The Llano Desktop Preview: AMD A8-3850 CPU & GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:00 AM ESTFinal Words
There are still a number of unanswered questions about Llano on the desktop. In the coming weeks we'll be looking at HTPC performance, power consumption, and hopefully we'll be able to figure out what the deal is with overclocking AMD's new mainstream APUs.
The question of processor graphics performance is open and closed. Llano offers what I'd expect to be the bare minimum from any processor offering a real performance oriented GPU. All of our bench suite is playable on Llano and its actually possible to drive up image quality settings without sacrificing playability. If you're looking to build an entry-level gaming PC, Llano is most likely going to be on your hit list this year.
It took AMD spending half the transistors of Llano on its GPU to deliver the sort of performance we've been asking for from integrated graphics for over a decade; the question I have is whether or not Intel is willing to make a similar sort of move in its architectures.
Ivy Bridge has already been decided upon; it'll be faster but not a significant upheaval in performance. However Intel does have a history of building upon ideas that AMD introduced before their time (e.g. IMC, x86-64, Fusion), and with Llano we may be given a peek at what's to come in the future.
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Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Look at all the graphs on page 4. Then try and guess how much thought was put into deciding which graph should be at the top of the page.basket687 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
You declared that the GPU performance of Llano is on par with the HD 6450, but all discrete graphics cards were tested with an i5 2500k which is vastly superior to Llano in CPU performance and that is an important consideration (especially that games can be pretty CPU limited at the low resolutions you used), so I think that you should test discrete cards with a CPU more comparable to Llano in order to reach a more accurate conclusion.norwayishot - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Good point - I would think its around a 10 fps difference if not more...Seikent - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
yep, the i5 2500k costs way more too.Taft12 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Dick-waving is far more important than grammar or missing a few words!StormyParis - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I was exaggerating a bit. 21.5", 1680 LCD are $120; 26 inchers are around $300.Hey, you just made me realize my monitors are actually more expensive than the PC connected to them (E-350, 4GB, 650GB) ! I always overspent on screen s and keyboards, and underspent on PCs... Must be a quirk, sorry to have overgeneralized.
The iPhone 4 is 960x640, which is indeed not as much, but not that far from 1024x768.
seapeople - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link
It doesn't matter how cheap xxxx resolution monitors are when the user is just going to set the LCD to 1024x768 anyway so everything "looks bigger".When your vision isn't that great, it's a choice between big and fuzzy and small and fuzzy, and I've seen many people choose the big and fuzzy option.
You think they'd just get better glasses or something...
StormyParis - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
Windows 7 has decent font / icon scaling. It allowed me to move my parents' ancient 21" IBM CRT from 1024x768 to something much higher, while preserving icon and text size. It looks much nicer.I had gotten that CRT specifically to be able to use a low resolution / bigger text/icon size without the ugly jaggies of a down-scaled LCD. Now, if it ever finally dies, I now I'll be able to replace it with an LCD. The thing is around 10yrs old, and just won't quit.
harshw - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Hope Ganesh gets to do his usual, thorough analysis of the integrated GPU especially w.r.t HTPC applications. I have an aging E5200 on a G45 board that I'm itching to replace. But had to hold off on Brazos, I think the E-350 and its GPU is a tad underpowered. Let's see what the 6550 is capable of ...frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yet another disappointment from AMD. I see a place for this chip in the notebook market where power saving, space, and lack of upgradability dominate. If the price is right you could have a low to mid price laptop with decent CPU and GPU performance.However, to me the desktop part is a total disaster. The highest clocked chip cant even make 3ghz and there is not turbo mode. The only reason this chip can be a success is if they can sell it for the same price as the Athlon II X4 chips. Then you would get the same CPU performance with better graphics.
Otherwise, just buy an X4 640 and put in a discrete card.