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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drumhellar - Friday, August 12, 2011 - link
Is it feasible to get measurements of display latency on laptop panels?frozentundra123456 - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
I do like Llano for laptops, but I am frustrated by the people who keep excusing the lousy CPU performance by saying that it is "good enough" for office tasks, web surfing, and e-mail. They then criticize Intel for having lousy graphics.However, in the same way that AMD cpu performance is "good enough" for these tasks, I would also argue that the HD3000 is also "good enough" for 90 percent of the casual users.
Only if you intend to do some light gaming (very limited at that) would the better graphics performance of Llano be of much benefit, in my opinion.
AnandThenMan - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
The problem with your argument is the CPU power in Llano IS more than adequate for most tasks, having a faster CPU yields little benefit to the day to day experience. Intel graphics on the other hand are simply too slow, and the drivers quite honestly are garbage. Llano is a more balanced processor, it's that simple.I would also say that Anandtech.com picked probably one of the worst examples to review, the Toshiba unit is quite poor. Either way, the satisfaction rates of the Llano units so far has been extremely positive, people are very happy with them. Goes to show that synthetic benches are quite useless in predicting the overall experience.
frozentundra123456 - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
I agree with you that CPU power in Llano is probably adequate for most tasks.And Llano is indeed a more "balanced" processer. In fact as Anand said, it may be too directed to the GPU. My point was that for most users, HD3000 is also adequate qraphically, while delivering superior CPU performance.
You say the HD3000 is "simply too slow". Too slow for what, except gaming, in which I already gave the edge to Llano? If one wanted the superior CPU performance of Sandy Bridge, what tasks would they not be able to do, other than gaming, because of the weaker graphics? I am not trying to be sarcastic or agrumentative, because I seriously dont know of anything the average user would not be able to do because of the HD3000.
DudleyUC - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
frozentundra, you're right. HD3000 is good enough for everything except games. I wonder, what with hardware acceleration available, how many flash and HTML5 games there are/will be that will be too demanding for HD3000. Regardless, if a user doesn't do any gaming, it's a better idea to pick the best CPU at a given price point (taking into consideration build, display quality, etc.).joe_dude - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
Couldn't wait for a review, so I got the HP G4 (same AMD A6-3400m).Using K10Stat, it was (relatively) easy to OC *and* undervolt. Speed went from 1.4 GHz -> 1.8 GHz, turbo from 2.3 GHz -> 2.8 GHz, and uses 10% to 15% _less_ power now than at stock (!!!).
So yes, you can have your cake and eat it too. :)
Note: It could easily OC above 2 GHz (non-turbo), but the power consumption and heat were too high (Prime95 + Furmark).
Hrel - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
blu Ray, seriously? Take 100 bucks off the price and DON'T include blu ray. It ads literally NO value to the laptop. I'd go so far as to say it makes it LESS valuable because now I have to go through the trouble of taking it out, putting in a dvd drive and selling it on ebay. Once you factor in time and effort I'm losing money. IF, that is a big IF, I want 1080p video running on my laptop, I will plug in my external hard drive. Give me USB 3.0, at least 2 ports and drop the price 600 bucks and you've got something. Wanna hit that 700 dollar price mark? 1080p screen please.oraclelaw - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
I am amazed at the endless stream of laptop reviews of units sporting the new LLano chips that bemoan the low speeds the apu's are set at, without even mentioning that buyers are, at the moment anyway, not bound by these speeds...huh? Yes its true. These present llano apu's are COMPLETELY UNLOCKED!!And this despite EVERY desktop llano review noting the huge performance gains to be had with the slightest bit of overclocking. Now before you all give me the knee jerk response..i.e. "OMG you CAN'T overclock a LAPTOP!!!!" let me put your lock step minds at ease...for while that may very well be true with this herd of reviewers, it is NOT the case with everyone else...WHY? Because not only do the LLano chips overclock like banshee's, they also and at the same time massively UNDERVOLT!!! giving the least technical buyer out there, the opportunity to hugely increase performance while at the same time, reducing voltage, and thus energy use, and thus HEAT. Its all free, and its all built in. Anyone wanting to know what they can really expect out of a LLano laptop should waste no time heading over to the notebookreview HP Pavilion forum where page after page of information on this subject lays it all out.
Now for the 'hook'....how about an A-8 3530mx equipped lappie with a discrete amd 6570m running in what amd refers to as 'dual graphics' mode...laying down a 3dmark11 of p2100 plus.....with a Graphics score of just under 2200!!!...That's i series quad and 560m territory folks....but try and find any reference from the 'reviewers' to such possibilities. Now that $699.00 buy in price is looking a little better, eh?...Let me give you a sense of scale here.
In HP's new Pavilion dv6 line we have nearly identical intel and amd based units to compare. The 'i' based unit with the huge advantage of the intel SandyBridge quad, AND a 'to within an inch of its life' overclocked 6770m (as opposed to the 'z' version's lesser 6750m) along with the requisite 'garage' sized utility fan to keep it from melting, can 'almost' get within 100 points of the 3dmark11 overall score, and almost 300 points of the Graphics score- both put up by the amd based 'z' unit referred to above, a unit (btw) that can game at hours at those clocks sitting on a std two fan laptop cooler, and not get past 78C.
"But WAIT" u may say. "We're talking the A-6 series here, NOT the A-8's "...well glad you brought that up.
Turns out its ALSO possible to run an A-6 to the same clocks or better than the A-8's to the point that a 3dmark11 in the 2000's can be had...
Bottom line, Amd has built a rather amazing little package here, and set it up to run in an extremely conservative manner. I have no idea why. If you have any interest in multi-threaded apps, and/or not entirely casual dx10 or 11 gaming, these LLano based laptops represent the most serious 'bang for buck' to come down the pike in a very long while.
Something you will apparently never hear from a laptop 'reviewer'.
o
oraclelaw - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
I neglected to mention that battery life can indeed run over 5 'real hours' with a std. 6 cell. AND,that tho this reviewer's unit is priced at 699, you can find 'other' mfg's fully equipped boxes in the 500's. If you look at the hp's you can (with the obligatory coupon) set yourself up with a full boat 1080p screened model with Blu-ray, a discrete 6750, and a hi-performance 9cell (u do NOT want to hear how long you get on battery:) and the whole nine yards for something around $800.00 Pretty amazing really.
o
oraclelaw - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
Comparable to the subject of the article, but better, i.e. this model DOES have dual graphics..Best Buy has the Asus Llano with the A-6 in it for 449.00. At that price you're talking at least a hundred less than a tablet, 50 more than a good netbook...
Seems like a no-brainer to me :)
o