AMD FirePro APUs and Motherboards Start Selling

[btarunr]

AMD's FirePro APUs built on the "Trinity" silicon, with the GPU feature-set of AMD's FirePro professional GPUs and durability of Opteron enterprise CPUs; and compatible motherboards made by PC Partner (Sapphire) have started selling in Japan. Among the new products on sale are the FirePro A300 (3.40 GHz CPU core, 4.00 GHz CPU TurboCore, 760 MHz GPU, quad-core, 65W), and FirePro A320 (3.80 GHz CPU core, 4.20 GHz CPU TurboCore, 800 MHz GPU, quad-core, 100W), and the AMD reference design micro-ATX motherboard, manufactured by PC Partner.

The motherboard features socket FM2, powered by an 8-phase digital PWM power supply to the APU socket, four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory, expansion slots that include PCI-Express 2.0 x16, PCI-Express 2.0 x4, x1, and legacy PCI; eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, display outputs that include dual-link DVI, dual-link DisplayPort, and D-Sub. HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of it.



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[Phusius]

firepro is a terrible name for a cpu chip, lmfao... AMD... ffs... lol

 

[Liquid Cool]

I usually stick to NVS Quadro video cards in the office for our Financial Charting software, but this article did peak my interest. Might need to check into it further, although I'm clueless at the moment as to how good the GPU side of the equation is on these APU's.

Thanks for posting this article btarunr...this apu flew under my radar and I've followed the llano story quite closely. I have a llano in my DV6-6135dx and I've grown rather fond of it.

I will add...we've actually been testing some of our software on the HD 4000 IGP because it seems to be running better than on our higher end video cards. I say this in means of stability. The software was designed for XP, but we are running it on Win7 and it is Java based. As soon as we dial up the graphics, we have strange glitches in the program under nVidia/AMD cards...the HD 4000 has been pretty stable. We're looking forward to checking out Haswell and ditching workstation cards altogether, but this APU might provide another solution.

Best,

LC

 

[repman244]

firepro is a terrible name for a cpu chip, lmfao... AMD... ffs... lol

It's an APU, and it's name is because of the FirePro (Workstation class) GPU, I don't see what's so wrong about that...

 

[MySchizoBuddy]

so this a trinity APU but with a different GPU inside. correct?

 

[glitch]

Hmm... I'm 99% sure that these apus are the A8 5700 and A10-5800k without the unlocked multi

 

[Fourstaff]

So can we flash "normal" APUs into FirePros?

 

[repman244]

so this a trinity APU but with a different GPU inside. correct?

Well the GPU itself is probably the same (apart from the GPU ID), the only difference is the drivers.

Hmm... I'm 99% sure that these apus are the A8 5700 and A10-5800k without the unlocked multi

That would be nice, but do APU's have a GPU BIOS? Or will this depend on the MB BIOS itself?

 

[WaroDaBeast]

That would be nice, but do APU's have a GPU BIOS? Or will this depend on the MB BIOS itself?

To be honest, I have no idea, but either way, you should be able to access it.

When the GPU BIOS is integrated into the main BIOS, all you need to do is, find the right program to extract it. Then, you open it in the adequate BIOS editor, reinject it inside the main BIOS file, and voilà.

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

I really question if the CPU part of these chips have the oomph for high end cad.

 

[Vulpesveritas]

I really question if the CPU part of these chips have the oomph for high end cad.

I'm pretty sure these are more for low end CAD work / cheap workstations / schools for their target audience more than high-end.

 

[SIGSEGV]

So can we flash "normal" APUs into FirePros?

if only we could flash them into firepro, i'd very very happy..

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

depends if you push enough ram into the system clock it up sure i could see it doing just fine

after all the W5000 aka cut down 7850 with performance within 1% of the HD7770 was 315% faster than my 7970 in Autodesk Maya and in general was 140-150% faster accross the board in other apps only in Open CL did the Radeon pull ahead. Is it driver based yes for the most part, but even driver modifications didnt let my 7970 overtake the FirePro

these FirePro APUs essentially form a good back bone for render rigs, and 2D CAD work for architectural firms. etc etc

 

[de.das.dude]

So can we flash "normal" APUs into FirePros?

it would be better if we could do the other way round.

Firepro series are not really different other than slight architectural change and driver support.

 

[cdawall]

I really question if the CPU part of these chips have the oomph for high end cad.

Probably not in fact all AMD workstation probably catch on fire. :shadedshu