facebook rss twitter

AMD demonstrates Zacate Fusion chip in action

by Pete Mason on 14 September 2010, 18:04

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaz2t

Add to My Vault: x

In an attempt to steal some of the thunder away from IDF this week, AMD is showcasing some of its upcoming Fusion APUs in San Francisco. 

On display was the 18W Zacate processor that comprises two Bobcat cores and a DirectX 11-capable GPU which is destined for ultrathin laptops and low-power desktops. Unfortunately, the clock speeds weren't disclosed. The competition was provided by an undisclosed laptop said to be running an Intel Core i5 CPU.

Obviously the tests were carefully selected and controlled, but the results were interesting nonetheless.  Running through City of Heroes: Going Rogue, the AMD-based system provided fast and fluid gameplay.  Unsurprisingly, the Intel system struggled, providing choppy visuals and poor frame-rates on the same settings and playing on the same server.

The next test was an HTML5 demo used to show the advantage of using a GPU to accelerate webpage rendering. As before, the AMD chip trounced the Core i5, showing a much higher frame-rate and providing a very smooth experience.

Again, these tests are fairly contrived and were probably specially chosen to show Zacate in a good light. At the same time, the silicon was clearly running well and the results are nothing if not encouraging.

AMD is bound to show more demonstrations of its upcoming APUs as the week - and IDF - continues.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Although the benchmarks were chosen to suit, the simple fact of it is this Zacate will provide a far nicer accelerated browsing and gaming experience than the i5 + intel graphics ever will.

Obviously it's going to lose while running very “serious” software, but nobody is doing that at 18 watts anyway. AMD is in a very nice position to make a huge dent in intel's low end with this, and it's 9w little brother Ontario.
Incidentally, they did more comparisons last night which you can see here -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH5A4D9qoDQ
Ontario should be good in netbooks then, my N220 isnt slow for a netbook CPU but waiting for the NF310 to come out for that extra bit of horsepower, AMD might not have been on the ball when Atom launched but unless the next revision of Atom is pretty good these bobcat based chips could be good, and it'd certainly be nice to see AMD ontop of Intel again if only for a while..