Initial thoughts on my new AMD Trinity based desktop:  Amazing for the money!

I just put together a system based on the AMD A4-5300 processor, ASRock FM2A75M-DGS mATX motherboard, 8GB of DDR3-1333Mhz RAM, and an Antec ECO 400W power supply.  Everything was from NewEgg, and very affordable.  This system was built using the slowest of the new AMD Trinity series of processors, and the cheapest AMD A75 chipset based motherboard I could find.

The goal was to load a Linux based operating system, and see how GPU performed under my most demanding graphical application:  Minecraft.

For less than $200 shipped (the power supply was on sale when I ordered), I was able to build a system using an existing case, hard drive, and monitor that will run Minecraft at 1920×1080 (full-screen) between 60 and 80 frames per second using Lubuntu 12.10, the “default-jre” package through Lubuntu, and the “fglrx” proprietary driver for the AMD graphics.  No other tweaks were made, and all the video settings were left to their defaults in Minecraft.

Neat.

So far, I am very impressed with the AMD Trinity system I put together for my tests.  The UEFI BIOS was very nice to work with, and even has the capability to configure the network interface via DHCP, fetch the latest BIOS version over the internet, download it, and update itself.  No operating system needed!

Lubuntu 12.10 runs like a dream.  All the hardware appears to be supported, and even without the “fglrx” graphics driver, the video worked perfect during the installation of Lubuntu, and after.  It was even quick enough to play Minecraft, but with some noticeable slowdown while running full-screen.

More updates to come as I mess around with this latest desktop systems architecture from AMD!