So what is the consensus on how this would compare with the AMD Fusion?

Which one.? This is a stupid question with an obvious answer right now, but in a few months it wont be, when there are 2 totally different "Fusion APU's" on the market.!

The current one is a direct competitor of the Atom/ION, the next one to be released is the "average desktop chip", this is the chip that will compete with the "i3's" and "i5's".

In answer to your question, we already know how they compete with the current "E" series, but what about the "A" series. In some areas, I know for a fact that there wont be a competitor, in others there should be a great battle, and likely both sides will claim to be victorious - and often they are, it mainly depends on the testing and the system setups that are used - which again, will have to be re-written, and no-doubt will be re-skewed in favour of someone with cash in a brown envelope (not that I am suggesting that anything underhand ever goes on when performance testing computer equipment at certain websites #cough# toms #cough#).

AMD will with the graphics hands down, they will also win the price (maybe not the first month or 2, prices always need to settle), likely the price/performance will sway AMD's way, the outright performance on the CPU side is in the air, as is the efficiency - especially when the 9xx series of chipsets hit the market.

This should be interesting to watch.


Andy

I meant on "at the wall" energy usage. I didn't know there were two distinct fusions. I would be interested in a comparison of either or both in terms of energy usage. I would expect the energy usage of the Intel to be greater... but I am sort of hoping only marginally so. I assume some people here, including you, might have some informed opinions on that.

Rumour has it that the "E" line of Fusions will get a little kick, and an upgrade in the back end of the year, a tiny speedbump, a lower power floor, faster memory bandwidth, and some form of "auto-overclocking of a single core below X TDP", and again another rumour about the SB chip getting less power hungry.

If half of this is true, it might wipe a few watts off of the idle power draw of an AMD "E" Fusion system, if all of it is true, it could halve it - but that in reality wont happen - here is hoping for a few watts. This is a simple case of evolution rather than revolution.

The "A" series when mixed with the 9xx chipset should be interesting simply because the "A" series has a GPU built in with the CPU - this means strict power management, and the total loss of a GPU built into the NB, this makes the NB vanish totallay, meaning that other than the "APU" the main power draw is from the SB - again this should drop overall power draw straight away when idle, how much I dont know, but I dont think it will be as good as the i3 simply because AMD will be using a "modified" K10 "stars" core AKA K10.5 as part of this APU.


Andy

Fusion A uses the brand new Hudson FCH, and new sockets. Not 900 chipsets.

"Mats" is right, look at the link below - pay attention to the chart (picture).

http://www.nordichardware.com/news/69-c ... sb-30.html

This is what is so confusing about what AMD are doing right now, there is so much going on and so much changing at the same time, We have the already out Fusion "E", the Fusion "A" in a few months that uses variations on the SB that the Fusion "E" is already using, then there is "Bulldozer" which is compatable with some motherboard already out there using the 8xx chipset - even though AMD have said that it is not compatable, and then there is the 9xx Chipset, which as "Mats" says is not for the Fusion "A" range, so must be Bulldozer only.!

No-doubt this will be totally clear in a few months when all of these products are actually out, and we can see real products.


Andy

Actually, it's the AM3 socket that's not officially compatible. The combination of AM3+ socket and 800 chipset is supported.
The boards that have been up for debate are some models from Asus, that uses AM3 and 800.


Llano have an old core, but a new socket and integrated PCIe and graphics.

Bulldozer have a new core, but still have the old chipset and socket, even though slightly revised.

Next year, AMD will replace everything old mentioned above. I'd expect a new socket for Bulldozer.

It seems that it is not only the 800 chipset that is supported, since Gigabyte are already advertising an AM3+ version, rev. 3.1, of the budget priced GA-MA770T-UD3 board on their website http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3807&dl=#ov. This board has a 770 North Bridge and a SB810 South Bridge. It should give AMD an AM3+ board that should compete with Intel's H61 motherboards on price, particularly the MSI H61s. But it does raise the question of whether the 770 isn't going to hold back the performance of the newer AM3+ CPUs to the point where there would be little, if any performance advantage over the current Intel 2100/H61 'hot' budget combo.

I'm wondering where the limit is as far as underclocking/undervolting the i3-2100. Is there a certain point where it could compete against dual core atom CPUs? Seems like if you could get the power down enough, the performance would destroy a net-top CPU. Probably more expensive though.

Take a look at this Tech Report review of an i5-2520M based laptop. Scroll down to the web surfing battery life. With the 55W-Hr battery, the sandy bridge laptop uses a little under 10W while websurfing, the dual core atom (eee pc 1015pn) with a 56W-hr battery uses 7.7W to a little under 10W. Power use when watching H.264 at 480p is 12.2W vs the Dual core Atom's 9.7-13.3W.

So, pretty similar. But, if you actually need any horsepower, the Atom is tapped out, while the SNB kicks ass.

No, sorry.

Intel could easily drop the power needed for all of the chips tthat run alongside ATOM, but not ATOM itself. They have already done so, by making the GPU integrated like AMD have done, but a poor effort in reality, due to a poor GPU.


Andy

I think you answered a question he didn't ask

Been reading this site for years and it's been hugely useful to me being a quite pc based kinda guy!
Back to the topic looking to update my aged Athlon X2 4200 pc I was considering various options for a more reasonable budget.

The Intel i3-2100 is clearly worth looking at..but review wise you simply have to compare it to processors in it's price range. It's obvious that dual core AMD CPU's are not going to fare that well v this new Intel model. The closest match price wise is the Phenom X4 840 (ok not a real Phenom) it's actually a bit cheaper and being a genuine 4 core CPU will perform a lot better than the dual core AMD ones.

Most of the reasons for picking a dual core or even triple core AMD CPU are to unlock the extra cores at a knock down price. With the Athlon X4 models so cheap now that's where the comparison should be.

But, price is just one factor. The AMD quad cores burn a lot of power at load, which then impacts how quiet the system will be vs a lower power/more efficient alternative...and you might end up spending more $'s to counter that increased thermal load. <shrugs>

W/ regard to spending more $$ for cooling... I doubt it. At least it won't be much more -- at the level of maybe $10~20. But I'd counter that enthusiast-level heatsink/fan development has been such that such coolers have been able to cool the hottest high performance CPUs quietly for some years now, and it would be easy to find a cheap off the shelf cooler to do the job w/virtually any of the CPUs discussed in the article. CPUs are way cooler now than they were a few years ago, and even AMD's hottest chips are not much of a challenge to cool quietly in desktop/consumer PCs. At high constant load in a busy server, the thermal differences between CPUs would obviously impinge more on noise/cooling, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Looking at performance...here's a comparison of the i3-2100 vs Athlon II x4 645 and the Phenom II x4 940 from Anandtech Bench. The Athlon can't quite beat the 2100 and the Phenom is better, but still not the clear cut winner. The i3-2100 goes for $125, the Athlon for $107 and the 95W version of the Phenom (945) goes for $110.

Motherboards: Just looking at the lowest priced Gigabyte boards..
Intel: H61/H67/P67 variants running from $90-110
AMD: 880G/970 variants are about $100.

I just don't see an AMD play here.

The play is overall system build cost.
It's typically cheaper to build AMD systems mobo wise bang per buck you get a better deal.

Personally I was tempted to look at the 910e Phenom but it's high cost is a put off hence you end up probably better served looking at "propus" variants which are well priced. For many applications the lack of level 3 cache isn't a big deal least I'm not seeing it myself in real world use bar games and maybe winrar

Simple long term solution is to shove an X4 of some kind (non Phenom 125w) in your AM3+ FX cpu ready board which will likely be good enough for many users..then look at what happens later on FX wise on AM3+. Done a few builds on those recently nobody is complaining much!

Yes Intel are very good right now but those x4 CPU's are not hard to keep cool I'd not get too hung up on power efficiency because most pc's don't spend all day long at 100% CPU usage. I'm pretty sure AMD will be back on track shortly..until then they have some good bang per buck processors worth looking at.

I know some folks bailed on AMD and did a Sandybridge but I'm not one of them... we need AMD to be around long term they get my cash no problems. I'm not overly obessed with benchmarks either if you're upgrading someone from a dual core X2 4200 or Pentium D these AMD quads are horribly fast to these folks v their old machines.