AMD releases Trinity APUs

AMD have launched their second generation of accelerated processing units (APUs) for mobile products, codenamed “Trinity”.

Replacing the AMD Llano range of APUs, Trinity mobile processors aim to target mainstream as well as Ultrabook laptops. AMD will release Trinity desktop parts, however those will only release later in 2012. In the meantime we have a look at the technology and features found in Trinity:

So what’s inside?

The Trinity is made up of the AMD Piledriver CPU core, as well as the HD7000 series graphics processors to handle the display side of things.

Piledriver features AMD Turbo Core technology which can reactively boost the CPU and GPU frequency depending on the application and temperature.

CPU core frequencies can be boosted up to 3.2GHz (from a standard of up to 2.7GHz), while the GPUs can get a boost from 497MHz t 686MHz.

AMD claims CPU performance is up by 29 percent, while GPU performance has increased by up to 56 percent over the previous generation Llano APU offerings.

AMD Trinity APU design

Standout features

Some of the standout features on Trinity include:

AMD HD Media Accelerator, made up of the following technologies:

• Perfect Picture HD – Processing technology for images and video that automatically adjusts colour vibrancy, and contrast ratio, as well as edge enhancement and noise reduction.
• Steady Video – In conjunction with plug-ins for web browsers and media players, Steady Video removes jitter from media for smoother video playback.
• Quick Stream – Quick Stream prioritizes video streaming on PC systems to ensure smooth playback.
• HD video chat – Support for up to 4 simultaneous video calling streams.
• Video converter – Video converter uses its own compression engine to convert and share media files in a range of formats.

AMD Eyefinity support: The Trinity series of APUs supports Eyefinity technology without the need for a discreet AMD graphics card. For the full Eyefinity breakdown, read the Mygaming overview.

AMD dual graphics support: Trinity APUs also feature dual graphics card support, which makes use of crossfire technology between the embedded graphics processor in the APU, as well as a compatible, discreet AMD graphics cards. AMD claims that dual graphics support can boost gaming performance by up to 75 percent. Dual graphics supports modern DirectX 11 games, as well as older DirectX 9 titles.

AMD Trinity APU Accelerated Video Converter

AMD accelerated app ecosystem

Trinity APUs can also take advantage of the AMD accelerated app ecosystem. This includes a number of well known applications which have added optimisation to work well with AMD APUs, as well as support for some of the features listed above (like Steady Video).

There are over 100 applications that support AMD APU optimisation, including: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 9, Adobe Photoshop CS6, WinZip 16.5 and VLC Media Player.

AMD Trinity APU processor

Technical details

The Trinity range of APUs will be available from partners including Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. The following models will be available:

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