The Xi3 rep I spoke to told me “just be careful what you’re assuming about PISTON capabilities and gameplay. It’s playing great inside our offices, across all games.” Well, there’s only so much the Radeon 7660G graphics core is capable of, and broad claims like this are just that — claims. At the very least, potential consumers need to see benchmarks and be given realistic expectations before they drop $1000 on this system. With the Piston, you’re paying for solid state storage and an ultra-compact form factor, but don’t think for a second that you’re paying for decent gaming performance.
[SPECS UPDATE: I have official word from AMD that Xi3 is using the AMD-R series line, specifically an R464L. It's a 35W chip very similar in design to the A10-4600M APU. The CPU cores have a base speed of 2.3GHz, and turbo up to 3.2GHz. More importantly, the GPU cores are clocked at 496MHz and turbo up to 685MHz. Crucially, the A10-4600M is two generations old and supports dual channel system memory up to only 1600MHz, although AMD isn't certain of the Piston's exact specifications in that regard. As I mentioned above, faster RAM does have an impact on APUs.
