AMD's "Puma" Mauls Intel

by Dustin Sklavos

AMD's mobile presence over the past couple years has been decidedly lackluster. Their processors have often been marred by poor battery life, mediocre performance, paper launches, or some combination of the three, and their saving grace has been a healthy presence in the budget laptop market.

Their buyout of ATI didn't do them any favors in the short term, either, with ATI's Radeon HD 2000 series being lackluster at best and disastrous at worst, leading to an eighteen month stagnation of the video card market resulting from an overconfident NVIDIA. And worse, an inability to capitalize on the mobile graphics market that started with the Radeon X1000 series only grew worse with the HD 2000 line.

I'm not here to suggest a sea change in brewing, but I'll happily point out that the release of the Radeon HD 3000 series on the desktop went a long way toward renewing faith in ATI, and the newly debuted Radeon HD 4000 series has suddenly made NVIDIA's entire lineup look quaint at best, and overpriced at worst. So while AMD still hasn't recovered from the buyout, ATI is back, and this year, we're finally seeing the merger bear fruit.

While the 690G integrated graphics processor (IGP) was fairly impressive, it still never quite got past the simple fact that it's still an IGP. But the 780G chipset - basically an entire Radeon HD 2400 core crammed into an integrated graphics part - has successfully managed to bring low-end dedicated performance to the integrated graphics set while actually reducing power consumption compared to its predecessor in the process! And this part, coupled with some smart engineering from AMD's processor division, forms the foundation of the exciting new platform they dub "Puma" - a platform that validates AMD's purchase of ATI.

The Platform

So what is Puma? Puma is the codename for AMD's new platform, a budget analog to Intel's Centrino Duo platform. But don't mistake "budget" for "inferior" -- it's a target market, but AMD has some tricks up their sleeve that make Puma a very compelling choice.

In stores, Puma will be identifiable by the name "Turion Ultra," thereby smartly avoiding the problem that has plagued Intel's Centrino platform since its inception: Turion Ultra can refer to the platform or the processor.

Puma is comprised of the same three types of parts as Centrino: processor, chipset, and wireless. Puma's processor is the Turion Ultra. The chipset is the mobile variant of AMD's 780G desktop chipset. The wireless is ...

Well, AMD diverges from Intel here. AMD allows the notebook manufacturer to use whatever wireless chipset they choose, while Intel only allows their own wireless to be used. AMD does cite this as a benefit, but I'm not sure I concur: my experience with Broadcom, Atheros, and Intel wireless parts has left me generally preferring the performance and stability of Intel's hardware. Your mileage may vary.

Turion Ultra Processor

First things first: AMD's Turion Ultra processor. The Turion Ultra is the first processor AMD has designed specifically for the mobile market; former Turions were basically Athlon 64s and Athlon 64 X2s with thermal characteristics good enough to make it in laptops. Yet the Turion Ultra, while its cores are basically unchanged from desktop Athlon 64 X2s, has inherited some architectural refinements from AMD's Phenom processors, including HyperTransport 3.0.

Additionally, the Turion Ultra offers more fine-grained clock speed control as well as allowing it to clock the cores independently of one another. It's also able to dynamically scale the HyperTransport as needed, resulting in a processor that can respond precisely as needed to workloads.

More improvements include an increase of processor cache from 1MB of L2 cache to 2MB (L2 cache is basically RAM built onto a processor) and support for up to DDR2-800. By themselves, these may not add up to much, but while memory speed has historically been for the most part unimportant to Intel's Core processors, it has had a more measurable impact on AMD's dual cores.

Unfortunately, the TDP (Thermal Design Power) hasn't changed from existing Turions: the Turion Ultra's lineup tops out at 35W, exactly the same wattage as its predecessors and exactly the same wattage as its Intel competition, though it bears mentioning Intel and AMD measure TDP differently. Given the improved power-saving characteristics, the Turion Ultra should offer at least marginally superior battery life to existing Turion X2s, but it may not be able to compete with Intel's Core 2 Duos in performance or battery life. Still, it's an improvement in an era where CPU power is already at a gross surplus.

The Turion Ultras available on initial release are the following:

Model	Speed	TDP
ZM-80	2.1GHz	32W
ZM-82	2.2GHz	35W
ZM-86	2.4GHz	35W

Radeon HD 3200 Graphics

The Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) at the center of Puma is perhaps the most exciting part of the platform, and rightfully so. It offers several features that Intel's IGPs simply can't touch and NVIDIA is struggling to keep up with.

First and foremost, the HD 3200 is one of the most - if not THE most - power-efficient IGPs available today. At the same time, it's easily the fastest, being basically an entire Radeon HD 2400 with virtually no changes made to it. As a result, it shares the benefits of that lineage, including two key features: 5.1 sound over HDMI and UVD (Unified Video Decoder). While sound over HDMI isn't a huge development, it's supported natively in the Radeon HD 3200, making design simpler for OEMs. It also allows easy connection to high-definition televisions, and personally I think laptops serving double duty as media center computers may wind up becoming a growing niche because of this.

UVD ...

The second, the Unified Video Decoder (UVD), is a big deal. UVD allows the computer to offload video decoding from the central processor to the graphics processor. While this isn't a big deal for watching DVDs or most any standard definition fare, watching high-definition content can cause processor usage to shoot straight up or even max out completely, leaving you with stuttering video. The inclusion of UVD allows for Blu-ray to continue trickling down the market as well as improving battery life by reducing processor strain in decoding high-definition video.

Gaming Performance ...

This isn't all. The Radeon HD 3200 is, in itself, a capable graphics processor that puts up numbers that nip at the heels of low-end dedicated graphics parts. It raises the bar and allows even budget buyers to play more modern games. Maybe not at the highest settings, but definitely playable. This is a far cry from Intel's competing parts: the existing X3100 is a punchline with profoundly hit-and-miss performance and support, and the even if the incoming X4500 winds up being three times faster than the X3100 as Intel claims, three times profoundly unplayable is generally still unplayable.

CrossFire ...

The HD 3200 also adds support for two different CrossFire schemes, dubbed Hybrid CrossFire and PowerXpress.

PowerXpress may be the more important of the two. One of the major drawbacks of dedicated graphics in notebooks is increased power draw, but PowerXpress doesn't just mitigate this problem, it basically solves it. When a Puma notebook is paired with a Radeon HD 3000 series dedicated GPU, the notebook can actually seamlessly switch between using the integrated HD 3200 and the dedicated graphics. This means that when you're plugged in, the notebook can run full bore with dedicated graphics, while when unplugged, the dedicated graphics can be shut down entirely and draw no power.

Hybrid CrossFire is the other big sell here. Basically, if the notebook is equipped with a dedicated Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series GPU, the HD 3400 can actually be run in tandem with the integrated HD 3200, generally resulting in about a 50% performance increase. This is a bigger deal than it appears because the 3400 is a pretty small, inexpensive, low-powered GPU to begin with. Try to imagine putting NVIDIA's low end GeForce 8400M GS in a laptop and the motherboard being able to boost the graphics performance by as much as 50%, and you start to see the value of this technology.

Everything Else

As mentioned before, the third component for a Puma notebook is wireless networking, and in its own way it seems kind of silly that this would even be part of it at all. When you look at the Turion Ultra processor and especially the Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics part - along with the technology it leverages - any mention of "it should include a wireless card" just seems silly. You can't even buy a new notebook without a wireless card anymore.

Now one crucial point worth making is that Puma isn't designed for ultraportables; it's just a little too big and throws off just a little too much heat for that market, which has so far been dominated by Intel's low voltage and ultra low voltage processors. That said, it wouldn't surprise me to see it get down to the 12" neighborhood like the Turion X2 has.

Conclusion

AMD is wholeheartedly embracing the budget market sector right now, but the interesting thing is how compelling and how balanced a platform Puma is compared to Intel's Centrino and upcoming Centrino 2 platforms. The reality is that the importance of the GPU is growing. High-definition content is becoming more and more common, and there's growing interest in employing the GPU for purposes outside of gaming. Adobe, for example, has demonstrated its next edition of Photoshop being substantially accelerated by employing graphics hardware.

Suddenly the surplus of CPU power Intel's Centrino platform offers doesn't seem as compelling when you look at the GPU performance you often have to sacrifice. Dedicated graphics are easy to find on the internet and in custom builds, but go into your local Best Buy or other retailer and the dedicated graphics parts suddenly become a bit of a rarity.

Puma's Radeon HD 3200 IGP ups the ante, and the Turion Ultra processor can help AMD stay competitive in the low end market until they can produce a faster architecture.

In the end, though, AMD's marketing is going to have to get the word out that they have the better platform. But if you're in the market for a budget laptop, Puma's the way to go.

Related Articels:

HP Pavilion tx2500 First Look Review

HP Pavilion tx2500 User Review

Early Hands on with new AMD Puma and Toshiba A300

 

Hm... interesting article... This line made absolutely zero sense to me though:
"even if the incoming X4500 winds up being three times faster than the X3100 as Intel claims, three times profoundly unplayable is generally still unplayable."

Care to elaborate?? Because to me having 3X the performance makes games 3X MORE playable not less...

Otherwise nice work!

 

^^ I guess he means that Intel will have to fix the X3100's unreliable gaming capabilities... if the X4500 is 3 times better, its still going to be hit and miss for some games.

Anyways, excellent article. +rep for the detailed lesson!

 

I think what Pulp meant was like 3 fps in Crysis is unplayable and going to 3x is impressive, but 9 fps is still unplayable.

 

Great article and im happy to see ATi is making big steps ther are almost at the same level if not better as nvidea. And if they keep on improving like they are they will be supperior in a year or so who could have thoughd that a year ago

 

well you have to give intel some credit... AMD bought ATI and added dedicated gfx-like chips into their platform. intel came up with their igp solutions with not that much background in the gfx realm.

this upcoming platform is definitely exciting. AMD's innovations on the graphics front hopefully will revolutionize notebook graphics... like combining integrated and dedicated

 

Good article! I really think that AMD has a very solid mobile platform for the budget sector. I'm especially impressed by the hd 3200 which actually scores higher in 3dmark 06 than a dedicated 8400m gs. Now I just want to see some real-life gaming benchmarks.

 

^^ I wouldn't give Intel any credit... Intel's future graphics solutions won't be able to compete with Puma, and the fact that they lack the technology is a fault rather than something to forgive; when AMD acquired ATI, we should have seen some response from Intel.

 

Is that so? I mean many budget consumers don't need 3d performance.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, in the area of battery life AMD still lags behind Intel.

So for the budget consumer who needs 3d power AMD's Puma may be the way to go. For people who want maximum battery life or application peformance, it may be different.

 

now the question is will the higher end of puma laptops with dedicated ati gfx be able to compete with the nvidia gpu's that come with intel

 

well if the 3800 series comes that can crossfire with the 3200 igp i think they beat nvidea by a mile

 

It would be nice to see AMD top Intel, as that would get intel motivated to come out with newer faster tech. What happened when the p4 got decimated by AMD chips? Intel came out with Core Duo and eventually C2D. So I for one am pulling for AMD as them topping the market will only help the consumer. Currently we have a lull in the graphics and CPU market, pretty much seat of the pants performance hasn't changed much in the past year or so and hopefully this will be the change we so desperately need.

 

Does anyone actually have benchmarks of the HD3200 igp hybrid crossfired with a HD 3450 or so? I'm really interested to see how good it really is compared to say a 9500M GS or so..

 

It sounds like a nice platform but I'm not sold that it's better than Centrino. It's great that the Puma integrated GPU is better than the X3100, but is it better in a way that makes a difference? Hardcore gamers will not be happy with either of them and with go for the dedicated GPU, and there wasn't anything in the article that convinced me that the Puma GPU outdoes the X3100 in office work or general media playback. The hardware decoding sounds pretty good, but ultra-high-bitrate HD (higher than BlueRay) decoding on laptops has got to be a pretty small niche market.

 

Well, they did hire many engineers from 3DLabs after Creative downsized [read destory] it from a maker of Ultra High-end Graphics Cards with prices amongst the grands and a pioneer at the OpenGL 2.0 standard, to makers of some nameless Media accelerator chip. But they are still newbies at making powerful graphics processors for the consumer market, and IMHO Larrabee is also a rather naive approach for consumer graphics, but well, the time would tell...

 

Yeah, thats the big question...

 

could the integrated be paired up with the 3650? i'm sure that would be able to top the 9500 or even the 9600

 

I think hybrid sli only works with the 3200 and the 3450 but im not 100% sure.

 

Still has to deal with the heat.

 

Puma looks nice. I want.

 

nice job,it is really a great read

 

Turion Ultra`s speed grades are marked too much like Zalman`s computer cooling products with "ZM-" in the beginning...

 

Yeah, I've been really impressed with the platform... I've had a HP TX2500 Tablet for a few days, and it's a HUGE improvement in multimedia and gaming over the Nvidia 6150 or X3100, as I've had both as well.... course, my other laptop is a X205 with SLI 8600's, so I like that market too, but honestly, the HD 3200 in this thing has really impressed me... The funny part is, on battery power, it actually outperforms my Toshiba with it's SLI cards, as they either kill the battery in no time or step back so much that they are actually slower, where as the HD3200 just chugs along nicely.

As an example, the HD3200 plays HL2, TF2 and Portal at native res (1280x800) at high in DirectX9 mode with fps in the 30's+, and doesn't dip down and stutter like the X3100 I had did, just runs right along smoothly. Even loaded up GRID and COD4, and they are both totally playable, have to drop some settings back, but for a 12" Tablet, that blew my mind.

Very nice step for AMD/ATI.

 

In fact, it's already been done:

HP's tx2500z is a 12 inch tablet that has the Puma platform, making it the most powerful tablet, and also the smallest laptop with the Puma to date.

 

That's a thump up for the GPU. Now I would consider the AMD cpu if it can keep up with the new Centrino 2.
Great article btw, good job.

 

GPU-wise, yes, Puma slaughters the GM45 (X4500), but the Turion simply cannot compete with the Penryn processors that Intel is using, and AMD will fall farther behind with Intel's Q1 09 release of Capella/Gilo.

However, one must also consider that both the Turion processor and the HD3200 will consume more power than the Penryn/X4500 combo. Also, consider that older Santa Rosa notebooks with dedicated GPUs will have better CPU and GPU performance than Puma notebooks and will be significantly marked down due to the fact that they are being phased out.

So you cannot unequivocally state that Puma mauls Intel, since that is only considering the graphical performance of their respective integrated graphic processors, as opposed to notebooks or even platforms as a whole.

 

Always great to see more competition and innovation in the market. I guess I share the writers sentiments in saying that AMD will have to capitalize on their advantage with some aggressive marketing. The ordinary consumer won't know the difference at the store.

Hopefully AMD will continue to press forward even though they are at a disadvantage with their processors. I'm looking forward to their K11 architecture.

 

Many budget consumers need 3d performance, a great marked for these kinds of notebooks would be students who leave home, like I did, if there was a budget notebook with good gaming performance I would bought my notebook myself and not asked for my father to give this to me.

 

Good to see some balance to the argument.

So in GPU performance AMD wins.
In battery life, heat and CPU performance Intel wins.

 

Well we do know conclusively about the GPU performance. I think the thermal design of the notebook in question is the key factor in heat - there are plenty of painfully hot Core 2 notebooks (MacBook, anyone?). Battery life I'll probably have to hand you, but we'll wait and see. As for CPU performance - K10 is fairly competitive with Core clock-per-clock (Core maintains a slight edge), I think we should wait and see benchmarks before calling any winners between two CPUs that aren't available yet. Not that CPU performance is terribly relevant in the notebook world - no one in their right mind buys a budget notebook to do complex scientific calculations or software render huge 3D videos.

And remember, price matters too. AMD-based notebooks are historically cheaper than Intel-based ones. If I can save $200 and get several times the GPU performance by taking an extra 1-2C of temperature, 10 minutes less battery life, and a slightly slower CPU (for all of those heavily CPU-bound things I do on my notebook, amirite?) I think I'd be sold.

 

While I agree that Intel's CPUs are superior, and probably will be in the future, I feel that AMD has a stronger long-term strategy with the direction that they're taking their technology. Not only are almost all CPUs in retail stores more than adequate for most people's needs, but more and more applications are tapping into the processing power of GPUs (for example, Adobe Photoshop). Additionally, I think most of us have found that laptops aren't very suitable for gaming.

Also, making a budget-oriented IGP that is actually capable of decent performance is a fantastic idea from a marketing perspective; it puts gaming within the reach of the masses, where previously laptops with solid graphics were costly.For these reasons I believe that Puma may be a turning point for AMD's fortunes.

 

Define budget - you can get an Asus F8Sv with an 8600GT, an F8Sn or M51Sn with a 9500GS for well under $1000. Same with a Dell Vostro 1500 with an 8600GT - close to $800. I think most Puma based laptops will come in at around there, so there is your budget performance notebook.

 

How does Puma "maul" Intel? The article says it has less CPU power and battery life while having more GPU power, yet people buying low end laptops rarely need GPU power...

**edit: nvm, I see I'm late to the discussion. But still, anyone who's even remotely interested in playing non web-based games on their laptop should get one with a decent dedicated GPU. Low-end dedicated GPUs aren't going to allow you to play games at much higher quality than Intel anyways.

 

I would be more interested to see whether there will be gaming laptops using the Puma platform and the mobility 3800 cards.

 

This is pretty much a non-event.

When I'm at work, or on the train, or in a coffee shop, I rarely, if ever, see anyone playing 3D games or watching HD content. People use their notebooks mostly for MS office, web surfing, email, and social networking, and none of these applications needs gaming level performance.

The gamers will still go for a discrete GPU with dedicated video memory.

 

So people only use their laptops in public places where they can be easily observed, right?

 

It'd be great to see some market statistics on what people use their computers for and what applications they run on a regular basis. We could all probably make more definitive statements as to whose approach (AMD or Intel) is a more appropriate response to the needs of the market. Personally, I would say that IGP technology has lagged far behind CPU tech so improvements there are more "significant".

 

I find that this backs up AMD's approach 100%. By having their hybrid GPU system, they use IGP's for those coffee shop moments to pinch every minute of battery life. While, at home where we "don't" see people using their computer is when they can fully utilize the dedicated graphics plugged in.

 

I just got a tx2524ca in Canada however it's using a rm-70 (2.0ghz) turion x2 cpu. I know it's l2 cache is only 1M comparing to zm's 2M, but except that is it supposed to provide similar battery advanctages as the turion ultra?

Cause I see no battery life improvement on the tx2524 vs. the tx2000. That makes me wondering if I shall wait for the zm version tx to appear in Canada (they hasn't yet).

Thanks!

 

Sounds like a money grabbing approach to me.
What they want you to do is buy 2 gpu from them for every computer they sell. When instead they could've probably just put the same power saving technology from their cpu into the gpu and sell you one discrete powerful gpu that can go into a power saving mode of operation when ran on battery.

Very shady.

 

The Sony Vaio SZ has had the same hybrid approach with Intel + Nvidia for a few years now.

 

It seems like AMD/ATI is the only group making serious gains in IGP performance. I agree with Zoogle, CPU performance is almost overkill on light notebooks, especially with Intel, where IGP performance has lagged behind for several years.

While I am sure Nvidia/AMD/Intel are all taking this market seriously, for once the red team has been the innovator AND successful with a new platform.

The 780G chipset is golden. I'll probably end up buying one for my next super-low cost desktop and media center (another place AMDs IGP is very significant).

 

I'll simply ditto this. Don't want to make anyone wet their pants and cry to their mommy by picking apart to state that Puma isn't quite mauling in an equal area of performance.

 

I agree. Most processors in mobile chipsets are overkill. IGP performance is an area that needs improvement and AMD has realized that and made headway. I think this is good because it provides consumers with options, something that has been missing while Intel has been dominating the mobile CPU market.

Pulp, great article BTW.

 

Take two HP notebooks, a dv5t and a dv5z (or whatever the latest models are), and put them side by side. Same basic design, same basic cooling architecture. The t (Intel) will have lower temperatures and better battery life. Thats what we mean when we say that AMD runs hotter and uses more power.

I just said, right. Take a Santa Rosa based Penryn notebook with a dedicated GPU, it will be inexpensive to the point of being identical in price with the AMD, and will have superior graphical performance to boot.

Just take the HP dv5z, running AMD's Puma platform. Equip it identically to the Asus M51Sn-C1 (T5750/3GB/250GB/9500M GS/15.4"/$999) other than CPU and GPU (leave those as the 2.1GHz Turion Ultra and the HD3200) and you get $959 plus tax and shipping. So, for essentially identical pricing (well, lower, actually), you get a laptop with a bit faster processor, a really significantly faster GPU, better battery life, and otherwise identical specs. Which would you go for? (And for the record, a dv6700t with Penryn and X3100 came in at $969 at those specs, and I'd assume the dv5t will be at the same price. So, even if you don't need that much GPU power, the Intel is a better option as well.)

 

In my opinion, an article with this kind of title should be backed up with some solid numbers pointing to the dominance of the mentioned platform. While this looks really good on paper, readers would love to see the foundation on which the claims are standing on. I myself got excited when i saw the title thinking that, finally, i'm seeing something that i would consider getting in the future.

But looking closely, the strength of "Puma" comes from the chipset/integrated graphics. CPU wise AMD has a lot of work to do to catch up with Intel. Sad to say, gone are the days when AMD is too confident to challenge Intel in benchmarking contest.

The only advantage i see is the strength of the integrated graphics that they used but then if gamers wants superior graphics then they will opt for a discrete graphics card. If, for non gamers, then they will look at overall value and performance based on what their priority is (a mix of casual gaming and regular office/internet/email use). If their price is lower than Intel's in a comparable setup then they might be able to compete otherwise they're gonna have a lot of work in marketing this "Puma" platform as against Intel's well established "Centrino" platform.

 

I agree. It's a good title for getting a lively discussion though.

 

Don't know about you guys, but from the title, I kind of thought I'd see lots of charts showing how "AMD Mauls Intel"...

Good article though! So maybe that's why Dell chose AMD HD GPUs for their new Studio line... AMD lives once more!

 

No, you're not the only one.

The title is extremely misleading, in this case.

 

You're missing the point; Puma's strength is in its superior graphics, not processing power. Graphics power has been the weak point in laptops for some time now, while the processing power has been more than enough for most.