AMD Beema and Mullins Low Power 2014 APUs Tested

Name: AMD Beema and Mullins Mainstream and Low-Power 2014 APUs Tested
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 12:00 AM EDT

We also played back a handful of on-line and local video files to get a feel for the A10 Micro-6700T's multimedia prowess, including some high-def YouTube and Hulu video and H.264 encoded MP4 files.

The Avengers Trailer (1080p) Streaming From YouTube

Local Playback of 1080P MP4 File

All of the local content played back perfectly with very low CPU utilization as you can see in the screen capture above. 1080p Flash videos streamed from the web, however, resulted in higher-than-expected CPU utilization which in turn resulted in some dropped frames. 720p playback was perfectly smooth, however.

We didn't have time to experiment with different video settings to see if there was a particular video enhancement that was causing the problem, but reps from AMD said these results weren't in-line with expectations. When researching the issue after the fact, resetting the graphics driver back to defaults reportedly resolved the issue, but we didn't have time to verify that for ourselves. Based on our experience with Kabini and other Radeons, we suspect this won't be an issue in shipping products / drivers.

Tags: AMD, GPU, mainstream, Low-power, SoC, APU, Beema, Mullins

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com