The AMD Llano Notebook Review: Competing in the Mobile Market
by Jarred Walton & Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:01 AM ESTApplications, Round Two: Treading Water
This time we have a more interesting competitor to look at: the Toshiba A660D. AMD says Turbo Core works at speeds of up to 2.4GHz on the A8-3500M, but we have no way of monitoring the actual CPU clocks right now. (CPU-Z if you’re wondering shows a constant 1.5GHz, but AMD says that utility doesn’t currently detect the proper clocks.) When we compare performance results between the Llano notebook and the A660D, we definitely see some differences in performance. Some of that may come from the added L2 cache and other architectural tweaks, but Cinebench R10 in particular shows a healthy 17% performance increase, even with a base clock that’s 7% lower. In the multi-threaded Cinebench result, the lead drops to 10%, which correlates well with how we’d expect Turbo Core to work. PCMark Vantage is still heavily influenced by the storage subsystem, and the storage score of 2950 on the A660D versus 3791 on the Llano suggests the Toshiba HDD is a significant bottleneck.
Looking at other laptops and tests where we’re looking purely at CPU performance, suddenly Llano starts to struggle. The Arrandale i5-520M offers 92% higher single-threaded performance in Cinebench R10 and 48% better single-threaded performance in R11.5; multi-threaded performance also goes to Arrandale, with a 23% lead in R10 and 17% lead in R11.5. x264 also gives Arrandale a decent lead, with i5-520M 17% faster in the first pass and 29% faster in the more intense second pass. The overclocked i3-380M in ASUS’ U41JF tells a similar tale—and both of these laptops are running processors from early last year. When we shift to Sandy Bridge, even without looking at the quad-core parts AMD’s CPU performance is tenuous. The i5-2520M is anywhere from 50 to 150 percent faster depending on which test we look at; even if we toss out the older Cinebench R10 single-threaded result of 150%, R11.5 given the 2520M a 94% lead. In general, then, a moderate dual-core Sandy Bridge i5-series processor looks to be at least 30% faster, so quad-core Llano really only competes with Core i3 and its lower, non-Turbo clocks.
None of the results here are particularly surprising; K10.5 even at 32nm is still largely the same performance. AMD has focused this round up upgrades more on reducing power consumption rather than increasing performance, and that’s a perfectly reasonable approach for a mobile CPU. Most of us probably aren’t doing 3D rendering, CAD/CAM, or unassisted video transcoding on our laptops anyway. It would still be great to see AMD offer up an equivalent to Intel’s Quick Sync; they have the better GPU architecture, but a dedicated decoder like Quick Sync can clearly pay dividends. Outside of that one deficit the reality is that Llano is still plenty fast. Slapping an SSD into Llano will make more of a difference than upgrading an HDD-based Llano laptop to Core i5, so if you’re looking for an inexpensive laptop that can do everything most users need, Llano is very appealing.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
177 Comments
View All Comments
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
So, what do you tell them? The only benchmarks of The Sims 3 I could find are pretty old and didn't offer much detail, but I think based on them that high quality would require more than the lowest IGP. (Then again, normal or low quality should probably run fine on anything.)msroadkill612 - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
ta 4 the post - but dont salesmen have a duty to sell them a bit of insurance against the next game fadash9 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Bring on the OpenCL apps, excuse me applications- Excel rewritten to take advantage of heterogeneous computing would silence everyone about Star CPU cores. The ball is in the hands of the people (to buy them), then the software developers (to program for them) - that's why Star cores? APU apps neededmsroadkill612 - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
I think it will happen. Big mobs will identify niches that can profit from OGPL & profit from using it - open languages always win in the end.I see fusion server apuS in the future.
FISHRULE - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
What a terrible CPU, who would want something that performs like a Phenom in a new computer circa 2011. The future might be fusion AMD, but you sure as heck aren't part of the future anymore.jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
90% of laptop owners wouldnt know if they were using a Brazos or an i5 in their laptops.The only real differential is in transcoding, ripping etc. and very few folks in the real world actually do that. Especially on laptops.
Price is far more important than outright performance. Has been for some time now.
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
False. My gf doesn't know anything about computers. But she somehow knew that Intel makes the best mobile CPUs even before asking me what to get. Clearly Intel marketing > AMD's. All of my current friends who just bought a computer all went with i3/i5/i7 processors only because they "heard" Sandy Bridge is the fastest CPU around.Llano is nothing more than a Phenom with a faster GPU. Phenom already didn't sell well against C2D/C2Q/Core i7 (1st) gen and isn't getting any better against SB. The only way AMD is gaining market share is if they ship cheap laptops with Llano to users for whom the price of a laptop is the most important factor.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Well, you have pretty computer literate friends. Most people I know would have no idea what Sandy Bridge is, probably not even what i3 and i5 are, and would only buy i3 or i5 because: a) AMD had very little market presence until now; b) I'd recommend them. That said, most of the people I know have no idea that AMD exists and is making CPU's (I mention it occasionally, and they're always surprised, so I guess it doesn't register), so it does look like AMD's marketing is pretty crappy.That said, I think that your analysis of why Llano will fail isn't right. For most people the CPU power really doesn't matter that much. They'd have no idea if i3 or Llano is better, and most likely won't be able to tell the difference in practice (unless they run a game for which the HD 3000 is unsuited). Sure Llano is for the low end market, but that's where most sales are, and it's certainly much improved in terms of power usage, which is an important enough measure to help it gain market share.
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
You are probably right that most people won't tell the difference between a Llano or an i3/i5/i7. But to them the perception of knowing that they have a slower CPU is what matters. One of my friends was building a PC for browsing the net only. I told him he'd be perfectly fine with a $100 CPU but he insisted that the system must have Sandy Bridge because it's the latest modern CPU. I gave up trying to convince him that his internet browsing experience will be more limited by his ISP latency and speed rather than CPU performance.So as long as AMD convinces the average consumer that Llano is at at least as good, they will do well. The problem is AMD's marketing department is worse than a 1st year undergrad student studying marketing in business school. They think if they pay millions of dollars to put AMD on F1 cars, people will notice?
You made a very important point - a lot of people don't even know what AMD is or that there is another competitor to Intel. Imagine if GM, Ford or Chrysler made cars that were more reliable than Honda or Toyota. It would still be a while until the average consumer would abandon the Japanese brands since the perception of reliability would lag behind reality. AMD has this similar problem with their CPU brands, which only marketing can fix.
jrs77 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Really... that's rather unimpressive.The GPU of Llano beats intels HD-graphics in games, what a surprise. But how many people do I know personally, that play games on their laptops anyways? Laptops are primarily used as mobile office-computers and they do still rely more on CPU-performance.
From all the experience I've made the HD3000 graphics of mobile SNB CPUs are perfectly fine for all tasks I throw at them (excluding games). So the question is, why would I buy a Llano-based laptop instead of a SandyBridge one?
Llano doesn't offer better battery-life so the only reason might be the price, but with i5-2xxx laptops starting at $600 I really don't see alot of competition there for intel, if we're talking anything else then gaming.