18W AMD Fusion Beats Intel Core i5 at Graphics Performance

[Sempron Guy]

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As with every IDF event, AMD camped nearby at hotel suites, showing off its latest. Even as Intel is busy selling Sandy Bridge to the press, AMD has some goods of its own. The green team displayed a notebook development platform built around the Fusion "Zacate" APU, which a dual-core APU based on the Bobcat architecture, with a DirectX 11 compliant GPU embedded into it. A more interesting specification is its TDP, just at 18W, with a more energy-efficient die suited for netbooks, at just 9W (codenamed "Ontario". The test platform was pitted against an Intel Core i5 processor-driven notebook, and the two were tested on casual gaming a run of City of Heroes, and HTML5 web-rendering performance using Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 test suite.

The Intel HD graphics embedded intro the Intel Core i5 managed just 6~7 fps @ 1024 x 768, while the Fusion "Zacate" managed close to 5 times that, around 30 fps, which made the game playable. Next up, the two setups were compared with MSIE9 HTML5 demos. In one such graphics-intensive demo that shows a virtual bookshelf from which you can pick up books, read a teaser, and then buy it off Amazon.com, the Fusion "Zacate" was able to deliver smooth animations, while that from the Core i5 looked choppy. Lastly, a close look at the demo board reveals that Fusion is indeed a 2-chip solution (APU + chipset). Compared to current AMD mobile platforms, it will significantly cut down board area, letting manufacturers build faster, and smaller ultraportables and netbooks.

18W AMD Fusion Beats Intel Core i5 at Graphics Performance | techPowerUp

Watch the demo here YouTube - AMD Fusion - First Demo of the Zacate APU

[goldfinger]

Nice find. I'm pretty sure that one day AMD will get his throne back again!

[devilsburger]

this is indeed a breakthrough on amd..^_^..

[kazki]

This is cool

[P0w3rM0v3]

The fusion architecture is highly focused on integration of graphics and raw cpu performance. This seems to be the direction both AMD and Intel (sandybridge) are taking as they seem to be targeting against integrated graphics and low end graphics cards. The question is how do these translate to improvements when used together with a dedicated card and will the actual cpu computation performance actually see significant increase as well.

[Sempron Guy]

As far as the articles go ( not sure if its true or not ) AMD's Fusion Tech is expected to replace dedicated cards. Where talking about an HD5670's raw performance and below.

[P0w3rM0v3]

^^ yep2x. and from what i read, that's what the sandybridge is targeting as well.
The interesting part with sandybridge is that they promise one channel per DIMM which is awesome

[acronis]

this will be good for the consumers =)

[vipvip68]

The integration of CPU and GPU should work towards AMD's advantage... Intel will have to scramble to compete in terms of GPU performance while Nvidia will have its rug swept from under it... a merger with Intel would have been possible ... too bad Nvidia and Intel arent the best of friends...