AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 Series & Llano “Fusion” APU: A Story in Pictures
by Ryan Smith on October 19, 2010 12:01 AM ESTAMD’s Radeon HD 6800 Series & Llano “Fusion” APU: A Story in Pictures
We happen to have the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 in-house for testing at the moment. We wanted to play Show & Tell, but the nice people from AMD’s Legal Department say that we’re not allowed to tell you anything about these cards quite yet. But they are letting us go ahead and show you the cards, so without further ado:
Radeon HD 6870
Radeon HD 6850
Llano
While we were at AMD’s latest press event to see the Radeon HD 6800 series, we also had the opportunity to take a quick look at an AMD prototype board housing a Llano APU. AMD is publically showcasing the Llano demo board at the AMD Technical Forum & Exhibition in Taiwan this week, which means we’re finally allowed to discuss what we saw.
At this point AMD isn’t telling us much about Llano. Besides being on a prototype board, we don’t know much else about the hardware other than that there was a Llano APU running on the board. We don’t know the clockspeeds of the CPU or the GPU, but as with most prototypes we’d imagine both are lower than they will be when it ships. AMD had the Llano prototype running Windows 7, and on top of that running the Alien vs. Predator rolling demo. The demo was running with its default quality settings at a resolution of 1024x768. The framerate wasn't being displayed, but we'd guesstimate it to be in the mid-to-high 20's; not quite high enough to be smooth, but you could probably play on it in a pinch.
Llano Running the Aliens vs. Predator Benchmark
Note: Llano is the chip under the copper pipped heatsink; that's not a NB/SB chip
AMD is also showing additional applications at TFE that we didn't get to see, including SuperPi and Blu-Ray playback in order to showcase the APU's multitasking capabilities when it comes to stressing the GPU and CPU portions simultaniously.
And speaking of TFE and APUs, AMD is also showing off Zacate at the show, which we saw last month opposite to Intel's IDF.
AMD's Chris Cloran showing off a Zacate promotional video
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
softdrinkviking - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
they wouldn't introduce a new lineup before the existing one got cold.nobody would buy the old cards, they would just rot on the shelves until they hit deep discount.
not that i wouldn't love that kind of price competition, but it's not realistic.
knutjb - Thursday, October 21, 2010 - link
Compute this:It has to do with product cycles and Nvidia WAS late from their own public release projections for Fermi.
Nvidia released what many consider to be direct competition to AMDs 5XXX series. Now AMD is about to release a 6XXX series of cards, provided AMD delivers on improved performance, that will have a negative impact on Nvidia's profit potential on a line of cards that now might appear old to purchasers. That could pressure Nvidia to lower prices further, reducing profit potential on the very expensive Fermi.
Also, the recent bad habit of Nvidia to change product names 8800, 9800, etc... without real product improvement might rear its ugly head again in an attempt to soften that blow.
This isn't, for me anyway, a slamming of Nvidia, its a look at the market and who has the perceived leading products with the most bang for the buck. It wasn't that long ago that AMD was in Nvidia's position.
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
I wonder how much better these gpu's will be over the Radeon 5xxx series in real world performance. I guess we will have to find out. It doesn't apper these Radeon 6xxx series will offer big performance gains but instead more of an update in certain areas to the existing Radeon 5xxx hardware much like what the Geforce 9xxx series was to the Geforce 8xxx series.Although these are no more then rumors at this point from what read the next big overhaul for AMD's gpu's will be the Radeon 7xxx series which will offer a new GPU microarchitecture along with DirectX 11.1 and PCI-E 3.0 support. The rumored release date for the Radeon 7xxxx series is around Q4 of 2011.
Goty - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
The performance gains should be quite nice and right in line with what we usually expect from generation to generation, at least if these are really the midrange replacements and the leaked benchmarks are anything to go by.Azfar - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
*Rubs his hands in excitement* ...cant wait :D !!!Kim Leo - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
Well it does seem like AMD has changed the numbering a little, I think it's a good idea, it never made sense to me that x9xx was the name for dual GPU's when they simply would use two x8xx's GPU's, why not do as they do with their CPU's and slap a x2 on there?I look forward to the tests, but I don't expect Fermi busters just yet atleast.
As for the Llano pictures, damn I look forward to it, I've always been a strong supporter of AMD simply because they are the smaller company and they still deliver, but have never been that attracted to their mobile CPU's but if I can get a decent performing 14" Zacate based laptop from let's say Lenovo, I think I would become a very happy camper. I currently have a T500 the model with only Intel graphics and that's my big issue with this laptop, I'm not some gamer who has to be surrounded by games, but having my laptop play an HD movie is something I can need from time to time to pass some time.
rootheday - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
T500 has GMA 4500 - perfectly capable of playing HD video.And with respect to gaming, Sandybridge and Zacate look to arrive about the same and I predict Sandybridge will have better gaming and multimedia performance.
Kim Leo - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
No.. Not really the GMA4500 is not strong enough, I've tried 1080P videos stored on the HDD and still it will lag, where I've tried weaker AMD laptops with HD3470 that will run them perfectly.Well that's all good and stuff, and you know what? The HD5800 paired with a I7 will also do better, but why are we comparing two CPU/APU's aimed at two completely different markets? Sandy Bridge doesn't have the size advantage(In other words price advantage), Sandy Bridge isn't aimed at cheap and small Laptops/Netbooks and having Intel graphics on this laptop their drivers aren't to be desired, where my desktop with ATI has never had any problems.
And as I've already mentioned it's not about gaming if it was, I would choose neither!
extide - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
Sandy bridge will exist in the market from top to bottom and in the mobile space. So it is a valid comparison.Kim Leo - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
No it's not Llano is more comparative to CULV and Atom, mostly Atom as it's an APU, it's dual core, and most likely it will be cheap.