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AMD Zacate - the next great HTPC chip?

178K views 939 replies 125 participants last post by  perpetual98 
#1 ·
 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3920/a...e-than-core-i5


It would be perfect for HTPC :-


- very small and low heat means very little cooling and a quiet fan

- 18W TDP - very low power

- the gpu does 1080p, is an extremely fast DX11 part, and can play games (!), and accelerate flash/html5/other apps (using OpenCL). AMD IGP's are much better than Intel's anemic offerings

- since its AMD, will be a performance bargain

- likely work with older hardware (socket and memory details unknown)

- better than Sandy Bridge for a lower price

- aimed at notebook/netbook market

- shipping Q4 2010


If it ships on time, I'm really looking forward to some Christmas deals!
 
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#27 ·
#28 ·
I am really excited by our news today on shipping the first production parts. The Ontario and Zacate APUs are going to be great parts for a lot of different applications and it should hit some very nice price points.


This is going to be pretty cool as we see some of the products these parts are going to enable.
 
#31 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by rogo /forum/post/19463980


These sound totally amazing (per the preview articles). I look forward not only to Zacate's arrival, but to Intel's equivalent in the 20w range.

Intel doesnt make its CULV available for oem desktop top use. Dual core sandybridge should have a lower idle usage then current core i3's which are allready pretty good. This will probably be our best bet from intel, but shouldn't be as power friendly as zacate.
 
#32 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffkro /forum/post/19464487


Intel doesnt make its CULV available for oem desktop top use. Dual core sandybridge should have a lower idle usage then current core i3's which are allready pretty good. This will probably be our best bet from intel, but shouldn't be as power friendly as zacate.

I reckon Intel doesn't care how their CULV chips get used. It's just few manufacturers use them for desktops. Viewsonic has a nettop based on Intel CULV+Intel GS45 and Zotac has some motherboards with Intel CULV+Nvidia ION 2.
 
#33 ·
#34 ·
Thanks. How about HDMI 1.4a? I guess it supports it too.
 
#35 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/19465503


Thanks. How about HDMI 1.4a? I guess it supports it too.

No, I think it is limited to HDMI 1.3.
 
#36 ·
These charts (attached) are very perplexing. Zacate is AMD Vision vanilla, hence it does not support "Smooth Blu-Ray with ATI Avivo HD Technology"?
If this is true, it is not suitable for a HD HTPC.

 
#37 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/19466132


These charts are very perplexing. Zacate is AMD Vision vanilla, hence it does not support "Smooth Blu-Ray with ATI Avivo HD Technology"?
If this is true, it is not suitable for a HD HTPC.




Don't let the vision branding slide fool you. Zacate should not have any problem with Blu ray playback. It has a UVD 3 block for h/w acceleration.


It is a very solid performer and should be a great part for HTPC. Keep in mind, the graphics core on the APU is equivalent to a discrete level card. I have seen this thing in action and it is pretty impressive when you think about it and it is only 18W.
 
#39 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Java Jack /forum/post/19466241


Don't let the vision branding slide fool you. Zacate should not have any problem with Blu ray playback. It has a UVD 3 block for h/w acceleration.


It is a very solid performer and should be a great part for HTPC. Keep in mind, the graphics core on the APU is equivalent to a discrete level card. I have seen this thing in action and it is pretty impressive when you think about it and it is only 18W.

Hi Java,


This all sounds very promising. Have you seen how the platform performs with interlaced content? 1080i stuff and SD material?


Also interested in how well it does 2:2 pulldown for PAL DVD's.


Thanks,


Wo0zy


Edit Whoa. More posts while I was posting. Will start reading. Sorry if my questions have already been answered.
 
#41 ·
You mean both decoding and bitstreaming?


May I ask will Zacate have a standardized socket for heatsink?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Java Jack /forum/post/19465198


Ontario and Zacate will support up to 7.1 DTS Master and Dolby True HD audio up to 24Mbps
 
#42 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx
Surely Zacate GPU is equivalent to or worse than HD 5450 in post-processing (but I don't know which is true).
Aparently it has 160 Stream units (2x80) compared to 5450's 80 Stream units. And with UVD 3.0 atleast the numbers looks promissing.
 
#43 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/19466132


These charts (attached) are very perplexing. Zacate is AMD Vision vanilla, hence it does not support "Smooth Blu-Ray with ATI Avivo HD Technology"?
If this is true, it is not suitable for a HD HTPC.

It seems like they are underselling it.
 
#44 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by lymzy /forum/post/19467256


May I ask will Zacate have a standardized socket for heatsink?

The socket (FT1) is BGA, CPU is soldered to the mb. Perhaps there is no standardized way to attach a heatsink (i.e. each manufacturer decides what cooling solution to use).
 
#45 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by zicoz /forum/post/19469327


Aparently it has 160 Stream units (2x80) compared to 5450's 80 Stream units.

Based on what reasoning?


- AnandTech (and every other preview published on November 9th) says:

Quote:
The GPU is based on AMD’s 5000 series architecture (Evergreen) and features 80 shader cores and AMD’s new UVD3 decode engine.

- Cedar (HD 5450) and Zacate (E350) are manufactured in TSMC 40 nm process. Die size and transistor count:

- Cedar: 59 mm^2, 292M

- Zacate: 75 mm^2, 380M
so Zacate die can't have 2 x Cedar.


- Gaming performance of Zacate is no better than Cedar.


Aren't they enough?
 
#47 ·
Who said so (if you remember)? Just for curiosity.


Googling with key words "Zacate" and "160sp" or "Zacate" and "160 stream", I see many results, all of which are merely guesses, not even leaked information. For example, PC Perspective :

Quote:
Initially I thought that the overall size of the Ontario/Zacate chip was in the 100 mm squared to 120 mm squared range (around the same size as a current Athlon II X2 “Regor” core. This would have allowed enough room to have a 2 to 3 SIMD based graphics portion (160 stream units to 240 stream units). But it appears as though my initial ideas were wrong. Hans de Vries of Chip-Architect was able to get a lot more information on Ontario/Zacate. It seems that the chip will actually be around 74 mm squared, which is really tiny.
 
#48 ·
OK, I found interesting sentences in the PC Perspective preview (also published on November 9th):

Update: The author corrected the mistake.

Quote:
That graphics portion is made up of 2 x 80 unit SIMDs (incorrect; 1 SIMD in Cedar core = 40 stream units), so it has a grand total of 160 stream processors (incorrect; 2 x 40 = 80 stream processors).
Quote:
Some other previews on the internet incorrectly listed the number of stream units in their articles (yes, they are correct). It is in fact 160 (80) stream units for the integrated graphics, which is amazing considering that only a few short years ago the high end HD 2900 XT featured only double that number (320).

Words in red letters are my comments. The trick is
1 SIMD in HD 5900/5800/5700/5600/5500 Series GPU = 16 Thread Processors = 80 Stream Cores
1 SIMD in HD 5450 GPU = 8 Thread Processors = 40 Stream Cores (the number of Thread Processors in the SIMD engine is reduced in half)
Perhaps the author confused them. Here are figures of SIMD (the black rectangle) and Thread Processor (the white rectangle; each consisting of 5 Stream Cores, called VLIW5 [Very Long Instruction Word 5]) in HD 5570 and HD 5450.


HD 5570 (5 x SIMD, 80 Thread Processors, 400 Stream Processors):


HD 5450 (2 x SIMD, 16 Thread Processors, 80 Stream Processors):


BTW it is a bit surprising that some hardware review sites (like PC Perspective ; the author is Ryan Shrout) said HD 5450 has *one* SIMD unit with 80 stream processors.
This is wrong. HD 5450 has *two* SIMD units, each with 40 stream processors, 80 stream processors in total.




 
#50 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx /forum/post/19470009


Based on what reasoning?


- AnandTech (and every other preview published on November 9th) says:




- Cedar (HD 5450) and Zacate (E350) are manufactured in TSMC 40 nm process. Die size and transistor count:

- Cedar: 59 mm^2, 292M

- Zacate: 75 mm^2, 380M
- Gaming performance of Zacate is no better than Cedar.


Aren't they enough?

This is not really designed for full fledged gaming. Its more directed at us HTPC guys for desktop versions, and for the ultra thin/light netbook/laptop market. Gamers are still going to want some serious hardware, but zacate would probably also work well for people that just surf the internet and do documents for work and what not. High end PC power seems to be moving past what the casual user will need, especially since netbooks have forced MS to make windows less of a resource hog.
 
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