The AMD Llano Notebook Review: Competing in the Mobile Market
by Jarred Walton & Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:01 AM ESTApplication Performance, Round One: PCMark 7
If the battery life was a pleasant change of pace, general application unfortunately remains a weak spot for AMD. Remember that Llano uses a tweaked K10.5 architecture for the CPU portion of the core, and while L2 cache per core is doubled relative to the previous generation quad-core Phenom parts, clock speeds and IPC (instructions per clock) still appear much lower than what Intel offers. I had hoped to see Turbo Core come into play here, which makes the comparison with Toshiba’s A660D a good starting point. That notebook has a Phenom II X4 P920 (quad-core 1.6GHz) with HD 5650M graphics, so the Llano A8-3500M has very similar specs.
Before we get to the graphs, let me make a quick note that not all laptops have been tested in all applications/games. Most of the systems have been shipped back to the manufacturer, so our newer benchmarks are going to have omissions (e.g. PCMark 7). In the gaming charts later in the review, we’ll have even more omissions, and many of the slower GPUs/IGPs will only be tested at our “low” settings.
With that out of the way, let’s start our application performance comparison with PCMark7, our only all-inclusive benchmark for laptops right now. We’ve run all of the benchmarks suites in the hopes of providing a better look at overall performance; however, outside of the “Computation” suite all of the tests have a storage element. That means any system with an SSD (like the quad-core SNB unit) will boast a massive advantage over the competition. The Computation suite also has an interesting footnote in that it supports Intel’s Quick Sync for video encoding, which again gives SNB systems a massive performance advantage. You can read more about the specific suites in PCMark 7 in their whitepaper. We’ll also have two results for Llano going forward: one for using the fGPU (6620G) and a second for using the dGPU (6630M).
And here’s our first hint that Llano may not be the homerun so many were hoping to see from AMD. All of the SNB laptops are still a healthy step up from Llano in overall PCMarks—the K53E leads by 43%, and systems with quad-core SNB are faster still. Llano might appear to at least surpass the previous generation Arrandale i5-520M in Dell’s E6410, but the storage subsystem in that laptop is a particularly slow 160GB HDD and that skews the results. Then again, the overclocked Arrandale i3-380M in the ASUS U41JF falls short of Llano, so AMD is at the very least competitive with Arrandale.
Since we’re not on a level playing field as far as storage, we won’t comment too much more here, but I do have SSD-based testing complete for four of the notebooks, and once I’ve swapped in an SSD for Llano we’ll have a follow-up article. Let’s move on to application testing round two, where we’ll look at some tests where we eliminate the storage bottleneck.
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sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
these prices, are definitively NOT in the netbook range:$500 - thinkpad x120e
$550 - HP Pavilion dm1
$600 - sony vaio YB
who the hell would pay that much dough for Atom level performance?
sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
even AMD's slower 1.0GHz C-50, costs more than the Atom in the SAME MODEL netbook (while benchmarking slower than the atom!):$250 - Acer Aspire One 255 with the FASTER Intel Atom
$330 - Acer Aspire One 522 with the SLOWER AMD C-50
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
First of all, the (lowest) prices I found at Amazon.com were $250 for the 255 and $310 for the 522, which is a smaller margin.Acer 522 has a 720p display vs. the 255's 1024x600. That alone is worth a significant price difference. It also has a HDMI port and a CPU (APU) that can play 1080p HD videos (or 720p on the internal display). The 255 is worth crap for video playback, a very common laptop use these days.
The C-50 can also play some games. Sure, older ones and at low settings, but it's something the 255 simply can't do.
In terms of general performance, the C-50 should be competitive with the Atom when it comes to web browsing and word processing.
In short, the 522 is so much better than the 255 that a $60 premium is really not a lot.
sinigami - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
"But, but, the 522 has an HDMI port on it!".Personally, i wouldn't pay $80 more for a netbook that is even SLOWER than an atom, no matter how much lipstick they put on that pig -- i mean, no matter how many hdmi ports they stick on that snail.
And they could stick whatever size screen they want on it, and i'm sure they would charge a whole lot more if they put a 55" on it, but i'd surely NOT buy it with a C-50 in it....
more bluntly: Acer could put a 1080p display on it, add USB 3.0, give it an amazing sound system, etc, and then charge $1000, but who wants a Ferrari with a Yugo engine?
ET - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
Forget the C-50 vs. Atom. Would you pay more for an Atom netbook if it had a higher resolution screen? If not, then fine, but I'm sure many people would. 1024x600 is too low for comfort.From your post it looks like you're just trolling, since you stick to "$80 more" even though it's $60 in reality, ignore any comfort from higher resolution and continue to insist that the C-50 is "SLOWER" in caps even though it would beat the Atom in the 255 on SunSpider and probably other benchmarks of real world usability. So I think the prudent thing to do would be to refrain from replying to you, and I will try to do that in the future.
sinigami - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
Sorry mate, i'm just slow, not a troll... though it's easy to confuse dain bramage with trolling.When i looked at amazon i saw their black one was "Currently unavailable", and the colored ones were $330. I didn't spot the black BZ465 that IS available for $310, so i cede to you that it is only a $60 difference.
My apologies.
"Forget the C-50 vs. Atom. Would you pay more for an Atom netbook if it had a higher resolution screen? If not, then fine, but I'm sure many people would."
That is a reasonable point. $60 is worth it to many people for a better netbooking experience. There is a LOT of value in a highly portable 10" netbook, with hours and hours of battery life, that you can toss anywhere (even a purse), and it does it's intended job of surfing and playing video (not 1080p, of course, but why would it, it has a freaking tiny screen), with a real keyboard and trackpad (and USB ports - take that, ipad). And with a dirt-cheap price, it's all smiles for "many people".
BTW, i did pay more, lol, except i had to go for an 11.6" screen (@1366x768), even though it isn't as tossable.... i also sprang more for an ultra-low-voltage, dual-core, U/SU chip, so i can have a little more fun, wasting hours on boxcar2d!
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Where did you get these prices? The HP is $450 (3GB RAM, 320GB disk). The Lenovo is normally $440 for the E-350 version (though currently backordered). It's not rare to be able to get them for less.This is still more than netbooks, but it's for a better spec and better performance.
sinigami - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
(sorry, i admit my prices were not current, the price has gone down and i haven't kept track)still, that is getting very close to the price range where you can get a much better spec, and way, WAY better performance.
the performance that becomes available, for a few dollars more, first jumps to twice that of an Atom or Zacate, and then you get to the budget i3's, which are, at the least, FOUR times as powerful as an atom or E-350.
sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
i fully appreciate netbooks for what they are, and i know better than to do anything more demanding than play my 720p MKV anime on a netbook (yes, even the latest Atom machines can do this).I'm just pointing out that, currently, with the Brazos and Zacate Fusion APUs, AMD is NOT hitting the price/performance spot that i expected them to.
the Zacate 1.6GHz E-350, should be priced the same as the Atom machines, up to the price of the Atom/Ion machines.
i was hoping for AMD's tradition of price/performance to continue, and that would have meant beating or at least NOT being more expensive than Intel!
and the C-50 is even worse!
iwod - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I was wondering if they used the latest drivers from Intel, which offer some performance increase. And on the notes of Drivers, GPU drivers these days matter a lot more then Hardware. And ATI has had YEARS of Hard Work on their drivers. While Intel is working hard now, although in terms of catch up they are rather slow.Which brings the questions, If Intel really did improve their drivers and bring extra 10 - 20% increase. The Liano doesn't look that attractive at all.