Llano in the Wild: Toshiba's Satellite L775D-S7206
by Dustin Sklavos on August 12, 2011 12:45 AM ESTBringing Gaming to the Masses
Where I honestly believe Llano shines is in its ability to bring a usable CPU and solid if unspectacular gaming performance south of the $600 price point. Similar configurations to this 17" Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7206 can be had for around $549 or less if you don't mind going down to a smaller, more portable form factor; Toshiba even offers a 14" notebook with the same APU and 4GB of RAM for just that price.
Low Detail Gaming
While Mafia II and Metro 2033 continue to punish most any notebook that dares to try and run them, and StarCraft II remains staggeringly poorly threaded and CPU limited, the A6-3400M and its Radeon HD 6520G graphics hardware are able to provide playable gaming experiences in almost every case, oftentimes even at the notebook's native 1600x900 resolution. It isn't ideal, but it's a big improvement over even Sandy Bridge's IGP, although the loss of four TMUs and 80 shaders going from the A8 to the A6 is definitely felt. Interesting to note is that the 6520G in the A6 typically handles 900p slightly better than Intel's HD 3000 handles 768p.
Medium Detail Gaming
Llano continues to put in a reasonably strong showing at medium settings, though the relative weakness of the four slow Stars cores is felt here. Much like with Brazos, it seems like AMD has crammed just a little too much GPU into these chips, more than the CPU halves can handle. Still, if you want to game on the cheap, the A6 can largely make it happen, with even 1600x900 gaming not entirely out of its reach in some instances. At our Medium settings, Intel's IGP also starts to fall off quite a bit, with very few titles in our suite managing to break 30FPS.
High Quality Gaming
Just for the heck of it, I figured I'd punish the A6-3400M all the way by running our suite of gaming benchmarks at our "high" preset.
900p proves largely to be too much for this class of graphics hardware; even NVIDIA's dedicated GeForce GT 540M struggles with it. Still, the results are notable and not wholly academic: Llano brings integrated graphics essentially on par with low-to-mid-end dedicated graphics hardware, and that's an achievement. The A6 takes a definite hit compared to the A8 in the GPU, but it still grossly outclasses Intel's HD 3000.
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Crazymech - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
Gotta agree with Dustin here.Tho I would like to add that I'm begining to think the problem is that the UI elements of windows aren't really being designed with this resolution in mind. I think Microsoft should start setting a 1920x1xx0 baseline resolution for designing the next UI, so that things wont be too small at our current standard.
This would allow us to enjoy the higher PPI without straining our eyes to see the tiny details. Like iPhones 4's screen for example. Icon size just the same, just more PPI - lovely to look at.
kmmatney - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
I have crappy eyes, and a 17" laptop with 1920 x 1200 resolution. I normally run the screen at 1440 x 900, which looks great. I like the fact that I can go to 1920 x 1200 when I really need the extra real-estate, but i can't handle that resolution very long. it nice to have the option, though.seapeople - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
I have really crappy eyes too, but I went to this thing they call an eye doctor (i.e. Walmart) and now while wearing these special lens type things I can actually see far away things just like I could when I was younger. I didn't realize this was an uncommon thing?Dustin Sklavos - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
The sarcasm is amusing but not entirely appropriate. Some of us with eye problems have a harder time getting them corrected as exactly. Despite my horrifically strong scrip and regular visits to the eye doctor, I still have trouble focusing sometimes.frozentundra123456 - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
Good comment Dustin. I still have decent vision, but I have had some problems that are not correctable that have decreased my vision somewhat. Believe me, it is really frightening to think that you might be losing vision in one or both eyes. Fortunately, the problem was not as serious as I first thought.However, I do know others that have very serious vision problems that are not totally fixable after many thousands of dollars of expensive surgery, much less a trip to Walmart. So I agree that seapeople's comment, intentionally or not, was not appropriate and is offensive to those who have serious vision problems.
joe_dude - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
IMHO, the NV75 is much better deal than the Toshiba. It comes with A8-3500m + dGPU. In Canada, it's $700 fully loaded with Blu-Ray.I think the A6 is better for low-end 13" to 15" laptops, where Intel + dGPU has a tendency to overheat (e.g. Acer TimelineX) or sounds like a jet engine in games.
Also, the productivity benchmarks are very misleading. On the NV75 (and I assume the Toshiba as well), the system is very responsive for day-to-day use. The CPU is definitely NOT a bottleneck.
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
The Gateway NV75, at least the models I've seen, does not include a dGPU. Any Radeon HD with the letter "G" at the end of the model number refers to the graphics built into the Llano APU. That said, you're right, the NV75 does look like a better deal.joe_dude - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
The Canadian model has a 6650m with 1 GB of VRAM.http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/gateway-gat...
The smallest AMD A6 laptop I can find so far is the 14" HP G4. Wanna review that one too? :>
charliek45 - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
Hi Dustin,Would you be able to expand on the heat and noise section of this review? I own an old Asus laptop and it gets very hot and noisy while playing games, sometimes to the point of shutting down, so this is one of the most important criteria for me when selecting a laptop. Can you please compare the heat and noise under load to other laptops? In particular, I am interested to know whether Llano is able to run cooler than Intel + dedicated graphics cards when playing games and if so, how much cooler.
MrCromulent - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
10/100 Ethernet... are you serious, Toshiba?Even for low-end machines that's unacceptable in this day and age.