The Llano Desktop Preview: AMD A8-3850 CPU & GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Pretty Much an Athlon II X4
As we found in our look at mobile Llano, the A8 isn't impressive as a general purpose x86 microprocessor. In general the chip is somewhat faster than the Athlon II X4 635 and I'd say it performs more like a 645 based on the numbers I've seen here. Again, nothing to be impressed by but if you're building a value gaming PC it may not matter.
Note that heavily-threaded applications actually favor the A8-3850 to the Core i3 2100 (its most likely target based on pricing rumors) thanks to its four cores. They may not be as efficient as the i3's cores, but you sure do have more of them. We have been discussing this tradeoff with AMD for quite a bit over the past couple of years. You lose out on single-threaded performance but you do gain better performance in heavily-threaded workloads. I had assumed that Turbo Core would partially solve this with Llano but 2.9GHz is going to be the fastest SKU AMD offers and it doesn't ship with any turbo enabled.
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ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Also for gaming. Hopefully Llano prices will end up a little lower than rumoured, otherwise might as well buy an Athlon II X4 635 + Radeon HD 6570 ($160 together at Newegg).Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
What do you mean?That the general populace does/doesn't buy computer with gaming in mind?
Because from these numbers Llano is as incapable of handling gaming as any other IGP. Aside from casual gaming, flash games and the like, but then again every IGP can handle that.
The bare minimum for gaming is doing native resolution, meaning 1080p today, at low-medium settings with no AA at tolerable framerates.
I'm not seeing that here.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I mean that Llano is also disappointing for gaming. I thought it was clear from context, but apparently it wasn't. I'm glad you've agreed with me.Still, I disagree with your assertion regarding bare minimum gaming. WoW at 720p is probably what separates a gaming capable PC from one that isn't.
Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Re: WoW, granted.I just feel WoW is a poor representation of the GPU prowess of Llano as the game is by far and large CPU-bound, as most MMOs, RPGs and RTSs are.
Shooters are by far and large the common denominator for mainstream gaming.
norwayishot - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
WoW is the single most mainstream game out there....Other titles I would consider mainstream are Call of Duty, Fifa, Portal, Minecraft...
I'm pretty sure all of these titles would get 100 fps in Llano
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
By the way, I think Llano could have a place where space is a premium, such as nettops and all in ones. The main problem here is power consumption and heat, and I wonder if the desktop Llano will be good enough in these respects.Mathos - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Whats the story on chipset plans for the Llano chips? Are they going to do a 990GX chipset that could be run in crossfire with the APU's GPU? Can these GPU's in the processor be used for hybrid crossfire the same as the GX chipset iGPU's can, for example with a discreet 6550?milli - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
"However Intel does have a history of building upon ideas that AMD introduced before their time (e.g. IMC, x86-64, Fusion), "AMD didn't invent IMC.
AMD didn't invent 64bit computing.
AMD didn't invent Fusion (well they did invent the brand name).
So please, don't mix things up. Don't think that Intel only looks at the x86 market for ideas. Having some of the old Alpha & Elbrus people there, i don't think they're short on ideas. It's just when they want to implement them.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
So who exactly invented x86-64 if not AMD? Perhaps it didn't invent "64 bit computing", which is a completely irrelevant argument, but it did invent the most far reaching enhancement of the x86.Lonbjerg - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
"but it did invent the most far reaching enhancement of the x86. "You say that like it's a good thing?
x86 should have died years ago.