Published in Graphics

Fusion to have Redwood graphics

by on20 July 2010
fusion
Real mainstream power inside
The surprising part of the Fusion all-integrated chip is that it actually comes with Redwood equivalent graphics. Redwood is a group codename for Radeon 5500 and 5600 graphics and its actually a mainstream core, rather than an entry level one.

Almost everyone had expected to see Cedar, an entry level Radeon 5000 core as a part of Fusion, as such cores would usually find their way into chipsets in the past. However, it looks like ATI can simply squeeze a much bigger and more powerful graphics core in this all-integrated Fusion chip. 

Compared to Sandy Bridge core, Redwood DirectX 11 derived core will kill Intel's all-integrated part in graphics performance, but it also looks like Intel will win the CPU fight, again. It also appears that the graphics inside Ontario and Llano only need DDR3 support, something that the Radeon 5500 generation offers, and the performance of the Fusion should be in range of 5500 series. This will depend on the clock and number of shaders enabled on the core, but it's clear that it will be quite powerful for the integrated market segment.

The Fusion APU line won’t be expensive either, but it seriously jeopardize the future of low-end, and entry level discrete graphics chips, as the CPUs of the future might have just enough graphics power.

We will still have to wait until 2011 before this technology is comercially available, but it already appears that it will be worth the wait.
Last modified on 20 July 2010
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