13-Way Low-End GPU Comparison With AMD's AM1 Athlon

[stiiixy]

Did Mick do a powerWatts/performance thing yet? He seems hell bent on benchmarking eveything about these CPU's, so logically, why not how much power it consumes. Hopefully I didn't miss it =P

[Michael]

Did Mick do a powerWatts/performance thing yet? He seems hell bent on benchmarking eveything about these CPU's, so logically, why not how much power it consumes. Hopefully I didn't miss it =P

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_athlon_sempron&num=1

[wizard69]

Very respectable.

I'm sure it'd beat out the 6570 if it weren't for the crappy single-channel memory controller. Considering this though, the results are actually pretty good.

Not bad at all as you imply. I have to wonder how AMD deals with the memory controller in future revisions. Do the go dual channel or do they support the faster emerging RAM interface standards. For that matter do they deliver a Kabini with a GDDR interface.

I'm also puzzled by the slow PCI Express port, you would think that they would support 8X at a minimal. I mean if the intention is to support a faster video card it would seem like making sure that card runs fast would be important.

[Ferdinand]

Kinda what I was thinking... Wait for the next revision or two revisions from now, DDR4 dual channel RAM with one of these style APU's? Nice low power, high performance little machine you could build.

Just give us 64GB/s eDRAM 64MB or 128MB.

[curaga]

Just give us 64GB/s eDRAM 64MB or 128MB.

You sure it's useful? The 10mb eDRAM of xbox 360 and 32mb eSRAM of Xbox One are not useful enough according to several devs of those platforms.

[Ferdinand]

You sure it's useful? The 10mb eDRAM of xbox 360 and 32mb eSRAM of Xbox One are not useful enough according to several devs of those platforms.

The 10MB is only big enough to do tricks to the framebuffer. 64-128MB would be large enough to have part of the level in that buffer. Single Channel DDR3 1600 is 12GB/s. Xbone has 68,3GB/s and PS4 176GB/s. So even the Xbone has 6x more memory bandwidth than these athlons.

[stiiixy]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._sempron&num=1

Look like I did miss it. Thanks for the reference.

[smitty3268]

You sure it's useful? The 10mb eDRAM of xbox 360 and 32mb eSRAM of Xbox One are not useful enough according to several devs of those platforms.

The devs don't say it's useless, they say it isn't enough. I'm pretty sure they've said the 32mb on the xbox one needs to be more like 48mb to get good 1080p performance, which is why so many of the games there are rendered at 720p or 900p and then scaled up afterwards.

[gagaboul]

PCIe with AM1H-ITX

On the AM1H-ITX motherboard there is also a DC connector...

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AM1H-ITX/?cat=Specifications

..I'm not sure if it is possible to plug a GPU on the PCIe socket while powering the system with a 19V adapter instead of a dedicated PSU. On the specs (url above), it says in the "slots" section:

- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE1 @ x4 mode)
- 1 x mini-PCI Express Slot

*Due to the power limitation and PCIe bandwidth (x4), the VGA card is not supported.

..where is the mini-PCI Express Slot?
..what does VGA card is not supported exactly mean?

[riklaunim]

Zostac has pcie 1x NVIDIA gt610 that conforms to power limits of that pcie so that ought to work. Thin mini itx has a specs limit on power it can provide via it PCIe slot and that limits using any stronger GPU.