Complete AMD 2012 APU Line Up

Mobile Trinity kicks off 2012 for AMD by incorporating the Piledriver CPU core (an enhanced version of the Bulldozer) and the updated GPU core based on the VLIW4 design derived from AMD’s Northern Island discreet GPU from the HD 6970. With the mobile APU out of the way, AMD also launched the budget APU codenamed the Brazos 2.0 and has revealed the desktop SKUs.

AMD launched four desktop models that all features four Piledriver cores, 4 MB of L2 cache, and supports DDR3 up to 1866MHz. The fastest desktop APU A10-5800K will have the CPU base speed of 3.8 GHz with Turbo speed to 4.2 GHz and the GPU speed of 800Mhz. This is a jump from the 3.0GHz CPU and 600MHz GPU found on the A8-3870K. The Piledriver has many improvements on the Bulldozer core that includes a better resource management, better execution units, more aggressive schedulersand and  improved instruction per clock. Combining this with the increase in the clock speed, we should expect the desktop Trinity to be significantly faster than the Llano.

Same thing can be expected from the GPU side. While there is a reduction in the number of the Radeon Core (384 on the A10-5800K vs 400 on the A8-3870K), the extra clock speed (800MHz vs 600MHz) and the more efficient design should yield a faster GPU overall. However, we do not expect the GPU to be as big of an improvement the CPU side which is perfectly logical considering that Llano’s GPU is already faster than the Ivy Bridge and it is the CPU front that AMD really needs improve on to stay competitive. If the desktop Trinity can deliver the CPU performance enhancement for AMD so it can stay competitive against Ivy Bridge while keeping the GPU lead it has, then the desktop Trinity can be a very viable alternative to the Ivy Bridge.