.
As for Intel IGPs, I know HP and Lenovo typically require you to go to the OEM for drivers. However, you can either manually install (as Anand did), or at least in the case of one HP netbook, if you uninstall the OEM driver and reboot, the latest Intel driver installed fine. I believe most business laptops also fall into the "go to the OEM" category, so you may have similar issues with Dell Latitude as an example.
NVIDIA is the standard bearer here with support from just about everyone for their Verde Drivers. Sony is now onboard with their latest Optimus enabled laptop (though older systems are still MIA). The only NVIDIA laptops that don't get Verde support are hybrid graphics solutions with Intel IGPs, and as I've discussed previously, that's more of a limitation with that particular technology than anything.
So glad Gateway doesn't buy into the OEM driver balderdash. When I got my NV5925u, it didn't even have Gateway-branded video drivers--it had reference Catalyst installed, albeit a slightly out of date version!
This is easy to get around, generally, because the lock comes from the drivers that are installed. Just uninstall the Dell drivers, dumping back to VGA. After that, you can typically install the Intel drivers, or at least that's my experience with Dell.
Eh...it's valid, but remember that Anand's purpose here was not to judge a specific implementation of Zacate, but to do an architectural comparison of Zacate v. Arrandale. To use an inferior software platform only serves to murky the hardware comparison. What AMD was trying to demonstrate was that Intel's platform is fundamentally weaker; not Intel's platform is the same except for drivers.
Hence the "as well". It's not an accurate performance comparison, but it is potentially an accurate state of play comparison. AMD has both the superior product, and also (potentially) superior support for that product, as shown by the first test when it went horribly wrong for Intel because their drivers aren't well done (and by that I don't mean bad coding, but an overall bad system of drivers).
Best case scenario: Intel performs on par in this seemingly poorly scaleing test. Worst case: Intel gets about 10% of the score because of poor support.
hedge is ridiculous to compare the next generation of AMD with and intel generation that is leaving behind, should be zacate or ontario vs sandy bridge
AMD Zacate launch date is Q4 2010, priliminary SB launch date is indeed just first or second week of 2011 however not the CULV parts, that will take 2more quarters according to official roadmap, so yes this test is valid.
This article is based on a test made on a available prototype Zacate APU notebook which AMD compared to a Intel solution they could get their hands on. (Even Anandtech haven't gotten to play with a Sandy bridge Notebook)
Besides Sandy Bridges direct competition, at a similar price point, will be the mobile variant of AMDs Llano and not their Ontario or Zacate APUs.
The market the Zacate APU will compete in is low to midrange notebooks, where the Core i5 520M notebook solution is a reasonable representative as a 2011 midrange(around $500 notebook) part. After all that is where the current last generation, the Core2Duo solutions, still exist today.
I very much agree with this... In particular because I tried a "force install" of standard nvidia drivers on my HP laptop and it caused some very serious and bizzar issues. A less experienced user would never have figured out the issue, and frankly HP was completely useless when I originally contacted them (they claimed I installed bad memory).
So in many cases, the OEM drivers are the way to go anyhow.
I tried updating a friends HP laptop with new video drivers but the "newest" that HP has are 2 years old. This laptop has an nvidia card so I know that there are newer drivers but since it isn't my laptop I just installed the 2 year old set. Pretty crappy that you have to install HP "official" drivers. Turned me off of HP laptops until you can use standard Nvidia/AMD/Intel graphic drivers.
In my experience, the official drivers can always be installed via Device Manager (in fact, that was the original way to install drivers, anyway), but as you mentioned about the odd issues, I've seen my share of those as well, no problems with acceleration or artifacting, but mostly the BSoD from nv4_disp.dll. It's just a sad testament to the nonstandard implementations of mobile GPUs, especially the nonremovable ones. That's why I really didn't care about picking up a secondhand machine with GMA 900 -- when I didn't expect much out of it anyway, there's little disappointment to be had. Naysayers can extrapolate that statement all they want, but when I need GPU muscle, I stick with the tried and true (built desktops) where at least I'm expected to download the latest driver. Uniformity would be nice -- I don't think it's as hard to support ANY mobile platform with your name on it in Windows as it is to port your drivers to another OS.
I just ran the Psychedelic test on two completely different systems and got almost identical scores to that of the i5-M and the Zacate. first system I ran it on was a 65nm core 2 duo E6750 @ 2.66GHz with a 9800GX2, Psychedelic score1789... Next I grabbed an even older system a 90nm AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.0GHz with a very old 6800GT, Psychedelic test score 1784. As far as raw GPU power the 9800GX2 is multiple times more powerful than a 6800GT and if the test was objective at all the core 2 and GX2 should have given very different numbers than the old x2 with a 6800gt...
I wouldn't trust Microsoft's scoring they mainly want their test to be compared to other browsers.
Great Job Anand for putting AMD on the spot to test their product. I'm really hoping for good things for AMD next year. I look forward to your articles in the upcoming months. It's going to be exciting!
Yeah, I think Anand mentioned that from his observations, "hardware accelerated" performance (i.e. IE9 on GPU) doesn't scale with GFLOPS, understandably so. What confuses me here is that the 6800 is pre-DX10 (I have a fuzzy memory of a DX10 requirement, geez, it was only earlier today I installed the beta for the first time) and that the 3800+ is in all ways weaker than the C2D (that's not fanboy talk -- I used to own a 3800+ and thought it was ludicrous speed) .. Indeed, the numbers seem almost random, like a mysterious performance rating a la Windows Experience Index (though that's much more telling).
Don't feel bad. I can't even run Psychedelic -- I do all my modern experimenting on retail displays ;-)
The Dell Duo is the first time a notebook/tablet convertible has been done right from the mechanical point of view. It's a far superior solution to transforming tablet/notebooks than that single middle joint garbage commonly found on these things. But the Duo currently lacks proper hardware to become truly awesome. Just the thought of Zacate in that thing is incredibly enticing.
How is a comparison to i5 relevant but Sandybridge not? SB is Intels fusion arch, and has CPU's that cover a wide range of targets, from ultra low power notebooks to high end gaming rigs.
sandy bridge is not released so you can't test it as a competitor. We only know anand gpu test for SB but this one has a larger clock than the mobile chips will have.
Lowest speed bin for SB is rated at 35W which is 2x that of zacate. Not sure where the competition is in that. AMD used the i5 since that one has the highest ondie gpu for the current laptop segment.
Also SB Will come in very low power parts (sub 20W) that target the ultra mobile laptop segment.
Therefore the comparison to SB is valid, since both are un-released and SB will likely target the notch just above zacate which is far closer than a current i5 mobile is to it.
I agree comparison to SB would be nice. That said, we haven't seen any information on the ULV parts yet - these typically are released quite a bit later than the other parts. I think though SB should be faster - it has twice the memory bandwidth and can use L3 cache for graphics, both should help quite a bit (of course this only matters if your graphics core doesn't suck otherwise). There is no doubt though Zacate platform is cheaper. As for other performance comparisons, someone should compare these benchmarks to HD5450 - the graphics core could be very similar.
Silly Sir, thats like comparing an Turion to a desktop Core 2 quad.
They're both for different platforms.
Llano is the competitor to Sandy Bridge, and both come out at the same time even though for the longest time people thought Sandy Bridge would beat out Fusion APU's. Just wait and we'll see who will win the fight, Llano which is probably going to sit very well with mainstream (not enthusiast obviously) gamers, and 3d editors, etc...
Zacate being compared to a note book based on Intel parts such as the i5 should be enough until We have a Llano vs SandyBridge benchmark comparison.
I never said they were, i said when it is not released a compitor cannot test with it.
current SB shows as low as 35W, no ULVC are releasing any time soon. Again, as mentioned couple of times, the ULVC require a severe reduction in frequency for cpu and gpu, so no you cannot compare them to the SB we see in there current version. (i5M has almost 50% gpu-core clock advantage over the UM). Even if the low power ULVC are going to compete on a power level, they will not on a cost level. die size is huuuge compared to zacate and so will the selling price. Basically they will still be in total different markets.
Do you have any idea how much Intel is going to be charging for a <20W SB? If it is less than $200 for the chip alone, I'll give you a cookie. Intel will sell nothing as cheap as zacate, unless it is an atom.
"Also SB Will come in very low power parts (sub 20W) that target the ultra mobile laptop segment." Will come. When it show up I am sure it will be tested. Thing is that the real apples to apples test with this would be with Cedar Trail but I do not think they are available yet. The test with the i5 is to show that it can not just bet an Atom but i3 and i5.
Frankly this APU looks great. It will be cheap and probably good enough for 90% of the people out there.
Frankly as a consumer which CPU/APU is best really doesn't matter as much as which is best for x dollars.
Actually I would not be surprised to see a whole bunch of mATX MAINSTREAM boxes sooner than later.
Without the stupid Intel restrictions, despite whose Atom desktops sell, it would not take much time for the Taiwanese juggernauts to flood the market ...
Considering that the current last generation, the Core2Duo designs, resides in the ~$500 market, the one Zacate will attack, I would say the comparison has merit for comparing the likely competition in 2011.
We all know AMD zacate has superior GPU than Core I5, but is there any CPU performance number for comparison? Is the single channel RAM the bottleneck for GPU and CPU?
Most important aspect was to remove any disparity between the cpu's so Zacate are still not optimised to their full potential so Fusion is still @ around 80-85%.
Intel's performance has still not evolved in terms of graphics. on the cpu aspect it is going to be around 70% of core i5's performance as Zacate will easily blow away Atom.
AMD has always been a generation behind Intel since there Athlon X2 series. they have an opportunity to get back at Intel.
Talking about Llano I wouldn't be surprised that it equates 90% of the performance of Sandy Bridge.
Great update thanks! clears out alot of confusion. AMD handled the situation great i see. Zacate seems nothing to be sneezed at, running at much lower power and being faster in 3d then the more consuming 2.4Ghz i5-M. So they are indeed a revolution to the very low power market. SB will have a better gpu for notebooks, but wether they can keep that performance in the 18W range while still having cpu power is a different matter. (needless to say, if zacate can compete with the ULVC with its current size... they have a huge advantage in cost).
Now all we need is launch clockspeeds within their TDP range.
Sandy Bridge is about twice as fast as Core i5. So we have 75% of SB performance in video tasks (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridg... Still there is question to answer how it compares to Core i5 in office tasks. Zacate somewhat compares to Radeon HD5470. These numbers explains why "ATI" name is dropped.
Exactly, notwithstanding crappy Intel drivers, Zacate and Sandy shall be about equals. Also keep in mind the ATI GPU's is MUCH less sensitive to the CPU accompanying it. Even less than NV.
Intel still does a bunch of GPU work in the drivers ...
I'd say the bobcats are more like 2.4 ghz Turion m500s. Games do require a good amount of processing power especially at higher resolutions. an Athlon 64 x2 probably couldn't start Arkham Asylum at 800x600 with low details
If it does not scale with GPU, does that mean it scales with CPU? If so, we should be even more impressed. Two bobcats on par with a 2.4Ghz Core i5? Anybody knows what the Psychodelic IE9 does scale with? M.
P.S. just tested my 2.5Ghz Core 2 with a Nvidial 8400 GS (crap dedicated GPU but still a dedicated GPU) and I got 1779 revelations. So this little beast is on par with that? Jeeez. Impressive! M.
if only it were true >). Psychodelic stops scaling with everything. Even an 800MHz cpu (downclocked) gets around 1800. It just not intesive enough to really stress systems. The hyperbolic (or whatever it name is) is much more taxing, but not sure what it tests.
Actually, since Zacate is the ultra mobile part for the really low power segment thats very impressive. What kind of info was there on the cpu and gpu clocks of the chip?
Is the iGPU on the Zacate and Llano going to be able to do hybrid crossfire with say the IGP on the 890gx or whatever they plan on releasing to follow it? That's one thing that always interested me. If so that's going to give any entry level or mid range OEM systems a huge boost in graphics power for the buck, and most likely a huge advantage over the Sandy Bridge and other similar Intel offerings.
If this low power ultra portable/netbook/low end notebook cpu is able to compete with the core i5, then it makes me wonder how well the full Llano or Bulldozer based fusion chips are going to do in the mainstream high end.
AMD must be very confident of their product if they allow journalists complete access to a pre-producton system. This sort of reminds me of how Intel was before the release of the original Core processors. All in all a very good sign for the entry level notebook market.
Well done Anand for not taking the numbers at face value and insisting on further investigation.
Big thanks to all the testers at Anandtech for double-checking this issue. It's not only good practice to cross all one's 't's and dot one's 'i's, but your dedication to the truth and AMD's policy to be transparent are both pivotal to keeping everyone honest.
Although I have to say the bigger kudos go to AMD for extracting that level of performance from a slip of silicon the size of a pinky fingernail.
I would love to see a mATX or mini-ITX platform with a PCIe x1 slot based off of this platform for a low-power-consumption WE7 Media Center system (paired with a Ceton InfiniTV4 card, of course).
I am having some difficulty locating benchmarks of the i5-520M gpu or really any list of gpu benchmarks. Dont you think it is time to start adding these to the Bench?
Could be because most other sites call it the Core i5 520M About benches on mobile parts I can recommend taking a look at http://www.notebookcheck.net/ as they have great comparisons of both CPU and GPUs.
are the people that are asking for this comparison nuts! Zacate is a 40nm bulk cpu that is targeted at the very low end of the notebook segment and other devices. sandy is not targeted anywhere near Zacate in the marketplace. llano will be so people need to wait and see when amd shows that cpu. so far i am extremely impressed that Zacate operates at 1.6 ghz with graphics at 500 mhz @ 40nm bulk is able to compete with a 2.4 ghz 32nm Arrandale with graphics at 733mhz this is a huge win in my book
Nobody is nuts here besides you looking like NUT :)
Zacate will, as a matter of fact, be used in low-end notebook where it will directly compete with i3 based devices. This is actually what AMD is hoping for - to squeeze Intel by Zacate from the bottom, have good price/perf in the mainstream with Llano and *TRY* to squeeze it from the top with Bulldozer chips.
No surprise here that Zacate performs better than old i5core with Intel Integrated graphic. How does it stand against Sandy Bridge? Does AMD bung again?
zacate it not aimed at sandy bridge so your comparison is unrealistic this a lo end of the notebook cpu and down you will not see this in the same price range as a sandy bridge notebook
First, major kudos to AMD on a brilliant chip. Second, minor kudos to Anand for clearing it up.
But there is one glaring issue here. I don't know if this was Anand to the rescue for intel that backfired or not, but it doesn't really matter, as the end result doesn't change and in fact solidifies Fusion's mindshare. I imagine AMD are doing backflips of joy right now, and the they should be this is a revolutionary chip. My question is, if it was so easy do dance in and update intel's platform drivers that took a manual install through device manager, why can't you update AMD's drivers when doing your own reviews? There are Catalyst driver updates monthly, and it's effortless to install them on a desktop platform with no need to manually install anything. In your preview article of sandy bridge you used 9.12 graphics drivers and 8.12 chipset drivers. Judging by your willingness to get to the bottom of things and find out what was going on here, it seems it should have been second nature to do the same in your preview.
Anyway, just wanted to bring that to your attention, and thanks for clearing the mud.
Dear Anand, Will you please stop comparing a a zakate to a Intel Atom 525, witout saying something about cost:
Zakate is 74mm2 on cheap TSMC bulk, Atom is 87mm2 - clearly favoring the Atom for performance Zakate have 413 pins making it cheaper than Atom with 559 pins, Clearly giving Atom the performance edge again
I am sitting here with my Atom and i only get 1,13 FPS in Batman. Clearly you put the comma the wrong place. Please correct the benchmarks.
Btw: You have to do something about the navigating of your homepage. It takes forever.
Umm, this article is talking about Core i5 (mobile part), and AMD Zacate. I have no idea where you see numbers for Cedar Trail (Atom) numbers in this review.
If Intel Core i5-M 520 which is mid-range netbook CPU clocked at 2.4GHz has 12fps in that game, you can't expect anything near it from ATOM which is low-end netbook CPU.
So your Cedar trail ~1 FPS is probably close to true numbers (unless you forgot to install drivers as well). Which is just a nice news for AMD, as 9W Ontario will likely wipe the floor with it while maintaining same power sonsumption..
I just think that you should have mentioned quite clearly in the article one more thing.
Intel Core i5-520M is 35W TDP part, and Zacate is 18W. So half the power envelope, and yet it offers considerable performance improvements in some scenarios. And I do hope someone hasn't made a mistake and wrote 520M instead of 520UM ;)
$265 plus the rest of the laptop. (CPU+chipset). That's good enough for a 700-900 dollar offer though. The bobcat on the other hand can't cost much more then $100 with chipset. W7HP OEM license is just that $90 - $100 dollars, which just leaves $400 USD left for harddrive, cpu, chipset, motherboard, dvddrive (if that's included), LCD-panel, battery, memory and case. Which don't leave more room then $100 dollars for the CPU/chipset solution. I could image business versions with ~12" panel, 4GB, Zacate and Windows 7 pro for $600 dollars though. So it's not like they really can compete just price wise, a 15" W7P laptops can be had for $600-700 too. They should be able to offer battery life though.
not completely true, since zacate will also be used in netbooks. Yes there will are netbooks with <20W chips + zacate will come in flavours but all with the same tdp, the lower grades will consume less and be competing to the high end atoms. But you are true, for the mid end atoms the competitor is ontario.
I hope we can get some nice builds now, this should fit well into the home and netbook/small notebook with small price market. Maybe even better in the media player / HTPC market.
The Problems with AMD laptops is always that nobody builds and designs a decent one, you still need good battery life and so on to compete against low end Intel laptops. So you can't skimp on the battery. If you can get a DX11 class GPU, DXVA hardware acceleration, Flash Player acceleration, WebGL (kinda OpenGL ES), half decent dualcore CPU and W7 for less then 500 dollar that's a good buy, especially if you can get a really good battery life and small form factor (they only need a south-bridge and single channel DDR3.). It will make Atoms redundant. I still hope for the bulldozers to make an entry into the notebook space properly though. As Bobcat (Zacate) and Llano can't really compete with Sandy Bridge in performance. And in the business space, they need at least the AMD Dash feature for remote management, and update it to compete with Intel AMT/vPro. They need not only AMD-V and RVI but also AMD-Vi (IOMMU/VT-d), and barebone virtualization of desktops. They need those offerings in a nice packet, for the intended audience, that means support for docking station, DP output and useful business and DTR features. But they will need to build and design a decent and serious AMD laptop and market it as such, and they can't compete against Intel at the same price point if they are not faster or offer anything extra. The K10.5 ones have cost to much. Why sell desktop CPUs for ~100 dollars but notebook up to 200 dollars if they aren't worth it? AMD also needs to make sure their drivers are 100%. You cant even compete against the Intel offerings otherwise. AMD needs to get manufacturers on the band wagon, the need to demonstrate that the platform can do, so they can try to live up to that.
Llano will basically be a Quad Core Phenom II with updates of course clocked over 3.0 ghz, with I'm going to say , over a 57xx GPU installed. SB will have its mind blown.
Los Athlon II /Turion Neo con el 785G ya hacen pedazos al Atom. Cuestan un poco más pero lo valen, estos nuevos Zacate mejoran en bataría y gpu siendo un chip aún más pequeño y por ende equipos de menor precio.
Throw this in a home media center style case, add a CableCard slot and Windows 7 please. It seems like it might be able to handle being a dedicated HTPC. No gaming on it, just TV and some media sharing/viewing within the home.
It's good to see that AMD released their Ultra-Low-Power processor in recent days. If this one, Zacate, can have better performance than Intel Core i-xxx, that will be great. Also, we do not want to see the delay of AMD's new CPU, just give me the best right now.
Im hoping they will release these for low powered desktop, if so I will definitely get one. I'm not a fan of laptops since I dont need a computer everywhere I go,but I would like to build a itsy bitsy pc.
Btw how would the cpu compare in application performence vs the athlon II x2 255, faster or slower?
OEm can make a killing if they make a bunch of netbook/ultra light notebook (10.1 to 11.6 inches) and desktop, super entry level server MB base from one base platform here 's is what I have in mind. 1.240 pin DDR3/1333 ECC or NON ecc. A MB should use it if ECC is present. 2. put DCtoDC converter like the D945SEJT. 3. Mini ITX with headers (just pins) for all the non essentials like HDMI/DVI and the freeking tall audio.
Just a "1U" mini ITX with two USB, one purple ps/2, one ETH, one PCIE slot, 3 raid0 sata2(3g), and a single VGA..
Universal MB that should be customizable for Light duty server, Desktop and possibly netbook/cheap notebook. Fast, small quiet mini HTPC and green is the name of the game..
Will this apu zatac be a better one than an i7 too if developed versions are considered I also have no knowledge of the graphics card power of this apu Actually i m an amateur amd need data as benchmarks are considered Yes from article it is true that i5 fails in front of apu but is this for i7 too and what about equivalence og graphics card 1 ghz of apu+=what specs of i cores and what gbs of a graphics card?? Thanx in advance
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Lonyo - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
To be honest, the first test was kind of valid as well, in a fashion.AMD has better drivers than Intel, and it highlights that there can be serious problems with (especially Intel) mobile drivers.
While Intel performance may sometimes be decent, it's not always a given with respect to graphics. Sure it's not showing outright performance advantage, but it's showing system advantage through AMD having a better update system, like their easily available mobile drivers which work with most systems.
artifex - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
It's definitely worth noting that if you have to force a manual install of an unsupported Intel driver to get parity with the AMD platform, that's bad. Because most people (including many enthusiasts) aren't going to go around trying to install drivers they're not offered. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to start posting "as normal" and "as tweaked" numbers. Also, Anand, you should tell us who the OEM is, as well as notifying them that their drivers suck :)Peciura - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
"Also, Anand, you should tell us who the OEM is, as well as notifying them that their drivers suck :) "i agree.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I didn't disclose the name of the OEM at AMD's request. AMD didn't want to strain its relationship with this particular OEM, which I can understand. I will contact this OEM privately to notify them of the issue and that it should be rectified.Take care,
Anand
Taft12 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
AMD can use all the OEM cooperation they can get, and indeed AMD laptops seemed to featured more than I can ever recall in electronics flyers this past back-to-school season.Desktop is fading and mobile is a critical market. Seeing AMD make gains against Uncle Monopoly in this space (both in performance and market share) is very encouraging.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I can say from my own experience that the "unsupported system" is a problem on both sides of the fence. Toshiba, Sony, and Panasonic do not participate in AMD's mobile reference driver program. On Toshiba, I've found that if you can download the drivers from a *different* AMD-GPU laptop, you can install them (for now), but I don't know if that holds for the other two manufacturers.As for Intel IGPs, I know HP and Lenovo typically require you to go to the OEM for drivers. However, you can either manually install (as Anand did), or at least in the case of one HP netbook, if you uninstall the OEM driver and reboot, the latest Intel driver installed fine. I believe most business laptops also fall into the "go to the OEM" category, so you may have similar issues with Dell Latitude as an example.
NVIDIA is the standard bearer here with support from just about everyone for their Verde Drivers. Sony is now onboard with their latest Optimus enabled laptop (though older systems are still MIA). The only NVIDIA laptops that don't get Verde support are hybrid graphics solutions with Intel IGPs, and as I've discussed previously, that's more of a limitation with that particular technology than anything.
synaesthetic - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
So glad Gateway doesn't buy into the OEM driver balderdash. When I got my NV5925u, it didn't even have Gateway-branded video drivers--it had reference Catalyst installed, albeit a slightly out of date version!LesMoss - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I know from experience that Dell locks down it Intel integrated graphics drivers.Colin1497 - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
This is easy to get around, generally, because the lock comes from the drivers that are installed. Just uninstall the Dell drivers, dumping back to VGA. After that, you can typically install the Intel drivers, or at least that's my experience with Dell.Sahrin - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Eh...it's valid, but remember that Anand's purpose here was not to judge a specific implementation of Zacate, but to do an architectural comparison of Zacate v. Arrandale. To use an inferior software platform only serves to murky the hardware comparison. What AMD was trying to demonstrate was that Intel's platform is fundamentally weaker; not Intel's platform is the same except for drivers.Lonyo - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Hence the "as well".It's not an accurate performance comparison, but it is potentially an accurate state of play comparison.
AMD has both the superior product, and also (potentially) superior support for that product, as shown by the first test when it went horribly wrong for Intel because their drivers aren't well done (and by that I don't mean bad coding, but an overall bad system of drivers).
Best case scenario: Intel performs on par in this seemingly poorly scaleing test.
Worst case: Intel gets about 10% of the score because of poor support.
spart - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
hedge is ridiculous to compare the next generation of AMD withand intel generation that is leaving behind, should be zacate or ontario vs sandy
bridge
duploxxx - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
AMD Zacate launch date is Q4 2010, priliminary SB launch date is indeed just first or second week of 2011 however not the CULV parts, that will take 2more quarters according to official roadmap, so yes this test is valid.http://www.anandtech.com/show/3876/intels-core-201...
stalker27 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Do you call Fermi vs Evergreen a "ridiculous" comparison?Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Yeah but intel's next generation will not be had for $500. There is nothing on the netbook roadmap for intel except a new crappy atom.justjc - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
This article is based on a test made on a available prototype Zacate APU notebook which AMD compared to a Intel solution they could get their hands on. (Even Anandtech haven't gotten to play with a Sandy bridge Notebook)Besides Sandy Bridges direct competition, at a similar price point, will be the mobile variant of AMDs Llano and not their Ontario or Zacate APUs.
The market the Zacate APU will compete in is low to midrange notebooks, where the Core i5 520M notebook solution is a reasonable representative as a 2011 midrange(around $500 notebook) part. After all that is where the current last generation, the Core2Duo solutions, still exist today.
crazzeto - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I very much agree with this... In particular because I tried a "force install" of standard nvidia drivers on my HP laptop and it caused some very serious and bizzar issues. A less experienced user would never have figured out the issue, and frankly HP was completely useless when I originally contacted them (they claimed I installed bad memory).So in many cases, the OEM drivers are the way to go anyhow.
fic2 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I tried updating a friends HP laptop with new video drivers but the "newest" that HP has are 2 years old. This laptop has an nvidia card so I know that there are newer drivers but since it isn't my laptop I just installed the 2 year old set. Pretty crappy that you have to install HP "official" drivers. Turned me off of HP laptops until you can use standard Nvidia/AMD/Intel graphic drivers.larson0699 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
In my experience, the official drivers can always be installed via Device Manager (in fact, that was the original way to install drivers, anyway), but as you mentioned about the odd issues, I've seen my share of those as well, no problems with acceleration or artifacting, but mostly the BSoD from nv4_disp.dll. It's just a sad testament to the nonstandard implementations of mobile GPUs, especially the nonremovable ones. That's why I really didn't care about picking up a secondhand machine with GMA 900 -- when I didn't expect much out of it anyway, there's little disappointment to be had. Naysayers can extrapolate that statement all they want, but when I need GPU muscle, I stick with the tried and true (built desktops) where at least I'm expected to download the latest driver. Uniformity would be nice -- I don't think it's as hard to support ANY mobile platform with your name on it in Windows as it is to port your drivers to another OS.Disregard all that. Stupid end user talking.
ellarpc - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I just ran the Psychedelic test on two completely different systems and got almost identical scores to that of the i5-M and the Zacate. first system I ran it on was a 65nm core 2 duo E6750 @ 2.66GHz with a 9800GX2, Psychedelic score1789... Next I grabbed an even older system a 90nm AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.0GHz with a very old 6800GT, Psychedelic test score 1784. As far as raw GPU power the 9800GX2 is multiple times more powerful than a 6800GT and if the test was objective at all the core 2 and GX2 should have given very different numbers than the old x2 with a 6800gt...I wouldn't trust Microsoft's scoring they mainly want their test to be compared to other browsers.
Great Job Anand for putting AMD on the spot to test their product. I'm really hoping for good things for AMD next year. I look forward to your articles in the upcoming months. It's going to be exciting!
larson0699 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Yeah, I think Anand mentioned that from his observations, "hardware accelerated" performance (i.e. IE9 on GPU) doesn't scale with GFLOPS, understandably so. What confuses me here is that the 6800 is pre-DX10 (I have a fuzzy memory of a DX10 requirement, geez, it was only earlier today I installed the beta for the first time) and that the 3800+ is in all ways weaker than the C2D (that's not fanboy talk -- I used to own a 3800+ and thought it was ludicrous speed) .. Indeed, the numbers seem almost random, like a mysterious performance rating a la Windows Experience Index (though that's much more telling).Don't feel bad. I can't even run Psychedelic -- I do all my modern experimenting on retail displays ;-)
Perisphetic - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
This needs to be put into this!http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/09/15/dell-puts-a-new-...
The Dell Duo is the first time a notebook/tablet convertible has been done right from the mechanical point of view. It's a far superior solution to transforming tablet/notebooks than that single middle joint garbage commonly found on these things. But the Duo currently lacks proper hardware to become truly awesome. Just the thought of Zacate in that thing is incredibly enticing.
5150Joker - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
How does zacate stack up against sandy bridge graphics performance?Duraz0rz - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
They're in totally different market segments. It's fairly irrelevent to compare the two.Now if you were talking Llano, that's a different story.
djgandy - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
How is a comparison to i5 relevant but Sandybridge not? SB is Intels fusion arch, and has CPU's that cover a wide range of targets, from ultra low power notebooks to high end gaming rigs.Comparing this to the current i5 is irrelevant.
flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
sandy bridge is not released so you can't test it as a competitor.We only know anand gpu test for SB but this one has a larger clock than the mobile chips will have.
Lowest speed bin for SB is rated at 35W which is 2x that of zacate. Not sure where the competition is in that. AMD used the i5 since that one has the highest ondie gpu for the current laptop segment.
djgandy - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
This is not released either!Also SB Will come in very low power parts (sub 20W) that target the ultra mobile laptop segment.
Therefore the comparison to SB is valid, since both are un-released and SB will likely target the notch just above zacate which is far closer than a current i5 mobile is to it.
mczak - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I agree comparison to SB would be nice. That said, we haven't seen any information on the ULV parts yet - these typically are released quite a bit later than the other parts. I think though SB should be faster - it has twice the memory bandwidth and can use L3 cache for graphics, both should help quite a bit (of course this only matters if your graphics core doesn't suck otherwise). There is no doubt though Zacate platform is cheaper.As for other performance comparisons, someone should compare these benchmarks to HD5450 - the graphics core could be very similar.
Mautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Silly Sir, thats like comparing an Turion to a desktop Core 2 quad.They're both for different platforms.
Llano is the competitor to Sandy Bridge, and both come out at the same time even though for the longest time people thought Sandy Bridge would beat out Fusion APU's. Just wait and we'll see who will win the fight, Llano which is probably going to sit very well with mainstream (not enthusiast obviously) gamers, and 3d editors, etc...
Zacate being compared to a note book based on Intel parts such as the i5 should be enough until We have a Llano vs SandyBridge benchmark comparison.
flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I never said they were, i said when it is not released a compitor cannot test with it.current SB shows as low as 35W, no ULVC are releasing any time soon. Again, as mentioned couple of times, the ULVC require a severe reduction in frequency for cpu and gpu, so no you cannot compare them to the SB we see in there current version.
(i5M has almost 50% gpu-core clock advantage over the UM).
Even if the low power ULVC are going to compete on a power level, they will not on a cost level. die size is huuuge compared to zacate and so will the selling price. Basically they will still be in total different markets.
Jamahl - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
What do you expect AMD to walk up to intel and say "Give us one of your unreleased Sandy Bridge systems so we can benchmark our new chip against it"?Dear oh dear.
djgandy - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
No, but there were some numbers for SB released the other day which could have been used.So your logic is if you can't make the right comparison, just make any comparison?
Jamahl - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Yes that could have been done, but then we'd have an idea of its performance vs SB at low resolution.That's the kind of thing Anand would like to keep back until the full review, don't you think?
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Do you have any idea how much Intel is going to be charging for a <20W SB? If it is less than $200 for the chip alone, I'll give you a cookie. Intel will sell nothing as cheap as zacate, unless it is an atom.lwatcdr - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
"Also SB Will come in very low power parts (sub 20W) that target the ultra mobile laptop segment."Will come.
When it show up I am sure it will be tested.
Thing is that the real apples to apples test with this would be with Cedar Trail but I do not think they are available yet.
The test with the i5 is to show that it can not just bet an Atom but i3 and i5.
Frankly this APU looks great. It will be cheap and probably good enough for 90% of the people out there.
Frankly as a consumer which CPU/APU is best really doesn't matter as much as which is best for x dollars.
mino - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Actually I would not be surprised to see a whole bunch of mATX MAINSTREAM boxes sooner than later.Without the stupid Intel restrictions, despite whose Atom desktops sell, it would not take much time for the Taiwanese juggernauts to flood the market ...
justjc - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Considering that the current last generation, the Core2Duo designs, resides in the ~$500 market, the one Zacate will attack, I would say the comparison has merit for comparing the likely competition in 2011.MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I'm wondering if we have enough info from those demos to guesstimate the number of SPs in Zacate. 200?Also, I bet the single channel IMC isn't as big a deal since it's DDR3 bandwidth, and the GPU is getting direct CPU/cache access.
Sandy Bridge aside, it looks like netbooks just got a huge kick in the pants! :D
mino - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Give or take 10 :)derek85 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Based on the info I believe it would be 80 SP, since it packs a Cedar core. And from the performance numbers it looks very much like so.mschira - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Well looking at the die shots (massive GPU!) and the fact that it uses 40nm bulk manufactoring, - its a GPU with an inbuilt CPU....Did AMD allow you to do some non CPU benching?
I wonder how fast the bobcat cores are.
Cheers
M.
mianmian - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
We all know AMD zacate has superior GPU than Core I5, but is there any CPU performance number for comparison? Is the single channel RAM the bottleneck for GPU and CPU?fshaharyar - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Thanks Anand for this ArticleMost important aspect was to remove any disparity between the cpu's so Zacate are still not optimised to their full potential so Fusion is still @ around 80-85%.
Intel's performance has still not evolved in terms of graphics. on the cpu aspect it is going to be around 70% of core i5's performance as Zacate will easily blow away Atom.
AMD has always been a generation behind Intel since there Athlon X2 series. they have an opportunity to get back at Intel.
Talking about Llano I wouldn't be surprised that it equates 90% of the performance of Sandy Bridge.
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
It's good AMD allowed Anand to retest everything. They are being honest about it and that's never bad.flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Great update thanks! clears out alot of confusion. AMD handled the situation great i see. Zacate seems nothing to be sneezed at, running at much lower power and being faster in 3d then the more consuming 2.4Ghz i5-M. So they are indeed a revolution to the very low power market.SB will have a better gpu for notebooks, but wether they can keep that performance in the 18W range while still having cpu power is a different matter. (needless to say, if zacate can compete with the ULVC with its current size... they have a huge advantage in cost).
Now all we need is launch clockspeeds within their TDP range.
Peciura - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Sandy Bridge is about twice as fast as Core i5. So we have 75% of SB performance in video tasks (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridg... Still there is question to answer how it compares to Core i5 in office tasks.Zacate somewhat compares to Radeon HD5470. These numbers explains why "ATI" name is dropped.
flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
don't forgetAnand test : gpu clock 850 / 1350MHz
mobile (35W) 650 / 1100MHz
So that will also make a difference.
mino - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Exactly, notwithstanding crappy Intel drivers, Zacate and Sandy shall be about equals.Also keep in mind the ATI GPU's is MUCH less sensitive to the CPU accompanying it. Even less than NV.
Intel still does a bunch of GPU work in the drivers ...
Bitter - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I be It's a Toshiba notebook. They are really crap.Mike1111 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
How about some CPU benchmarks where the GPU is idle? How does Zacate do as a work machine?flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
They mention they could do anything on the Zacate to test the GPU. So there will be no info about the cpu performance.mino - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Think Turion 64 X2 TL-54, Athlon 64 X2 3600+ or Yonah 1.8.Mautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
I'd say the bobcats are more like 2.4 ghz Turion m500s.Games do require a good amount of processing power especially at higher resolutions. an Athlon 64 x2 probably couldn't start Arkham Asylum at 800x600 with low details
mschira - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
If it does not scale with GPU, does that mean it scales with CPU? If so, we should be even more impressed. Two bobcats on par with a 2.4Ghz Core i5?Anybody knows what the Psychodelic IE9 does scale with?
M.
mschira - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
P.S. just tested my 2.5Ghz Core 2 with a Nvidial 8400 GS (crap dedicated GPU but still a dedicated GPU) and I got 1779 revelations.So this little beast is on par with that? Jeeez. Impressive!
M.
flyck - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
if only it were true >). Psychodelic stops scaling with everything. Even an 800MHz cpu (downclocked) gets around 1800. It just not intesive enough to really stress systems. The hyperbolic (or whatever it name is) is much more taxing, but not sure what it tests.mschira - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Hm, so maybe it scales with frame rate?One revelation needs two frames?
one minute is 3600 frames/2 = 1800....
M.
cynic783 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Way to go, both AMD and Anand. Full, open, and honest disclosure was demonstrated here.Mathos - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Actually, since Zacate is the ultra mobile part for the really low power segment thats very impressive. What kind of info was there on the cpu and gpu clocks of the chip?Is the iGPU on the Zacate and Llano going to be able to do hybrid crossfire with say the IGP on the 890gx or whatever they plan on releasing to follow it? That's one thing that always interested me. If so that's going to give any entry level or mid range OEM systems a huge boost in graphics power for the buck, and most likely a huge advantage over the Sandy Bridge and other similar Intel offerings.
If this low power ultra portable/netbook/low end notebook cpu is able to compete with the core i5, then it makes me wonder how well the full Llano or Bulldozer based fusion chips are going to do in the mainstream high end.
tech6 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
AMD must be very confident of their product if they allow journalists complete access to a pre-producton system. This sort of reminds me of how Intel was before the release of the original Core processors. All in all a very good sign for the entry level notebook market.Well done Anand for not taking the numbers at face value and insisting on further investigation.
Voldenuit - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Big thanks to all the testers at Anandtech for double-checking this issue. It's not only good practice to cross all one's 't's and dot one's 'i's, but your dedication to the truth and AMD's policy to be transparent are both pivotal to keeping everyone honest.Although I have to say the bigger kudos go to AMD for extracting that level of performance from a slip of silicon the size of a pinky fingernail.
Donkeyshins - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I would love to see a mATX or mini-ITX platform with a PCIe x1 slot based off of this platform for a low-power-consumption WE7 Media Center system (paired with a Ceton InfiniTV4 card, of course).Pretty please?
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I am having some difficulty locating benchmarks of the i5-520M gpu or really any list of gpu benchmarks. Dont you think it is time to start adding these to the Bench?Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
I mean it is hard to find benchmarks for integrated GPUs in general.Peciura - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
good place to starthttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-46...
justjc - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Could be because most other sites call it the Core i5 520MAbout benches on mobile parts I can recommend taking a look at http://www.notebookcheck.net/ as they have great comparisons of both CPU and GPUs.
mAxius - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
are the people that are asking for this comparison nuts! Zacate is a 40nm bulk cpu that is targeted at the very low end of the notebook segment and other devices. sandy is not targeted anywhere near Zacate in the marketplace. llano will be so people need to wait and see when amd shows that cpu. so far i am extremely impressed that Zacate operates at 1.6 ghz with graphics at 500 mhz @ 40nm bulk is able to compete with a 2.4 ghz 32nm Arrandale with graphics at 733mhz this is a huge win in my booksource for numbers
http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/processors/proc...
mino - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
Nobody is nuts here besides you looking like NUT :)Zacate will, as a matter of fact, be used in low-end notebook where it will directly compete with i3 based devices.
This is actually what AMD is hoping for - to squeeze Intel by Zacate from the bottom, have good price/perf in the mainstream with Llano and *TRY* to squeeze it from the top with Bulldozer chips.
mAxius - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
maybe i am! though my previous statement stands an 18w 40nm cpu owns a 35w 32nm cpu and its 800 mhz slower cpuwise and 233 mhz slower gfx wiseMautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
I really can't see how Zacate operates at 1.6, it has to be a 2.0 ghz.jebo - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
It's really refreshing to see openness and honesty in a day when many companies wouldn't be forthcoming.Also, it is great to see (FINALLY) some progress on the integrated graphics front.
all around, an article full of good news.
nofumble62 - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
No surprise here that Zacate performs better than old i5core with Intel Integrated graphic. How does it stand against Sandy Bridge? Does AMD bung again?boomshine - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
please show us first a Sandybridge with the same power consumption as ZacateAdul - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
Please show us a sandy bridgemAxius - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
zacate it not aimed at sandy bridge so your comparison is unrealistic this a lo end of the notebook cpu and down you will not see this in the same price range as a sandy bridge notebookpiesquared - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
First, major kudos to AMD on a brilliant chip. Second, minor kudos to Anand for clearing it up.But there is one glaring issue here. I don't know if this was Anand to the rescue for intel that backfired or not, but it doesn't really matter, as the end result doesn't change and in fact solidifies Fusion's mindshare. I imagine AMD are doing backflips of joy right now, and the they should be this is a revolutionary chip. My question is, if it was so easy do dance in and update intel's platform drivers that took a manual install through device manager, why can't you update AMD's drivers when doing your own reviews? There are Catalyst driver updates monthly, and it's effortless to install them on a desktop platform with no need to manually install anything. In your preview article of sandy bridge you used 9.12 graphics drivers and 8.12 chipset drivers. Judging by your willingness to get to the bottom of things and find out what was going on here, it seems it should have been second nature to do the same in your preview.
Anyway, just wanted to bring that to your attention, and thanks for clearing the mud.
krumme - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
Dear Anand,Will you please stop comparing a a zakate to a Intel Atom 525, witout saying something about cost:
Zakate is 74mm2 on cheap TSMC bulk, Atom is 87mm2 - clearly favoring the Atom for performance
Zakate have 413 pins making it cheaper than Atom with 559 pins, Clearly giving Atom the performance edge again
I am sitting here with my Atom and i only get 1,13 FPS in Batman. Clearly you put the comma the wrong place. Please correct the benchmarks.
Btw: You have to do something about the navigating of your homepage. It takes forever.
krumme - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
Hi AnandJust an update
Intel just send me the new Atom Ceder Trail platform D6870 HD FR, as i am their best customer.
I still get 1.13 FPS in Batman. Intel told me that the GPU was twice as fast, how can i then get such low FPS then?
Looking forward to future Batman testing on the Atom platform.
LuxZg - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
Umm, this article is talking about Core i5 (mobile part), and AMD Zacate.I have no idea where you see numbers for Cedar Trail (Atom) numbers in this review.
If Intel Core i5-M 520 which is mid-range netbook CPU clocked at 2.4GHz has 12fps in that game, you can't expect anything near it from ATOM which is low-end netbook CPU.
So your Cedar trail ~1 FPS is probably close to true numbers (unless you forgot to install drivers as well). Which is just a nice news for AMD, as 9W Ontario will likely wipe the floor with it while maintaining same power sonsumption..
t.s - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link
Haha...@krumme: Sarcasm, everyone?
Mautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Atom = CrapIt is to be compared to the old AMD Neo Processor. Don't start this ignorant trash.
LuxZg - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
I just think that you should have mentioned quite clearly in the article one more thing.Intel Core i5-520M is 35W TDP part, and Zacate is 18W. So half the power envelope, and yet it offers considerable performance improvements in some scenarios. And I do hope someone hasn't made a mistake and wrote 520M instead of 520UM ;)
Intel Core i5-520M - 35W, 2.40 GHz
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47341
Intel Core i5-520UM - 18W, 1.06 GHz
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47554
Just the same, it should be pointed that these two Intel CPUs cost more than 200$ per piece, and Zacate aims at finished product costing around 500$..
Penti - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
$265 plus the rest of the laptop. (CPU+chipset). That's good enough for a 700-900 dollar offer though. The bobcat on the other hand can't cost much more then $100 with chipset. W7HP OEM license is just that $90 - $100 dollars, which just leaves $400 USD left for harddrive, cpu, chipset, motherboard, dvddrive (if that's included), LCD-panel, battery, memory and case. Which don't leave more room then $100 dollars for the CPU/chipset solution. I could image business versions with ~12" panel, 4GB, Zacate and Windows 7 pro for $600 dollars though. So it's not like they really can compete just price wise, a 15" W7P laptops can be had for $600-700 too. They should be able to offer battery life though.flyck - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
not completely true, since zacate will also be used in netbooks. Yes there will are netbooks with <20W chips + zacate will come in flavours but all with the same tdp, the lower grades will consume less and be competing to the high end atoms. But you are true, for the mid end atoms the competitor is ontario.SandmanWN - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
It's listed as both a netbook/notebook part.Penti - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
I hope we can get some nice builds now, this should fit well into the home and netbook/small notebook with small price market. Maybe even better in the media player / HTPC market.The Problems with AMD laptops is always that nobody builds and designs a decent one, you still need good battery life and so on to compete against low end Intel laptops. So you can't skimp on the battery. If you can get a DX11 class GPU, DXVA hardware acceleration, Flash Player acceleration, WebGL (kinda OpenGL ES), half decent dualcore CPU and W7 for less then 500 dollar that's a good buy, especially if you can get a really good battery life and small form factor (they only need a south-bridge and single channel DDR3.). It will make Atoms redundant. I still hope for the bulldozers to make an entry into the notebook space properly though. As Bobcat (Zacate) and Llano can't really compete with Sandy Bridge in performance. And in the business space, they need at least the AMD Dash feature for remote management, and update it to compete with Intel AMT/vPro. They need not only AMD-V and RVI but also AMD-Vi (IOMMU/VT-d), and barebone virtualization of desktops. They need those offerings in a nice packet, for the intended audience, that means support for docking station, DP output and useful business and DTR features. But they will need to build and design a decent and serious AMD laptop and market it as such, and they can't compete against Intel at the same price point if they are not faster or offer anything extra. The K10.5 ones have cost to much. Why sell desktop CPUs for ~100 dollars but notebook up to 200 dollars if they aren't worth it? AMD also needs to make sure their drivers are 100%. You cant even compete against the Intel offerings otherwise. AMD needs to get manufacturers on the band wagon, the need to demonstrate that the platform can do, so they can try to live up to that.
Mautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Llano will basically be a Quad Core Phenom II with updates of course clocked over 3.0 ghz, with I'm going to say , over a 57xx GPU installed. SB will have its mind blown.But, I'll just have to wait to see.
xjh - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link
http://fogz.eu/skqqdFashion Female attire
Gold autumn, personality Men's clothing + Shoes,
Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet
Free transport
hansel2099 - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link
alfin amd lanza un pro que compita con el atomLolimaster - Saturday, September 18, 2010 - link
Los Athlon II /Turion Neo con el 785G ya hacen pedazos al Atom. Cuestan un poco más pero lo valen, estos nuevos Zacate mejoran en bataría y gpu siendo un chip aún más pequeño y por ende equipos de menor precio.Atom ha sido fue y será basura.
zeke009 - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link
Throw this in a home media center style case, add a CableCard slot and Windows 7 please. It seems like it might be able to handle being a dedicated HTPC. No gaming on it, just TV and some media sharing/viewing within the home.Vallwesture - Monday, September 20, 2010 - link
It's good to see that AMD released their Ultra-Low-Power processor in recent days. If this one, Zacate, can have better performance than Intel Core i-xxx, that will be great. Also, we do not want to see the delay of AMD's new CPU, just give me the best right now.Customize_Your_Sleep - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Im hoping they will release these for low powered desktop, if so I will definitely get one.I'm not a fan of laptops since I dont need a computer everywhere I go,but I would like to build a itsy bitsy pc.
Btw how would the cpu compare in application performence vs the athlon II x2 255, faster or slower?
Mautaznesh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
I see Ontario annihilating the atom.The atom hasn't changed in forever, and has been used in netbooks and intel pentiums in lower class notebooks.
Ontario and Zacate will completely own the mobile region $700 and down.
teekblang - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
OEm can make a killing if they make a bunch of netbook/ultra light notebook (10.1 to 11.6 inches) and desktop, super entry level server MB base from one base platformhere 's is what I have in mind.
1.240 pin DDR3/1333 ECC or NON ecc. A MB should use it if ECC is present.
2. put DCtoDC converter like the D945SEJT.
3. Mini ITX with headers (just pins) for all the non essentials like HDMI/DVI and the freeking tall audio.
Just a "1U" mini ITX with two USB, one purple ps/2, one ETH, one PCIE slot, 3 raid0 sata2(3g), and a single VGA..
Universal MB that should be customizable for Light duty server, Desktop and possibly netbook/cheap notebook. Fast, small quiet mini HTPC and green is the name of the game..
vipink1berwal - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
Will this apu zatac be a better one than an i7 too if developed versions are consideredI also have no knowledge of the graphics card power of this apu
Actually i m an amateur amd need data as benchmarks are considered
Yes from article it is true that i5 fails in front of apu
but is this for i7 too
and what about equivalence og graphics card
1 ghz of apu+=what specs of i cores
and what gbs of a graphics card??
Thanx in advance