The Llano Desktop Preview: AMD A8-3850 CPU & GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:00 AM ESTGPU Performance: Between a Radeon HD 6450 & 5570
I grabbed some of our most recent GPU testbed data for the Radeon HD 6450 and the Radeon HD 5570, the latter of which is architecturally most similar to the Sumo GPU in the A8-3850. If you're wondering how much sharing memory bandwidth between the GPU and four CPU cores impacts performance, it's pretty significant. The HD 6450 only has 160 cores compared to 400 on the 6550D, while the 5570 has 400 cores running at 750MHz.
Note that these scores are taken with DDR3-1333, however if we push the memory bus all the way to its limit on desktop (DDR3-1866) you end up with performance that's somewhere between a 6450 and a 5570. AMD's branding makes sense in this case (6550D).
Overall the Radeon HD 6550D in AMD's A8-3850 APU performs a lot like a discrete Radeon HD 6450 card. For a GPU that ships integrated with all high-end A8 APUs, I really can't complain. The real question is how does it stack up when compared directly to Sandy Bridge, which brings us to our next page...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
131 Comments
View All Comments
bnjiman - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
@seapeople: which version of Excel/processor are you using? Using Excel 2008 on XP I can agree with your experience using a core 2 duo @ 3ghz - in fact I had IT write an executable to open Excel on one CPU only and diabled multi thread calc. However using a Core I5 laptop 2.7ghz quad core with Office 2010/Win 7, spreadsheets that would take ten minutes to update are done in thirty seconds. I appreciate there will be a single threaded performance delta but I don't feel this accounts for such a radical improvement; perhaps the multi threaded suport is getting better as well.psiboy - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
8 watts difference in a desktop? Ooooohh I'm gonna cry....psiboy - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
14 years doesn't mean dick if you suck at it... on the other hand you might be good at it...quiksilvr - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
That's the big factor here as well. It would be nice to see a comparison please.quiksilvr - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Apologies, I saw the explanation.8steve8 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
curious about power consumption.disappointing that amd seems so far behind in performance per core.
Lots of software (still) have components that require single core performance.
8steve8 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
the igp looks nice though, funny the people who care the most about that won't be using it. Still nice though.TrackSmart - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Agreed. This isn't an exciting release for the desktop computer realm, where there's lots of spaces and small power saving differences don't matter much.HOWEVER, for HTPCs, All-In-Ones, and Small Form Factor systems, the new Llano APUs might be a hit. Of course, that's an admittedly small (but growing) market.
mino - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
This is a godsend for any OEM customer. Anybody who can't see that must be blind.jjj - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
wish you had at least a few numbers for higher res gaming.