While the launch of Trinity isn't too far away, it's important to remember there are still plenty of Llano notebooks available today with a lot to offer on their own. AMD's APU may be weak on the processor performance side, but the GPU side achieves something Intel historically couldn't touch: decent gaming performance at a budget price.

The problem now is that with Ivy Bridge also due soon, Sandy Bridge-based notebooks are going at fire sale prices while any of NVIDIA's 500 series graphics that haven't been rebranded also need to be purged, resulting in a substantial number of notebooks with gaming potential hanging out in Llano's neighborhood. Toshiba's Satellite P755D features AMD's fastest 35-watt Llano processor and a Blu-ray drive at a reasonably low price, but is it still going to be competitive?

Today we are looking at the Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V, the first A55 motherboard to hit the AnandTech test beds. In comparison to the A75 platform which we have covered extensively, although the A55 lacks a few features such as USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gbps and a second full length PCIe slot, the A55 motherboards are usually aimed at low end, low budget system builders. The Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V comes in at a smaller than mATX form factor for just such occasions.  Please read on for the full review.

Just about anyone can put together a solid computer using a decent midtower and the right parts. What we don't see as often is just how fast a computer can be assembled in a small form factor. More and more, too, the term "fast" isn't an all-encompassing one; as the GPU becomes increasingly important, the definition gets foggier and foggier. Today, all of these considerations collide as we test two top end configurations from Puget Systems against each other.

On the outside it looks we have two systems assembled in Antec's ISK-110 enclosure, but on the inside, we have a showdown between Intel and AMD's best and brightest at 65 watts. The more cynical (and admittedly informed) reader may already have an idea of where this is going, but there are definitely some surprises in store. Read on to find out where each platform performs better, as well as our thoughts on the best use case for each system.

Llano is still selling strong for AMD, as shown by the relatively recent reports of representing a major aspect of their CPU profit margins. Building on our Llano and A75 review base, ASUS gave us the opportunity to look at their F1A75-M Pro motherboard - e-tailing at the time of writing for around $110.  Here at AnandTech we have reviewed other offerings from ASUS in A75, in full ATX from the F1A75-V Pro, and the mini-ITX F1A75-I Deluxe.  This time, it's the turn of micro-ATX.  Read on for the full review!

The latest edition of our Holiday 2011 guides focuses on midrange desktops. If you enjoy the prospect of building your own PC or you just prefer the ability to customize every component, we'll have recommendations. We'll outline three different systems at $800, $1000, and $1200, with processors from AMD and Intel.

The first system we've put together is an AMD Llano APU-based PC designed to deliver acceptable gaming performance at medium resolutions as well as great "daily driver" general computing performance. Next up, we cover our latest iteration of a now "classic" i5-2500K build that offers better gaming and computing capabilities for a few hundred dollars more than the AMD build. Finally, we have an i7-2600K rig that focuses on raw computational power and eschews graphics for the time being (though you can easily add your own). So whether you're upgrading or building new, we have suggestions. Read on for more details.

The recent launch of Intel Sandy Bridge-based Celeron CPUs and the proliferation of budget-priced LGA 1155 socket motherboards bring fresh competition to the budget desktop computer market segment, long dominated by AMD. AMD's Fusion APUs are also available for budget builders, and we explore the performance of the A4-3300 APU. RAM prices continue to stay depressed, and some excellent new budget cases have arrived on the market recently. In short, there are many factors aligning to offer consumers capable yet inexpensive build options for the upcoming holiday season.

In this guide we will highlight a variety of lower-priced products to keep your eyes on during the impending sales, along with providing some basic benchmarking of budget motherboards and CPUs. Ready to put together some fiscally responsible builds for the holidays? Then read on....

Since Llano's introduction, the value of AMD's new APU has been the subject of some debate, even between editors here at AnandTech. With notebooks sporting the new A-series processors trickling out from vendors (and Toshiba waving the banner) it's been fairly difficult getting a good feel for what the chip brings to the table for the end user, but thankfully that's changing. Today we have on hand the Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7206, a budget 17" model that also gives us our first look at the AMD A6-3400M.

Today is all about Lynx, the desktop version of the Llano platform from AMD. Anand is reviewing the A8-3850 from a generic PC perspective, and Ian is covering its overclocking aspects using an ASRock A75 Extreme6 motherboard. I will be handling it from an HTPC viewpoint. Ever since ATI got acquired by AMD, HTPC enthusiasts have waiting with bated breath for a CPU-GPU hybrid to come out.

Does the Lynx fulfil their expectations? Read on to find out!

Ever since the arrival of Conroe back in 2006, we've only really recommended AMD for its (sometimes incredible) value. Recommending AMD for those looking for absolute performance pretty much ended when the Pentium 4 retired.

AMD is looking to change that with the arrival of its first Fusion APUs. These APUs marry one or more AMD x86 cores with dozens if not hundreds of Radeon "cores" on a single die. While today the APU is little more than a cohabitation of these two computing architectures, the end goal is something far more integrated:

Llano is AMD's second Fusion APU, the first being Zacate which we met earlier this year. Llano shouldn't be all that unfamiliar to you either, the notebook version of the APU launched just two weeks ago. Our conclusions were as you'd expect: sub-par x86 performance but competitive battery life and great gaming performance for a value notebook. If gaming is going to be the most intensive thing you do on your notebook, you may find yourself wanting one based on a Llano APU.

Now it's time to look at Llano on the desktop. Read on for our review of AMD's A8-3850!

Our initial tests with the ASRock A75 Extreme6 were based on a pre-release model, and shown in our preview.  At that point, the board design was not finalized and the BIOS was still quite raw, but the performance was essentially complete.  However, now in my grasp is the full release version of the Extreme6.  Alongside this standard motherboard review, and testing to see whether it's worth the $150 asking price, we're also going to take a good look at the overclocking features of the Desktop Llano chipset.