Conclusion
- The AMD FM2 APUs will be available soon along with supporting board products. Retail pricing is unknown at this time.
- NEW Piledriver CPU core design
- Support for up to two VGAs in CrossfireX with supported board products
- Updated with VLIW4 GPU shader core design
- Support for 3+1 Eyefinity display connectivity
- Turbo CORE 3.0 for both CPU and GPU
- Same maximum TDP as FM1 products.
- Perhaps a bit late to the market, with laptop-grade parts already for sale.
- No compatibility with previous FM1 products, be it boards or chips.
[score][/score]
I really wish there was more I could tell you at this point, but, unfortunately, AMD said no. I can highlight the exact changes in the platform here, and I can outline the feature changes well enough, but that is about it. Having had several months to play with the AMD A10-5800K, I do have to say that I'm rather impressed. No, it's not going to be a top performer across the board, but it's not meant to be one either. It does what it is capable of pretty well, including simple, daily "family-gaming" usage. I've even managed to do some decent gaming myself using this rig, and, as you can tell by the 3DMark11 score posted on the last page, the gaming performance offered is pretty reasonable. Most titles are definitely playable provided you adjust in-game settings accordingly.
Honestly, that's all I've done with my AMD A10-5800K APU. I simply used it. My wife has used it far more than I, and she likes to do some light gaming from time to time. I haven't heard any complaints from her or my kids. It has actually proven quite useful to have an affordable rig around, especially with a small power footprint sticking under 135 W with AMD Dual Graphics gaming. That's better-than-console graphics, for better or the same power-consumption. Valve's new armchair-version of STEAM is getting more and more appealing with such hardware in hand, let me tell you.
And that is all I can tell you. This IS a preview, after all. For a proper look from all angles, and a deeper look into performance, overclocking, and other things, be sure to check the TechPowerUp front page daily! Maybe make it your homepage. ;)