Mobile CPUs: AMD A8 and A10 vs Core i5 and i7 (Llano, Trinity, Sandy and Ivy Bridge) (page 11: Conclusion)

This first overview of mobile platforms allowed us to survey the respective platform developments from the two manufacturers.

Inside Trinity, AMD has introduced many architectural changes. With the same manufacturing process and an increased number of transistors, AMD has succeeded in keeping the energy consumption of its chip down. The arrival of Piledriver has given a level of performance that is at least as high as previously, though at the cost of a higher clock in load. In spite of everything, the Piledriver architecture holds up relatively well during this type of exercise, which is to AMD’s credit. The impact resulting from the change in GPU architecture is variable depending on the games, but is on average quite marked. Forgetting about the competition for a second, with Trinity AMD has introduced some daring architectural changes, which have paid off.

Intel continues to dominate in terms of purely processor performance. Ivy Bridge has given a gain partly down to its slightly higher clocks but a simple dual core Sandy Bridge continues to dominate the AMD quad core offers in our processor tests. With Sandy Bridge, Intel’s quad cores were already in another world in terms of performance and energy consumption but the arrival of the 35 Watt quad core processors in the Ivy Bridge range (such as the Core i7 2612QM) have stretched this gap even more. The slight increase in idle energy consumption on the Ivy Bridge samples we tested is the only criticism we have of these chips. This is however relative when you think that the 35 and 45 Watt processors haven’t really been designed for machines supposed to be as mobile as possible (Intel and AMD have chips with a TDP of 17 and 25 Watts for this market).

Intel could be criticized for the delay in OpenCL and graphics drivers, an area where they are likely to be making more of an effort given that AMD is counting on highlighting the use of this API so as to try to make up the ground lost on the processor side. This requires the participation of developers who, while less so than before, remain reticent.

Real usage of these machines remains moreover an important question. With the A10-4600M, AMD is in practice offering the best platform for games of all those in this report. While Intel’s HD 4000 is indeed an advance on the Sandy Bridge HD 3000, it’s still quite some way down on the AMD graphics cores. In addition, the Trinity platform draws less power. A platform equipped with an additional graphics card would however give better results for those who really want to do some gaming, obviously at the price of reduced mobility and higher power consumption. This is what makes the AMD A10-4600M a viable solution within a certain fairly small niche. It remains to be seen if it will convince the OEMs and end users.