Computex — As you may be aware, AMD launched its long-awaited Trinity APU last month. Only mobile variants are available to start, and the chips were featured in more than a few notebooks on the Computex show floor. Motherboards with FM2 sockets primed for the desktop variants of Trinity were everywhere, too. Some of them powered demo systems, like this one at MSI’s booth.
DiRT: Showdown looked like it was running smoothly on the system’s A10-5800K APU. However, we heard from numerous motherboard makers that desktop versions of Trinity are delayed until the fall. Some thought the chip would show up in September, others anticipated its arrival in October, and one thought it would be even later than that. None really seemed to have a clear idea, though.
We didn’t meet with AMD at the show. However, when we sat down with GlobalFoundries, the company tasked with building Trinity APUs, we were told the "AMD yield issues" were "behind them."
If that’s not the issue, we don’t know why the desktop Trinity chips are delayed, although we do suspect AMD will want to have plenty of mobile chips on hand during the back-to-school notebook buying season.
Despite the desktop delay, there were the scores of full-sized ATX motherboards designed for Trinity. A few of them featured a new A85 platform hub, which we were told has eight 6Gbps SATA and six USB 3.0 ports. That’s an impressive payload, but it seems like overkill for the sort of systems Trinity is likely to power.