What memory clock speed was used for those benchmarks? A Radeon HD 5570 wouldn't perform like a 5570 either if it were stuck with 1066 MHz DDR3. 1866 MHz DDR3 would presumably be less of a bottleneck.
I can't say I didn't expect to see memory bandwidth start to become an issue here.
This may be a problem if it really does end up being bandwidth-heavy and OEMs cheap out on RAM. I fully expect to see some very good OEM builds that complement it with good parts, and some hideous ones that use DDR3-1066 or DDR3-800 and just choke the life out of that GPU.
I think you're being a bit overly pessimistic. Between the much smaller number of 1066 (30) vs 1333 (179) desktop memory products listed on newegg (no ddr3-800 at all), and the fact that Dell doesn't offer anything below DDR3-1333 on their cheapest crappiest ddr3 boxes it appears that 1333 is the slowest DDR3 still being produced.
Meanwhile the pricegap for 2x2GB is only ~$5 on newegg for 1333 vs 1600, so if faster ram actually does help performance it's reasonable to expect a decent number of vendors to offer it.
it's good to share this information already, provides a lot of information, but I do feel you clearly need to enter in this preview what specs are used. People will go for the first idea always, although the APU is fine, I think it will gain quite some performance on the 1866 mem which is fully supported.
1866 memory will have to go down in price significantly to be viable for an entry level PC. Still, it would be interesting to see performance with 1600, which seems to be the new standard.
Ahh nice. 40% more memory bandwidth nets you 20-30% (mostly 20% though) more graphics performance. Could you throw in some ddr3-1600 numbers? The cpu is still in the value category, ddr3-1866 isn't there yet (but ddr3-1600 is). Though extrapolating from these numbers, I'd expect ddr3-1600 (plus 20% memory bandwidth over ddr3-1333) to offer around a 13% improvement over ddr3-1333 - not too shabby.
Oh and forgot to add could you please specify the exact specification of the HD5570? The article only says 400 cores at 750Mhz (seems very high for 5570) and misses the memory completely (there are 5570 on the market with pretty much anything ranging from ddr2 to gddr5...). Reference 5570 would be 650Mhz core clock and 900Mhz ddr3 memory.
Right. So $14 difference changes a $499 system into a $513 system. While I recognize the psychological difference between those numbers, I also know that manufacturers and marketing departments can find ways to trim that $14 from somewhere else and highlight the DDR3-2000 memory, even if they only advertise and run it as DDR3-1866.
I would not typically encourage the use of high-speed memory because traditionally it has little to no impact on most real applications. However, Llano changes that when using the IGP.
very nice scaling results. This platform REALLY wants at least ddr3-1600. AMD should have only officially supported ddr3-1600 and faster to force the OEMs to not skimp on the memory :-).
The cpu benches shouldn't change really, just like older Phenom II you could just as well use ddr2 I bet. It should probably help for CF indeed as it will make the setup more symmetric, but given it barely worked at all I don't think there's much point retrying that without a newer driver version anyway.
Yes bc we all run 7Zip 24/7 ... right? I'd rather have an i3 2100 + HD6450 if the leaked price of $170 is anything to go by. The i3 combo will be much more responsive.
first of all there are no leaked prices since they refer to SKU that never exist.
Secondly the A8-3850 has more then CPU power enough, if you want a more responsive system invest in better HD RPM or SSD, general apps perf difference with just a few MHZ and Intel arch is whishfull thinking.
third: Intel boards have always been more expensive, the FM1 boards have better specs thx to USB3 and you have additional cost of the GPU and powerconsumption. You from a fanboy perspective might think that way (i would never select a 6450 low budget in the first place for a GPU board but anyhow) but OEM think different and focus on general consumers.
50% performance advantage on a single thread is nothing to scoff at. That's something you will feel no matter your IO. Since we're talking sub-$500 systems, i don't understand you bringing up Raptors or SSD's.
Actually Intel H61 MB's (with USB3) are very very cheap. Something like the MSI H61MU-E35 costs $80. If you think FM1 boards are going to be a lot cheaper, then you are wrong. I hope you know that an A8-3850 has a TDP of 100W. Power consumption? i3+HD6450=92W.
170 for the chip is outrageous, given the underwhelming performance in CPU and GPU. If they can drop the price to ~200-220 with the mobo, I'd pick one up for HTPC. The chip seems much more "exciting" on the mobile side, even then it is more of a snooze.
"50% performance advantage on a single thread is nothing to scoff at. That's something you will feel no matter your IO."
Really? What are you doing with your computer which actually relies so heavily on its single-threaded performance? Even if you can name something, try to name something which is the sort of application this solution is aimed at. My nearly six years old Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is much slower runing single-threaded stuff than this new chip, but can run all the typical apps fine and only really struggles when I task it with HD video work, work which really could benefit from more than two cores (which the A8-3850 has). In that respect, more cores is what I need, and it provides that.
Having said that, Ivy Bridge is probably what I'll buy as I build a new box rarely, but when built, is something I expect to last (just like this one). AMDs high-end offering due later this year should be interesting and provide just the push needed to both companies, to make 2012 the ideal year to build a new box (with either an Intel or AMD CPU depending on which I consider best) which will see another few years through.
Are you serious? Single threaded performance defines the CPU experience for probably 95+% of the apps most people use. I'm talking poorly GPU accelerated flash, firefox, the entire Windows GUI , and most of Microsoft Office for that matter. Try updating a bunch of cells in a complicated excel spreadsheet with a quad core CPU and watch in pain as your spreadsheet (and now every other excel spreadsheet too) freezes up while your CPU chugs along at 25% to update your cells. While complex calculations are multithreaded, it's easy to push excel into single threaded mode with a bunch of dependencies.
Oh, and once you do have a SSD, watch your CPU usage as you install a bunch of Windows Updates... yep, that's single threaded too for the most part. Apart from high end multi-threaded applications that only a small percentage of users even use, the biggest benefit to a dual core CPU, for example, is making faster threads rather than increasing the number of cores.
@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.
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.
Admittedly, I have stopped following AMD chips since the move from AM2+ to AM3. So at this point, if the A8 is targeting Core i3, is there anything known about their future roadmap that would indicate any other line of chips such as a "Phenom"-class chip to target i5/i7???
Take a look at the Bulldozer/Zambezi line of chips that should be out in the next few months. Those are the 4/8 core competition for i7. The first iteration will not have an integrated GPU, but that is coming eventually.
The highest desktop CPU (A8-3850) is apparently already running close to maximum performance. It seems like there should still be headroom available, but because of the way AMD is doing TC versus Intel's Turbo Boost, maybe they can't make use of the final few MHz. Or maybe current Llano chips just don't clock stable enough at 3.0+ GHz.
Yeah, that's really strange. They pushed their 45 nm chips to 3.5+ GHz with lots of (unnecessary) voltage, and now the maximum they're allowing the 32 nm chips is 2.9 GHz? For the cost of looking stupid compared to Intel in single threaded performance? And with a 100 W TDP.. which gives them all the headroom they could realistically use for single thread? Sounds like AMD 32 nm isn't quite there yet, or they introduced some speed bumps into the design.
Last time I used a 1280x1024 screen was ... 10 years ago ? can you even *BUY* those anymore ? Let alone 1024x768 (isn't that what my *phone* has ?). And LCD screens *don't* degrade beautifully.
I'm guessing those rez may be useful when trying to isolate CPU vs GPU performance... which will we be relevant as soon as Anand release their much-awaited tutorial: Llano: how to saw off the integrated graphics and hammer in a 6890....
FYI, my E-350 is driving a 1920x1200 main screen, and a 1680x1050 secondry one. Relevant tests, please, people ?
Absolutely agree , 1024 x 768 ,resolution gaming test are absolute joke & No wonder Sandy bridges shitty graphics are able to keep up , increase the resolution & Sandy Bridge will eat dust , Anand I hope for better that this.
+1 I don't know any laptop running these resolutions these days. Seems like someone want to show 'how close' are Sandy Bridge graphics to Llano... Please show tests at least at 1366x768 and 168x1050
+2 1366x768 is the de facto standard on laptops and would yield more useful results Anandtech readers. Widescreen has been standard for a long time now. It doesn't make sense to test laptops as if they still had 4:3 aspect ratios...
Well there's a few ways to look at it. I've played tons of games at 1024x600 resolution, they can still look pretty good. Console games run around that resolution sometimes too, so apparently millions of people are fine with it. It's still way above a DVD resolution. It's not much of a change to 1366x768 either. IGPs are pretty limited on bandwidth so go get discrete to play at 1920x1200 obviously. Just my 2 cents.
I dont see why you toss consoles or DVD in the mix here. We're not talking huge but low dpi TV screens where resolutions like this are quite normal but screens that are used for computers. A screen with that resolution would be tiny, compared the standard these days - and nobody would accept that unless its a crapbook.
Keep in mind that these are entry level GPUs here, anything above 1280 x 1024 isn't really going to do too well. Llano at least lets us have a conversation at 1280 x 1024 but for the most part integrated solutions are going to keep you to these types of resolutions. I tried to provide both a reference point to older IGP results (1024 x 768) as well as some perspective for discrete cards (page 3 at 1280 x 1024). As you can see by some of the numbers on page 3, at 1280 x 1024 in many benchmarks we're pretty close to 30 fps already.
That being said, this is just a preview. If you'd like I'll provide some resolution scaling data in the full review :)
I disagree. There are plenty of cases where the AMD chip is in the 100's. Nobody expects them to run Metro 2033 on high so don't bother using that as an excuse.
1680 minimum, and medium settings - we'll see who holds on to the fps and who collapses. And for god sake put some decent RAM in the AMD system.
There were a couple of tests where this setup had 80-100 fps.
I think particular attention ought to be paid to the most popular games in your list, and that's probably Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 + Black Ops and WoW.
Given that the Llano is a budget desktop chip, who is going to buy one? The semi casual gamer who is probably interested in the Call of Duty franchise or World of Warcraft.
And in both of those games this APU gets 100+ fps.
Most screens these days are widescreen, 1366 x 768, 1280 x 720, 1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1080. I think these are the resolutions to focus on.
But I really appreciate the review having just discovered this web site last week it's really nice. Keep up the great work!
My apologies - I was referencing the data on page 3 which purposefully looks at higher resolution/quality settings. There you're not looking at 100 fps in most situations but more down to earth frame rates.
I've already begun work on high resolution testing and varying memory bandwidth, our story at the end of the month will focus much more attention on these questions as a result of your feedback :)
Thanks for your answers Anand. I indeed keep trying to play at non-native resolutions, but for a PC (very close to the screen; as opposed to a console), things get very ugly very quickly.
I was kinda hoping Llano would be able to play WoW, in a raid 25, lowest settings, on my 1680 screen if not on my 1920... that doesn't seem to be the case ?
Thanks for you very interesting website, and best regards,
You're making me feel sad here... my primary desktop at home still uses a 19" 1280x1024 Dell 1905FP. My work desktop was also a 1280x1024 19" until that machine was replaced about 2 months ago.
My laptops both run 1280x800 as well, which is even less resolution than my desktops.
For gaming purposes steam's hardware survey is a better dataset. It has about 26% at 1280x1024 or less, and 17% at 720Pish resolutions (1366x768 and 1400x900) . It's still a large share, but is much smaller than the overall web average.
Comparing the Sandy Bridge scores on page 4 with your original Sandy Bridge review it looks like you are reposting your original scores for Sandy Bridge with launch drivers.
Normally, I don't get too picky about Intel graphics driver updates since they tend to be bug fix focused rather than performance, but the most recent Intel driver update looks to have a new description format and specifically calls out double digit percentage performance increases in a number of games. With it looking like Intel is finally getting gaming serious with their IGPs and now their drivers too, it's disappointing that you didn't use the latest drivers to compare to Llano. Especially when you conclude that the A8-3850's IGP is 56% faster than the fastest Sandy Bridge IGP, if Intel's double digit percentage performance claims are actually realizable, that has a material impact on how significant the IGP difference between Llano and Sandy Bridge is.
Looks like a measurable improvement overall for Sandy Bridge with the newer drivers, but only a significant performance increase in Starcraft II and Black Ops.
While it's not surprising to find out that the GPU end of Llano is memory-starved it's no less disappointing. I had expected performance closer to that of a 400 SP-equipped discrete card.
With the current performance levels it's still impossible for the chip to allow for even reasonable gaming power, being within spitting distance of other IGPs.
Unless we'll see solutions that add dedicated GPU memory to Llano motherboards I'd still rather buy the i3 2100 as it offers better performance for the majority of the applications relevant in that segment of the market.
Let's face it... people who buy low-end/midrange chips, AIOs and entry-level graphics aren't going to be doing any amount of work that benefits significantly from multi-threading power or GPU grunt.
Also for gaming. Hopefully Llano prices will end up a little lower than rumoured, otherwise might as well buy an Athlon II X4 635 + Radeon HD 6570 ($160 together at Newegg).
That the general populace does/doesn't buy computer with gaming in mind?
Because from these numbers Llano is as incapable of handling gaming as any other IGP. Aside from casual gaming, flash games and the like, but then again every IGP can handle that.
The bare minimum for gaming is doing native resolution, meaning 1080p today, at low-medium settings with no AA at tolerable framerates.
By the way, I think Llano could have a place where space is a premium, such as nettops and all in ones. The main problem here is power consumption and heat, and I wonder if the desktop Llano will be good enough in these respects.
Whats the story on chipset plans for the Llano chips? Are they going to do a 990GX chipset that could be run in crossfire with the APU's GPU? Can these GPU's in the processor be used for hybrid crossfire the same as the GX chipset iGPU's can, for example with a discreet 6550?
"However Intel does have a history of building upon ideas that AMD introduced before their time (e.g. IMC, x86-64, Fusion), "
AMD didn't invent IMC. AMD didn't invent 64bit computing. AMD didn't invent Fusion (well they did invent the brand name).
So please, don't mix things up. Don't think that Intel only looks at the x86 market for ideas. Having some of the old Alpha & Elbrus people there, i don't think they're short on ideas. It's just when they want to implement them.
So who exactly invented x86-64 if not AMD? Perhaps it didn't invent "64 bit computing", which is a completely irrelevant argument, but it did invent the most far reaching enhancement of the x86.
AMD was the first in the consumer market to do an IMC. Intel was second. AMD developed the x86_64 ISA; Intel licensed it from AMD (EMT64; not IA64 which is EPIC/Itanium)
as far as Fusion goes, could be several different aspects to things there...(core fusion, gpu/cpu fusion, etc.). Arguably, AMD announced their GPU/CPU fusion capabilities before Intel did.
However, if you are like me a member of the 0.001% of geek website visitors who use computer for cognitive activities, you will find that gaming performance is not that important.
Sandy Bridge offers more CPU power and totally sufficient IGP for sciences, technology, arts and video. How come you can write that that is not acceptable graphics ?
If you are a roaring swearing illiterate teenager however you will need something stronger - and uglier - in front of your eyes. Like a war game or something.
The more I visit reviews website, the more I wish teenagers would be kept away in their bedrooms, with their gamez and their loudspeakers.
I'd love to know what you mean by "cognitive activities" exactly. Gaming certainly includes many such activities, such as perceiving the environment, remembering it, responding to on-screen action, and so on.
Even an Atom offers CPU and GPU power that's totally sufficient for "sciences", "technology" and "arts". If by that you mean browsing websites and reading about them. I mean, if you remain on the vague side of definitions there's no particular need to go for a powerful CPU.
And even if you keep teenagers locked up, the majority of gamers happen to be in their twenties and thirties, so that probably won't have as huge an effect as you think.
So your conclusions seem a lot more "interesting" than those of the article.
Keep in mind the ddr3-1333 memory - I bet it scales almost linearly with memory frequency (especially the fastest part here). Intel HD3000 may also only use ddr3-1333 but this is by vendor choice (H67) plus it likely relies a bit less on memory bandwidth (first because it's slower, second because it can use L3 cache). I bet it would easily beat GT220 with faster memory. If you're running ddr3-1333 with desktop Llano, you're either using some old memory you already have, got a prebuilt box where the vendor saved 2$ for 20% performance hit, or are just plain crazy.
As a PC gamer I love that CPUs are finally getting somewhat respectable integrated graphics.
I hope Ivy Bridge continues on what Sandy Bridge did...if it can play TF2, COD, WOW in decent graphics at a decent resolution, PC gaming just got a lot more accessible.
I suspect there has been a quite a few people with crap PCs who have tried to play games but found out they couldn't because of the integrated graphics.
Perhaps this is what Intel and AMD are thinking? They want more gamers on the PC because they buy hardware. Ensuring that everyone on a PC can play games can ultimately get more people to buy higher end graphics cards and processors so they can play in good details.
As I mentioned earlier today, the only games I tend to find on "normal folks" PCs and laptops are the Sims games.
Thats pretty much it. In three years of business I've seen a lot of PCs and laptops and so far only about 3-4 of them have been what I would call 'gamers'.
If it can run The Sims/WoW and Farmville and make them look pretty then its mission accomplished.
The other 10% will be using a separate GPU anyway.
Might help the Bitcoin miners though? Every little helps.
True WoW and other MMO's are the most demanding games a casual gamer will run, but it's only with Sandy Bridge and now Llano that integrated graphics were able to satisfy that demand, and even then a little more power won't hurt.
What is called "serious gamerz" is 0.01% of users, but 99.99% of review websites visitors.
Hence the eerie tone of most articles like "so can it do gaming or not" totally out of context when price, consumption, heat, technical elegance should be the matter.
The fact that an IGP that can do perfect bluray, perfect architectural or medical simulation, perfect graphic editing can be labeled "insufficient for serious users" is itself a subject of philosophical wonder, especially when you realize that what the "serious users" do is shooting at ridiculous zombies in extremely ugly environments.
I think the issue is that AMD is listening and looking at what 99% of real world users actually use and need and catering to that.
Intel on the other hand have been totally blinded to follow the rants and needs of the 0.01% that read the review sites and their prices/power levels have gone up accordingly.
Its really only AMD's stubborn and baffling refusal to advertise to the masses that they obviously covet so much that holds them back.
Get enough TV ads up there and folks will be just as happy to ask for an AMD chip as an Intel especially when they find the AMD box is $100 cheaper.
If you dont advertise then its your own fault that you arent selling as much as the guy that does.
Given that both Intel's and AMD's IGP solutions are currently good enough for everything up to mainstream gaming I can't really see why AMD are doing a better job?
Llano is obviously not fast enough to allow more serious work and the weaker per-core performance is going to be a drawback for most mainstream users who do browsing and word processing as their main tasks.
Llano seems to be lacking a significantly improved memory and cache system to truly make it shine, at least as far as GPU performance with 400 SPs go.
Are you serious? I can browse and do word processing on my ancient P4. Per-core performance doesn't matter for what the *vast* majority of users do on their computers. What kind of "serious work" requires something beefier than an Athlon II X4?
And think a minute before you say "video encoding/transcoding", because soo few people actually do that, and those that do know what they need.
Yeah I've always felt that as soon as CPUs reached dual core to stop the eggtimer appearing with more then two windows open, that was it.
The "need for more power game" ended for most folks at that point.
Customers just dont give a damn about CPUs on modern PCs. The thing that really wows them is show the the difference between a mechanical HDD and a SSD.
I think that an upgrade from an old pc (P4 for example) does have a noticeable impact on web browsing, text processors and so on, because these program are hungrier than before, but when you get certain amount of power, the bottleneck goes to the hard drive. So if you're browsing using a SB or a llano cpu, it wouldn't matter very much.
Good folks at Anandtech, is there any chance one of you could get an interview with the Marketing Dept Head at AMD and ask them exactly what is their strategy for getting into the hearts and minds of the general computing public?
I would guess they don't bother a whole lot because most people don't know or give a shit what the difference between Intel and AMD is. I know my mom and my sister don't. All they really care about is whether their computer can be used for email, browsing, and maybe occasional light photo/video editing with something like Windows Movie Maker or Photoshop Elements.
No thats note quite my point. As you say if mum and dad dont care but they only know of Intel due to them appearing on TV adverts 5 times a night which one will they go for?
The Intel, cos they've never heard of AMD. You wouldnt buy a car and many other goods from a company you never heard of.
But you only have to get slight recognition and folks will be okay with it.
You declared that the GPU performance of Llano is on par with the HD 6450, but all discrete graphics cards were tested with an i5 2500k which is vastly superior to Llano in CPU performance and that is an important consideration (especially that games can be pretty CPU limited at the low resolutions you used), so I think that you should test discrete cards with a CPU more comparable to Llano in order to reach a more accurate conclusion.
I was exaggerating a bit. 21.5", 1680 LCD are $120; 26 inchers are around $300. Hey, you just made me realize my monitors are actually more expensive than the PC connected to them (E-350, 4GB, 650GB) ! I always overspent on screen s and keyboards, and underspent on PCs... Must be a quirk, sorry to have overgeneralized.
The iPhone 4 is 960x640, which is indeed not as much, but not that far from 1024x768.
Windows 7 has decent font / icon scaling. It allowed me to move my parents' ancient 21" IBM CRT from 1024x768 to something much higher, while preserving icon and text size. It looks much nicer.
I had gotten that CRT specifically to be able to use a low resolution / bigger text/icon size without the ugly jaggies of a down-scaled LCD. Now, if it ever finally dies, I now I'll be able to replace it with an LCD. The thing is around 10yrs old, and just won't quit.
Hope Ganesh gets to do his usual, thorough analysis of the integrated GPU especially w.r.t HTPC applications. I have an aging E5200 on a G45 board that I'm itching to replace. But had to hold off on Brazos, I think the E-350 and its GPU is a tad underpowered. Let's see what the 6550 is capable of ...
Yet another disappointment from AMD. I see a place for this chip in the notebook market where power saving, space, and lack of upgradability dominate. If the price is right you could have a low to mid price laptop with decent CPU and GPU performance.
However, to me the desktop part is a total disaster. The highest clocked chip cant even make 3ghz and there is not turbo mode. The only reason this chip can be a success is if they can sell it for the same price as the Athlon II X4 chips. Then you would get the same CPU performance with better graphics.
Otherwise, just buy an X4 640 and put in a discrete card.
They used DDR3 1866 only for Llano. This is cheating. HD3000 might not be limited by memory bandwith as much as Llano, but it might still get few fps boost.
How many people buy DDR3 1866 anyway ? Most people use either DDR3 1333 or 1600. Very few people buy anything above that, and those are not mainstream users.
I find it funny that people still cry about CPU performance of Llano when it was largely expected to be as it actualy is. Come on people, it's a K10 core on 32nm. The only saving grace was the possibility for high clock speed thanks to the die shrink. However AMD decided otherwise, so no point in arguing.
Most probably there are some technical limitations to the maximum clock speed with the GPU on-die as it is. I hope they solve this for Trinity.
Anyway Llano is good enough for 95% of the general computer users. It has enough CPU power for Office/Web/Video/Internet. The fGPU is good enough for WoW and older games. I can totaly see this as a great computer for my wife (mostly internets, movies, some older games). I even thought Zacate would be enough for her. And that's as casual a computer user as it gets.
Basicaly AMD scored a big OEM hit here. If Intel does not pull any dirty tricks, the Llano APUs should get an even share with the budget SB OEM builds.
I am interested in the 2nd or third generation where the GPU will replace the FPU in the x86 cores. Look at what AMD did with BD. The FPU is shared among the CPU cores. In the future, I expect them to assign SIMD units as FPUs to integer cores on the fly. Now a 16 core/16SIMD (1280SPUs in the current GPU architecture) CPU would be awesome.
The results of AMD's efforts here lead me to conclude that Llano is the ultimate in HTPC performance right now. With this architecture's performance in a mini-ITX form factor, I would find it hard to justify spending up on a larger, costlier discrete GPU system.
This seems to me to also offer a great general computing experience for desktops in the $400-$600 range.
I look forward to seeing what Zambezi can do and, following that, what the Bulldozer-based APUs will be capable of. With any luck, we will end up with another CPU arms race like we had circa 2002-2005.
I may sound technically challenged here, but from what I grasped from Anand's analysis is that as far as CPU performance is concerned the Sandy Bridge would trump the LLano by far. However, I also understand that Llano isnt too bad when its comes to the performance of its internal GPU.
I am looking at buying a medium range gaming desktop and am currently looking at an Intel Core i5 2500k and the MSI GTX560 Twin Frozr II as the graphics card.
My question is that if one is to buy a separate graphics card, I am guessing the performance of the GPU component of the LLano or the Sandy Bridge doesnt really matter, does it? And thus with an external graphics card Sandy Bridge is the obvious choice.
To get real Turbo freq, get Phenom x4 840 (i.e. w/o L3) or mobile Phenom x4, scale it down to Llano base freq and run single-threaded test , for instance, Lame.
You will be surprised that real Turbo freq will be much lower than declared 2.4GHz.
When you review desktop Llano's can you cover multiple screens please? Some of us don't game but are interested in a lower power multiple screen solution for working. I.e. do boards support triple screens now that there's a 6xxx series GPU in there? Thanks
The thing that most all of everyone here is not taking into consideration is Direct x. Anand you tested most games under direct x 9. The I3, I5, I7 with HD3000 can only run Dx9 or Dx10 but not Dx11. Llano can run all three. The point is if you purchase Intel Sandybridge and have any Dx11 games you have to buy a discreet graphics card. So an investment into lets say my kids low level gaming PC for Intel is Sandybridge, 1155 socket MB, and a graphics card that costs < $100. The AMD PC - Llano, FM1 socket MB, and a Turks based card HD6670 which costs about $90. Could you please test 2 systems like this? Maybe provide AMD dual graphics game info for games that are Dx10 and 11 since dual graphics does not support Dx9. My request is what in my opinion is a real life buying decision and your technical expertise is much appreciated to help me decide.
1) you ran Llano with only the basic frequency !!! When overclock Llano both cpu & igp parts you have impressive results as below
2) Ran games & programs in resolution 1024 x768. This is very very bad. In this resolution (1024χ768) big part from the results they depend from the CPU part and sandy bridge can be compared with Llano. In resolution that all of us we play today (1920x1080, 1680x1050) the all action undertakes the IGP part. In this resolution IGP (6650D) of Liano it would destroy all intel igp (hd 3000, hd 2000)..... but you have only ran games at 1024x768,....
3) In Llanos platform we can make HYBRID CROSSFIRE with AMD/ATI GPU, HD 6670, HD 6570 ++++ In conclusion with the same increase of pecuniary cost that in the case sandy bridge we have also exterior graphic card (5570 or 6570 ), in the case of Llano we will have much better graphic thanks to HYBRID CROSSFIRE with IGP 6550d and exterior HD6570 or HD6670!!!
For this reason Llano kills the sandy in gaming performance, in comparison with incorporated cards (IGP), but still more compared to same exterior ( discrete GPU).
3D Mark 06: Stock Settings: 7650 3D Marks Overclocked Settings: 10,492 3D Marks (10K Barrier broken by a single IGP is a world record)
3D Mark Vantage: Stock Settings: 4400 3D Marks Overclocked Settings: 6160 3D Marks (New IGP World Record)
3D Mark 11: Stock Settings: 1148 3D Marks Overclocked Settings: 1591 3D Marks
That why Llano is unstoppable in gaming performance! With Hybrid crossfire with small discrete HD6670 we can run everything game with very small total cost !!!
What if you add a faster GPU i to the mix? Such as a 6870? Does the on board graphics mixed with something more powerful make much of a difference to your numbers? How about adding a GTX Card? (now I'm being silly)
- When I run game or graphic benches in low resolution I throw the weight in CPU and no so much in GPU (IGP) !!! Then i cannot show clearly the superiority graphic card ( 6550D) toward a other (intel 3000), if in the feeblest card I have placed stronger processor. This has made anand and it is absurd because we speak for graphic and try to bring the resolution which is near the current levels so that it has also value what we measure!
In the review anand we see that he is used ΑΤΙ 5570 in 1155 for comparison.What wanted to show us with that? Thoughts…
1) If anand. wanted to shows us techno -economic results in construction of system, it would be supposed in the platform of Llanos it places an exterior card graphic (ATI 6670), so that system comes in the same pecuniary cost with sandy-bidge 2500k/2600k with their incorporated intel graphic card (igp hd 3000& 2000). And ιn this case exists a surprise!!! Lianos platform makes HYBRID CROSSFIRE (ΙGP & DISCRETE GPU) and doubles the force !!!
2) If anand. wanted to shows us what becomes adding a discrete card in the two platforms of this dynamic range category (5570,5670, 6570,6670 etc.) would be supposed to add one of those card in two platforms, not only in sandybridge!!!
Ιn this case in Llano platform you achieve Hybrid crossfire and you simultaneously have 400 STREAM PROCESSORS from the IGP and 480 stream processors from the discrete card in the system, so you you can play comfortably your games !!! That is to say, you have in your disposal more and more rapid stream processors from the core 4850 (brought from the line of 6000 amd/ati)!!!! Ιs this little for the speed of games? Νo I do not believe that ..............
Ηybrid crossfire he is dynamic crossfire. Depending on the intensity graphic in a program it activates automatically crossfire the internal card with the exterior card graphic. With this way you have big force and small consumption in your system. Also with hubrid crossfire you simultaneously have complete management of all material graphic for achievement of max records in a game, while in case lucid virtu, which exists case you find in the 1155 platform, you only have alternation between internal and external card!
This possibility however does not appear in this review !!!
If this therefore is review then…. lollololololoollol!!!
what's the A8-3850? pricing previews in late may showed the A8-3550P(unlocked multiplier) as the top Llano desktop model. http://www.techpowerup.com/146236/AMD-Bulldozer-Ll... what gives? is the one reviewed here just an engineering sample? that might explain why it didn't seem to overclock well.
Comparing Sandy Bridge and Llano is not truly relevant because they address different market segments. SB is a high-end chip; Llano is a budget chip. The only reason they are being compared today is that they are the first two CPUs with on-chip graphics. However, they could scarcely have more different intended uses. Soon-to-come Bulldozer is the proper chip to compare to SB.
Llano was not designed for performance; it was designed for economy by integrating the graphics onto the CPU chip. This can be seen by the fact that it is based on the low-end Athlon II, not the higher performance Phenom II.
Llano's target market is the OEM market for "cheap PCs", not the enthusiast market or high-end market like SB. Expect to see Llano in a large part of the sub-$500 desktop PC marketplace. Once the initial surge of demand is satisfied, Llano's price will drop steeply to where it will cost half of what SB costs.
Given it's 32nm manufacturing process, AMD should be able to sell this CPU + GPU combo chip for around $100 or less. This will position it where Intel has no direct competition for it, allowing Llano to quickly achieve deep penetration in its target (budget) market.
Llano was designed to address the huge mid-range and budget segments of the PC marketplace where its CPU power is plenty sufficient and where consumers largely buy based on price.. This is the same strategy that AMD/ATI successfully employed against Nvidia in the discrete video card market: give up the high end, but take the middle and low end where the real volume and profits are made.
The fact that Llano's superior graphics performance (relative to SB/HD 3000) allows it to compete with SB in gaming is an unexpected gift to buyers. It's really not in SB's class by design, but it is able to compete in gaming because it is a better balanced chip, performance-wise. That is, SB has a very strong CPU, but a weak GPU. The performance of Llano's CPU and GPU are much more closely matched, designed to provide the performance levels necessary for the midrange and budget markets at maximum economy (lowest cost).
If you want an AMD CPU that can (hopefully) compete with Sandy Bridge, you will have to wait for Bulldozer. Llano is a cost-effective solution for the mass market (especially OEMs) for which Intel currently has no answer unless they drop the price of SB and gut their profit margins.
The question is: will Intel be forced to introduce a lower cost CPU+GPU combo chip to compete with Llano?
What a triumphant boasts were made of Bobcat & Bulldozer. The lauch of chips have been postponed several times, only to reveal that in its core the Bobcat is still the same Sledgehammer Opteron of 2003. It took AMD 3 years to shrink the Phenom II to 32 nm and pair it with GPU (that I admitt is very decent). What a disgrace !
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131 Comments
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Quizzical - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
What memory clock speed was used for those benchmarks? A Radeon HD 5570 wouldn't perform like a 5570 either if it were stuck with 1066 MHz DDR3. 1866 MHz DDR3 would presumably be less of a bottleneck.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
DDR3-1333, expect to see more testing with higher memory frequencies for our final review :)Take care,
Anand
dertechie - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I can't say I didn't expect to see memory bandwidth start to become an issue here.This may be a problem if it really does end up being bandwidth-heavy and OEMs cheap out on RAM. I fully expect to see some very good OEM builds that complement it with good parts, and some hideous ones that use DDR3-1066 or DDR3-800 and just choke the life out of that GPU.
DanNeely - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I think you're being a bit overly pessimistic. Between the much smaller number of 1066 (30) vs 1333 (179) desktop memory products listed on newegg (no ddr3-800 at all), and the fact that Dell doesn't offer anything below DDR3-1333 on their cheapest crappiest ddr3 boxes it appears that 1333 is the slowest DDR3 still being produced.Meanwhile the pricegap for 2x2GB is only ~$5 on newegg for 1333 vs 1600, so if faster ram actually does help performance it's reasonable to expect a decent number of vendors to offer it.
duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
it's good to share this information already, provides a lot of information, but I do feel you clearly need to enter in this preview what specs are used. People will go for the first idea always, although the APU is fine, I think it will gain quite some performance on the 1866 mem which is fully supported.ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
1866 memory will have to go down in price significantly to be viable for an entry level PC. Still, it would be interesting to see performance with 1600, which seems to be the new standard.Tanclearas - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yeah. The $10 to $20 premium on 4GB of DDR3-2000 memory is just way too much to expect people to come up with...Sadly though, you're right. Many manufacturers will cheap out on the RAM even if it does severely impact performance.
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Given the importance of memory bandwidth, cant you stick some other speed ram in there and give as an estimate of overall average FPS vs ram speed?Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Reload page 3 :)Take care,
Anand
mczak - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Ahh nice. 40% more memory bandwidth nets you 20-30% (mostly 20% though) more graphics performance.Could you throw in some ddr3-1600 numbers? The cpu is still in the value category, ddr3-1866 isn't there yet (but ddr3-1600 is). Though extrapolating from these numbers, I'd expect ddr3-1600 (plus 20% memory bandwidth over ddr3-1333) to offer around a 13% improvement over ddr3-1333 - not too shabby.
mczak - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Oh and forgot to add could you please specify the exact specification of the HD5570? The article only says 400 cores at 750Mhz (seems very high for 5570) and misses the memory completely (there are 5570 on the market with pretty much anything ranging from ddr2 to gddr5...). Reference 5570 would be 650Mhz core clock and 900Mhz ddr3 memory.Tanclearas - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Seriously?! Have you even checked memory prices lately?DanNeely - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
newegg typical basely prices for 2x2GB DDR3:1333: $40
1600: $44
1866: $70
2000: $60
anything above 1600 starts to show a binning penalty. (The 1866/2000 prices are not an error, DDR3-2000 is readily available for less than 1866.)
Tanclearas - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
Right. So $14 difference changes a $499 system into a $513 system. While I recognize the psychological difference between those numbers, I also know that manufacturers and marketing departments can find ways to trim that $14 from somewhere else and highlight the DDR3-2000 memory, even if they only advertise and run it as DDR3-1866.I would not typically encourage the use of high-speed memory because traditionally it has little to no impact on most real applications. However, Llano changes that when using the IGP.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Here's some additional data to tide you over :)http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/llano/...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Hmm a shortened link, looks like our comment system needs a tweak :)http://bit.ly/kYGkvk
mczak - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
very nice scaling results. This platform REALLY wants at least ddr3-1600. AMD should have only officially supported ddr3-1600 and faster to force the OEMs to not skimp on the memory :-).duploxxx - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
major improvement seen from this increase of RAM speed, can you pls reload ALL benches with this new DRAM?It was clearly mentioned in the AMD slides that memory bandwidth was very important, this might also influence the CF setup a lot.
mczak - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
The cpu benches shouldn't change really, just like older Phenom II you could just as well use ddr2 I bet.It should probably help for CF indeed as it will make the setup more symmetric, but given it barely worked at all I don't think there's much point retrying that without a newer driver version anyway.
plonk420 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
will the final review have 1333 vs 1866 ram?maroon1 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I hope that anandtech use similar DDR3 speed for both intel and AMD setupkillerclick - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
It's good enough for the era of PS3 and XBOX360 console ports but AMD is way behind Intel and that gap is growing day by day.StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Llano isn't meant to compete with the high-end Sandy Bridge, it's a low-end/mid-range chip, wait for Zambezi to see AMD's answer to the Core i7.duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
what charrts have you been looking at? did you check any gaming performance or multithreaded apps??milli - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yes bc we all run 7Zip 24/7 ... right?I'd rather have an i3 2100 + HD6450 if the leaked price of $170 is anything to go by. The i3 combo will be much more responsive.
duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
first of all there are no leaked prices since they refer to SKU that never exist.Secondly the A8-3850 has more then CPU power enough, if you want a more responsive system invest in better HD RPM or SSD, general apps perf difference with just a few MHZ and Intel arch is whishfull thinking.
third: Intel boards have always been more expensive, the FM1 boards have better specs thx to USB3 and you have additional cost of the GPU and powerconsumption. You from a fanboy perspective might think that way (i would never select a 6450 low budget in the first place for a GPU board but anyhow) but OEM think different and focus on general consumers.
milli - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Well you're talking to a SI here with 14 business experience, so i'm no fanboy.My info comes from here:
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2011/2011061301_E2-_...
All the SKU's mentioned there do exist.
50% performance advantage on a single thread is nothing to scoff at. That's something you will feel no matter your IO. Since we're talking sub-$500 systems, i don't understand you bringing up Raptors or SSD's.
Actually Intel H61 MB's (with USB3) are very very cheap. Something like the MSI H61MU-E35 costs $80. If you think FM1 boards are going to be a lot cheaper, then you are wrong.
I hope you know that an A8-3850 has a TDP of 100W. Power consumption? i3+HD6450=92W.
chiadog - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
170 for the chip is outrageous, given the underwhelming performance in CPU and GPU. If they can drop the price to ~200-220 with the mobo, I'd pick one up for HTPC. The chip seems much more "exciting" on the mobile side, even then it is more of a snooze.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
"50% performance advantage on a single thread is nothing to scoff at. That's something you will feel no matter your IO."Really? What are you doing with your computer which actually relies so heavily on its single-threaded performance? Even if you can name something, try to name something which is the sort of application this solution is aimed at. My nearly six years old Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is much slower runing single-threaded stuff than this new chip, but can run all the typical apps fine and only really struggles when I task it with HD video work, work which really could benefit from more than two cores (which the A8-3850 has). In that respect, more cores is what I need, and it provides that.
Having said that, Ivy Bridge is probably what I'll buy as I build a new box rarely, but when built, is something I expect to last (just like this one). AMDs high-end offering due later this year should be interesting and provide just the push needed to both companies, to make 2012 the ideal year to build a new box (with either an Intel or AMD CPU depending on which I consider best) which will see another few years through.
seapeople - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link
Are you serious? Single threaded performance defines the CPU experience for probably 95+% of the apps most people use. I'm talking poorly GPU accelerated flash, firefox, the entire Windows GUI , and most of Microsoft Office for that matter. Try updating a bunch of cells in a complicated excel spreadsheet with a quad core CPU and watch in pain as your spreadsheet (and now every other excel spreadsheet too) freezes up while your CPU chugs along at 25% to update your cells. While complex calculations are multithreaded, it's easy to push excel into single threaded mode with a bunch of dependencies.Oh, and once you do have a SSD, watch your CPU usage as you install a bunch of Windows Updates... yep, that's single threaded too for the most part. Apart from high end multi-threaded applications that only a small percentage of users even use, the biggest benefit to a dual core CPU, for example, is making faster threads rather than increasing the number of cores.
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.nuker - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Any hints on the probable cost of this processor?KingKuei - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Admittedly, I have stopped following AMD chips since the move from AM2+ to AM3. So at this point, if the A8 is targeting Core i3, is there anything known about their future roadmap that would indicate any other line of chips such as a "Phenom"-class chip to target i5/i7???Veerappan - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Take a look at the Bulldozer/Zambezi line of chips that should be out in the next few months. Those are the 4/8 core competition for i7. The first iteration will not have an integrated GPU, but that is coming eventually.LtGoonRush - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Is the absence of Turbo Core something particular to this sample, or is it not present in desktop Llano processors?JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
The highest desktop CPU (A8-3850) is apparently already running close to maximum performance. It seems like there should still be headroom available, but because of the way AMD is doing TC versus Intel's Turbo Boost, maybe they can't make use of the final few MHz. Or maybe current Llano chips just don't clock stable enough at 3.0+ GHz.MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yeah, that's really strange. They pushed their 45 nm chips to 3.5+ GHz with lots of (unnecessary) voltage, and now the maximum they're allowing the 32 nm chips is 2.9 GHz? For the cost of looking stupid compared to Intel in single threaded performance? And with a 100 W TDP.. which gives them all the headroom they could realistically use for single thread? Sounds like AMD 32 nm isn't quite there yet, or they introduced some speed bumps into the design.MrS
StormyParis - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Last time I used a 1280x1024 screen was ... 10 years ago ? can you even *BUY* those anymore ? Let alone 1024x768 (isn't that what my *phone* has ?). And LCD screens *don't* degrade beautifully.I'm guessing those rez may be useful when trying to isolate CPU vs GPU performance... which will we be relevant as soon as Anand release their much-awaited tutorial: Llano: how to saw off the integrated graphics and hammer in a 6890....
FYI, my E-350 is driving a 1920x1200 main screen, and a 1680x1050 secondry one. Relevant tests, please, people ?
BLaber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Absolutely agree , 1024 x 768 ,resolution gaming test are absolute joke & No wonder Sandy bridges shitty graphics are able to keep up , increase the resolution & Sandy Bridge will eat dust , Anand I hope for better that this.tisho75 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
+1I don't know any laptop running these resolutions these days. Seems like someone want to show 'how close' are Sandy Bridge graphics to Llano... Please show tests at least at 1366x768 and 168x1050
TrackSmart - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
+21366x768 is the de facto standard on laptops and would yield more useful results Anandtech readers. Widescreen has been standard for a long time now. It doesn't make sense to test laptops as if they still had 4:3 aspect ratios...
starfalcon - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Well there's a few ways to look at it.I've played tons of games at 1024x600 resolution, they can still look pretty good.
Console games run around that resolution sometimes too, so apparently millions of people are fine with it. It's still way above a DVD resolution.
It's not much of a change to 1366x768 either.
IGPs are pretty limited on bandwidth so go get discrete to play at 1920x1200 obviously.
Just my 2 cents.
Griswold - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I dont see why you toss consoles or DVD in the mix here. We're not talking huge but low dpi TV screens where resolutions like this are quite normal but screens that are used for computers. A screen with that resolution would be tiny, compared the standard these days - and nobody would accept that unless its a crapbook.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Keep in mind that these are entry level GPUs here, anything above 1280 x 1024 isn't really going to do too well. Llano at least lets us have a conversation at 1280 x 1024 but for the most part integrated solutions are going to keep you to these types of resolutions. I tried to provide both a reference point to older IGP results (1024 x 768) as well as some perspective for discrete cards (page 3 at 1280 x 1024). As you can see by some of the numbers on page 3, at 1280 x 1024 in many benchmarks we're pretty close to 30 fps already.That being said, this is just a preview. If you'd like I'll provide some resolution scaling data in the full review :)
Take care,
Anand
Jamahl - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I disagree. There are plenty of cases where the AMD chip is in the 100's. Nobody expects them to run Metro 2033 on high so don't bother using that as an excuse.1680 minimum, and medium settings - we'll see who holds on to the fps and who collapses. And for god sake put some decent RAM in the AMD system.
Griswold - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
QFTwhoaaaaaaaa - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I have to concur with everyone else, Anand.There were a couple of tests where this setup had 80-100 fps.
I think particular attention ought to be paid to the most popular games in your list, and that's probably Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 + Black Ops and WoW.
Given that the Llano is a budget desktop chip, who is going to buy one? The semi casual gamer who is probably interested in the Call of Duty franchise or World of Warcraft.
And in both of those games this APU gets 100+ fps.
Most screens these days are widescreen, 1366 x 768, 1280 x 720, 1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1080. I think these are the resolutions to focus on.
But I really appreciate the review having just discovered this web site last week it's really nice. Keep up the great work!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
My apologies - I was referencing the data on page 3 which purposefully looks at higher resolution/quality settings. There you're not looking at 100 fps in most situations but more down to earth frame rates.I've already begun work on high resolution testing and varying memory bandwidth, our story at the end of the month will focus much more attention on these questions as a result of your feedback :)
Take care,
Anand
veri745 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
This would be a perfect scenario for the list older games that you guys were putting together a few months ago.Show us some 2005-2008 action at decent resolutions (1366x/1680x)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Have any specific requests you'd like to see?Take care,
Anand
veri745 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
A couple suggestionsOblivion
Bioshock
Empire: TW
Titan Quest
Stalker SOC
Torchlight
GRID
In no particular order
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Thanks for your input :) I'll definitely get some of this in there.Take care,
Anand
StormyParis - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Thanks for your answers Anand. I indeed keep trying to play at non-native resolutions, but for a PC (very close to the screen; as opposed to a console), things get very ugly very quickly.I was kinda hoping Llano would be able to play WoW, in a raid 25, lowest settings, on my 1680 screen if not on my 1920... that doesn't seem to be the case ?
Thanks for you very interesting website, and best regards,
Olivier
Veerappan - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
You're making me feel sad here... my primary desktop at home still uses a 19" 1280x1024 Dell 1905FP. My work desktop was also a 1280x1024 19" until that machine was replaced about 2 months ago.My laptops both run 1280x800 as well, which is even less resolution than my desktops.
Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteață - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
According to StatCounter, a quarter of world population still run at 1024x768 and two thirds (!) at 1280 or below.http://gs.statcounter.com/#resolution-ww-monthly-2...
DanNeely - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
For gaming purposes steam's hardware survey is a better dataset. It has about 26% at 1280x1024 or less, and 17% at 720Pish resolutions (1366x768 and 1400x900) . It's still a large share, but is much smaller than the overall web average.http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=p...
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Comparing the Sandy Bridge scores on page 4 with your original Sandy Bridge review it looks like you are reposting your original scores for Sandy Bridge with launch drivers.http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridg...
Normally, I don't get too picky about Intel graphics driver updates since they tend to be bug fix focused rather than performance, but the most recent Intel driver update looks to have a new description format and specifically calls out double digit percentage performance increases in a number of games. With it looking like Intel is finally getting gaming serious with their IGPs and now their drivers too, it's disappointing that you didn't use the latest drivers to compare to Llano. Especially when you conclude that the A8-3850's IGP is 56% faster than the fastest Sandy Bridge IGP, if Intel's double digit percentage performance claims are actually realizable, that has a material impact on how significant the IGP difference between Llano and Sandy Bridge is.
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/20035/eng/Graphics...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Thanks for the post - I've updated the results with the new 2372 drivers :)Take care,
Anand
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Looks like a measurable improvement overall for Sandy Bridge with the newer drivers, but only a significant performance increase in Starcraft II and Black Ops.Thanks for the prompt response.
iwod - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Great Itcommanderdata actually points this out here. Which i just did in the other Mobile Review comment.We are comparing ATI Mature drivers to Intel Drivers that can still extract double digit percentage gain in performance.
Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
While it's not surprising to find out that the GPU end of Llano is memory-starved it's no less disappointing. I had expected performance closer to that of a 400 SP-equipped discrete card.With the current performance levels it's still impossible for the chip to allow for even reasonable gaming power, being within spitting distance of other IGPs.
Unless we'll see solutions that add dedicated GPU memory to Llano motherboards I'd still rather buy the i3 2100 as it offers better performance for the majority of the applications relevant in that segment of the market.
Let's face it... people who buy low-end/midrange chips, AIOs and entry-level graphics aren't going to be doing any amount of work that benefits significantly from multi-threading power or GPU grunt.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Also for gaming. Hopefully Llano prices will end up a little lower than rumoured, otherwise might as well buy an Athlon II X4 635 + Radeon HD 6570 ($160 together at Newegg).Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
What do you mean?That the general populace does/doesn't buy computer with gaming in mind?
Because from these numbers Llano is as incapable of handling gaming as any other IGP. Aside from casual gaming, flash games and the like, but then again every IGP can handle that.
The bare minimum for gaming is doing native resolution, meaning 1080p today, at low-medium settings with no AA at tolerable framerates.
I'm not seeing that here.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I mean that Llano is also disappointing for gaming. I thought it was clear from context, but apparently it wasn't. I'm glad you've agreed with me.Still, I disagree with your assertion regarding bare minimum gaming. WoW at 720p is probably what separates a gaming capable PC from one that isn't.
Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Re: WoW, granted.I just feel WoW is a poor representation of the GPU prowess of Llano as the game is by far and large CPU-bound, as most MMOs, RPGs and RTSs are.
Shooters are by far and large the common denominator for mainstream gaming.
norwayishot - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
WoW is the single most mainstream game out there....Other titles I would consider mainstream are Call of Duty, Fifa, Portal, Minecraft...
I'm pretty sure all of these titles would get 100 fps in Llano
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
By the way, I think Llano could have a place where space is a premium, such as nettops and all in ones. The main problem here is power consumption and heat, and I wonder if the desktop Llano will be good enough in these respects.Mathos - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Whats the story on chipset plans for the Llano chips? Are they going to do a 990GX chipset that could be run in crossfire with the APU's GPU? Can these GPU's in the processor be used for hybrid crossfire the same as the GX chipset iGPU's can, for example with a discreet 6550?milli - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
"However Intel does have a history of building upon ideas that AMD introduced before their time (e.g. IMC, x86-64, Fusion), "AMD didn't invent IMC.
AMD didn't invent 64bit computing.
AMD didn't invent Fusion (well they did invent the brand name).
So please, don't mix things up. Don't think that Intel only looks at the x86 market for ideas. Having some of the old Alpha & Elbrus people there, i don't think they're short on ideas. It's just when they want to implement them.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
So who exactly invented x86-64 if not AMD? Perhaps it didn't invent "64 bit computing", which is a completely irrelevant argument, but it did invent the most far reaching enhancement of the x86.Lonbjerg - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
"but it did invent the most far reaching enhancement of the x86. "You say that like it's a good thing?
x86 should have died years ago.
SlyNine - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
And why exactly is that, or do you actually believe that X86 is slows your computer down and uses more power?davegraham - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
milli,AMD was the first in the consumer market to do an IMC. Intel was second.
AMD developed the x86_64 ISA; Intel licensed it from AMD (EMT64; not IA64 which is EPIC/Itanium)
as far as Fusion goes, could be several different aspects to things there...(core fusion, gpu/cpu fusion, etc.). Arguably, AMD announced their GPU/CPU fusion capabilities before Intel did.
cheers,
Dave
Akv - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Interesting conclusion.However, if you are like me a member of the 0.001% of geek website visitors who use computer for cognitive activities, you will find that gaming performance is not that important.
Sandy Bridge offers more CPU power and totally sufficient IGP for sciences, technology, arts and video. How come you can write that that is not acceptable graphics ?
If you are a roaring swearing illiterate teenager however you will need something stronger - and uglier - in front of your eyes. Like a war game or something.
The more I visit reviews website, the more I wish teenagers would be kept away in their bedrooms, with their gamez and their loudspeakers.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I'd love to know what you mean by "cognitive activities" exactly. Gaming certainly includes many such activities, such as perceiving the environment, remembering it, responding to on-screen action, and so on.Even an Atom offers CPU and GPU power that's totally sufficient for "sciences", "technology" and "arts". If by that you mean browsing websites and reading about them. I mean, if you remain on the vague side of definitions there's no particular need to go for a powerful CPU.
And even if you keep teenagers locked up, the majority of gamers happen to be in their twenties and thirties, so that probably won't have as huge an effect as you think.
So your conclusions seem a lot more "interesting" than those of the article.
BernardP - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
CPU performance is as expected, considering it's based on a tweaked Athlon II core. But the positive effects of the tweaks don't show in benchmarks.GPU performance is disappointing: With 400 shaders, expectations were higher than the results shown here. Not even to the level of NVidia's GT 220.
Overall, an adequate and hopefuly cheap APU for basic PC and HTPC.
I'm still waiting to see what Bulldozer can do: No integrated graphics for me.
mczak - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Keep in mind the ddr3-1333 memory - I bet it scales almost linearly with memory frequency (especially the fastest part here). Intel HD3000 may also only use ddr3-1333 but this is by vendor choice (H67) plus it likely relies a bit less on memory bandwidth (first because it's slower, second because it can use L3 cache). I bet it would easily beat GT220 with faster memory.If you're running ddr3-1333 with desktop Llano, you're either using some old memory you already have, got a prebuilt box where the vendor saved 2$ for 20% performance hit, or are just plain crazy.
whoaaaaaaaa - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
As a PC gamer I love that CPUs are finally getting somewhat respectable integrated graphics.I hope Ivy Bridge continues on what Sandy Bridge did...if it can play TF2, COD, WOW in decent graphics at a decent resolution, PC gaming just got a lot more accessible.
I suspect there has been a quite a few people with crap PCs who have tried to play games but found out they couldn't because of the integrated graphics.
Perhaps this is what Intel and AMD are thinking? They want more gamers on the PC because they buy hardware. Ensuring that everyone on a PC can play games can ultimately get more people to buy higher end graphics cards and processors so they can play in good details.
jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
As I mentioned earlier today, the only games I tend to find on "normal folks" PCs and laptops are the Sims games.Thats pretty much it. In three years of business I've seen a lot of PCs and laptops and so far only about 3-4 of them have been what I would call 'gamers'.
If it can run The Sims/WoW and Farmville and make them look pretty then its mission accomplished.
The other 10% will be using a separate GPU anyway.
Might help the Bitcoin miners though? Every little helps.
SlyNine - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I say, Most people try a game, find it cannot run and uninstall it.Why would I have a game wasting space ( and in many peoples minds performence even when its not running).
The other 10% use a separate GPU because the IGP cannot handle gaming.
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
True WoW and other MMO's are the most demanding games a casual gamer will run, but it's only with Sandy Bridge and now Llano that integrated graphics were able to satisfy that demand, and even then a little more power won't hurt.Akv - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
What is called "serious gamerz" is 0.01% of users, but 99.99% of review websites visitors.Hence the eerie tone of most articles like "so can it do gaming or not" totally out of context when price, consumption, heat, technical elegance should be the matter.
The fact that an IGP that can do perfect bluray, perfect architectural or medical simulation, perfect graphic editing can be labeled "insufficient for serious users" is itself a subject of philosophical wonder, especially when you realize that what the "serious users" do is shooting at ridiculous zombies in extremely ugly environments.
jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Spot on!I think the issue is that AMD is listening and looking at what 99% of real world users actually use and need and catering to that.
Intel on the other hand have been totally blinded to follow the rants and needs of the 0.01% that read the review sites and their prices/power levels have gone up accordingly.
Its really only AMD's stubborn and baffling refusal to advertise to the masses that they obviously covet so much that holds them back.
Get enough TV ads up there and folks will be just as happy to ask for an AMD chip as an Intel especially when they find the AMD box is $100 cheaper.
If you dont advertise then its your own fault that you arent selling as much as the guy that does.
Exodite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Given that both Intel's and AMD's IGP solutions are currently good enough for everything up to mainstream gaming I can't really see why AMD are doing a better job?Llano is obviously not fast enough to allow more serious work and the weaker per-core performance is going to be a drawback for most mainstream users who do browsing and word processing as their main tasks.
Llano seems to be lacking a significantly improved memory and cache system to truly make it shine, at least as far as GPU performance with 400 SPs go.
veri745 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Are you serious? I can browse and do word processing on my ancient P4. Per-core performance doesn't matter for what the *vast* majority of users do on their computers. What kind of "serious work" requires something beefier than an Athlon II X4?And think a minute before you say "video encoding/transcoding", because soo few people actually do that, and those that do know what they need.
norwayishot - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Gotta agree with 'veri745', mainstream users will not notice the performance difference.A 5 year old processor is just fine for your average PC user.
jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yeah I've always felt that as soon as CPUs reached dual core to stop the eggtimer appearing with more then two windows open, that was it.The "need for more power game" ended for most folks at that point.
Customers just dont give a damn about CPUs on modern PCs. The thing that really wows them is show the the difference between a mechanical HDD and a SSD.
Now that they notice.
Seikent - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I think that an upgrade from an old pc (P4 for example) does have a noticeable impact on web browsing, text processors and so on, because these program are hungrier than before, but when you get certain amount of power, the bottleneck goes to the hard drive. So if you're browsing using a SB or a llano cpu, it wouldn't matter very much.jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Good folks at Anandtech, is there any chance one of you could get an interview with the Marketing Dept Head at AMD and ask them exactly what is their strategy for getting into the hearts and minds of the general computing public?The dont seem to be bothering thats all.
nickb64 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I would guess they don't bother a whole lot because most people don't know or give a shit what the difference between Intel and AMD is. I know my mom and my sister don't. All they really care about is whether their computer can be used for email, browsing, and maybe occasional light photo/video editing with something like Windows Movie Maker or Photoshop Elements.jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
No thats note quite my point. As you say if mum and dad dont care but they only know of Intel due to them appearing on TV adverts 5 times a night which one will they go for?The Intel, cos they've never heard of AMD. You wouldnt buy a car and many other goods from a company you never heard of.
But you only have to get slight recognition and folks will be okay with it.
If you dont try you'll never know.
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Look at all the graphs on page 4. Then try and guess how much thought was put into deciding which graph should be at the top of the page.basket687 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
You declared that the GPU performance of Llano is on par with the HD 6450, but all discrete graphics cards were tested with an i5 2500k which is vastly superior to Llano in CPU performance and that is an important consideration (especially that games can be pretty CPU limited at the low resolutions you used), so I think that you should test discrete cards with a CPU more comparable to Llano in order to reach a more accurate conclusion.norwayishot - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Good point - I would think its around a 10 fps difference if not more...Seikent - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
yep, the i5 2500k costs way more too.Taft12 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Dick-waving is far more important than grammar or missing a few words!StormyParis - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I was exaggerating a bit. 21.5", 1680 LCD are $120; 26 inchers are around $300.Hey, you just made me realize my monitors are actually more expensive than the PC connected to them (E-350, 4GB, 650GB) ! I always overspent on screen s and keyboards, and underspent on PCs... Must be a quirk, sorry to have overgeneralized.
The iPhone 4 is 960x640, which is indeed not as much, but not that far from 1024x768.
seapeople - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link
It doesn't matter how cheap xxxx resolution monitors are when the user is just going to set the LCD to 1024x768 anyway so everything "looks bigger".When your vision isn't that great, it's a choice between big and fuzzy and small and fuzzy, and I've seen many people choose the big and fuzzy option.
You think they'd just get better glasses or something...
StormyParis - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - link
Windows 7 has decent font / icon scaling. It allowed me to move my parents' ancient 21" IBM CRT from 1024x768 to something much higher, while preserving icon and text size. It looks much nicer.I had gotten that CRT specifically to be able to use a low resolution / bigger text/icon size without the ugly jaggies of a down-scaled LCD. Now, if it ever finally dies, I now I'll be able to replace it with an LCD. The thing is around 10yrs old, and just won't quit.
harshw - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Hope Ganesh gets to do his usual, thorough analysis of the integrated GPU especially w.r.t HTPC applications. I have an aging E5200 on a G45 board that I'm itching to replace. But had to hold off on Brazos, I think the E-350 and its GPU is a tad underpowered. Let's see what the 6550 is capable of ...frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Yet another disappointment from AMD. I see a place for this chip in the notebook market where power saving, space, and lack of upgradability dominate. If the price is right you could have a low to mid price laptop with decent CPU and GPU performance.However, to me the desktop part is a total disaster. The highest clocked chip cant even make 3ghz and there is not turbo mode. The only reason this chip can be a success is if they can sell it for the same price as the Athlon II X4 chips. Then you would get the same CPU performance with better graphics.
Otherwise, just buy an X4 640 and put in a discrete card.
maroon1 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Why they didn't use DDR3 1866 for intel as well ?They used DDR3 1866 only for Llano. This is cheating. HD3000 might not be limited by memory bandwith as much as Llano, but it might still get few fps boost.
How many people buy DDR3 1866 anyway ? Most people use either DDR3 1333 or 1600. Very few people buy anything above that, and those are not mainstream users.
mino - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Wonder if Sandy-E will be benched with normal non-low-latency DDR3-1333 ... with DDR3-1866 mentioned as an after-thought ...haplo602 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
I find it funny that people still cry about CPU performance of Llano when it was largely expected to be as it actualy is. Come on people, it's a K10 core on 32nm. The only saving grace was the possibility for high clock speed thanks to the die shrink. However AMD decided otherwise, so no point in arguing.Most probably there are some technical limitations to the maximum clock speed with the GPU on-die as it is. I hope they solve this for Trinity.
Anyway Llano is good enough for 95% of the general computer users. It has enough CPU power for Office/Web/Video/Internet. The fGPU is good enough for WoW and older games. I can totaly see this as a great computer for my wife (mostly internets, movies, some older games). I even thought Zacate would be enough for her. And that's as casual a computer user as it gets.
Basicaly AMD scored a big OEM hit here. If Intel does not pull any dirty tricks, the Llano APUs should get an even share with the budget SB OEM builds.
I am interested in the 2nd or third generation where the GPU will replace the FPU in the x86 cores. Look at what AMD did with BD. The FPU is shared among the CPU cores. In the future, I expect them to assign SIMD units as FPUs to integer cores on the fly. Now a 16 core/16SIMD (1280SPUs in the current GPU architecture) CPU would be awesome.
von Krupp - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
The results of AMD's efforts here lead me to conclude that Llano is the ultimate in HTPC performance right now. With this architecture's performance in a mini-ITX form factor, I would find it hard to justify spending up on a larger, costlier discrete GPU system.This seems to me to also offer a great general computing experience for desktops in the $400-$600 range.
I look forward to seeing what Zambezi can do and, following that, what the Bulldozer-based APUs will be capable of. With any luck, we will end up with another CPU arms race like we had circa 2002-2005.
magmojo - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
I may sound technically challenged here, but from what I grasped from Anand's analysis is that as far as CPU performance is concerned the Sandy Bridge would trump the LLano by far. However, I also understand that Llano isnt too bad when its comes to the performance of its internal GPU.I am looking at buying a medium range gaming desktop and am currently looking at an Intel Core i5 2500k and the MSI GTX560 Twin Frozr II as the graphics card.
My question is that if one is to buy a separate graphics card, I am guessing the performance of the GPU component of the LLano or the Sandy Bridge doesnt really matter, does it? And thus with an external graphics card Sandy Bridge is the obvious choice.
Aone - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
To get real Turbo freq, get Phenom x4 840 (i.e. w/o L3) or mobile Phenom x4, scale it down to Llano base freq and run single-threaded test , for instance, Lame.You will be surprised that real Turbo freq will be much lower than declared 2.4GHz.
medi01 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Why didn't you highlight the i5 2500? Many of those, who briefly scroll over graphics, would get wrong impression about 2500k outperforming A8...Schmich - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
When you review desktop Llano's can you cover multiple screens please? Some of us don't game but are interested in a lower power multiple screen solution for working. I.e. do boards support triple screens now that there's a 6xxx series GPU in there?Thanks
Slaughterem - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
The thing that most all of everyone here is not taking into consideration is Direct x. Anand you tested most games under direct x 9. The I3, I5, I7 with HD3000 can only run Dx9 or Dx10 but not Dx11. Llano can run all three. The point is if you purchase Intel Sandybridge and have any Dx11 games you have to buy a discreet graphics card. So an investment into lets say my kids low level gaming PC for Intel is Sandybridge, 1155 socket MB, and a graphics card that costs < $100. The AMD PC - Llano, FM1 socket MB, and a Turks based card HD6670 which costs about $90. Could you please test 2 systems like this? Maybe provide AMD dual graphics game info for games that are Dx10 and 11 since dual graphics does not support Dx9. My request is what in my opinion is a real life buying decision and your technical expertise is much appreciated to help me decide.rem82 - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
1) you ran Llano with only the basic frequency !!! When overclock Llano both cpu & igp parts you have impressive results as below2) Ran games & programs in resolution 1024 x768. This is very very bad.
In this resolution (1024χ768) big part from the results they depend from the CPU part and sandy bridge can be compared with Llano.
In resolution that all of us we play today (1920x1080, 1680x1050) the all action undertakes the IGP part.
In this resolution IGP (6650D) of Liano it would destroy all intel igp (hd 3000, hd 2000)..... but you have only ran games at 1024x768,....
3) In Llanos platform we can make HYBRID CROSSFIRE with AMD/ATI GPU, HD 6670, HD 6570 ++++
In conclusion with the same increase of pecuniary cost that in the case sandy bridge we have also exterior graphic card (5570 or 6570 ), in the case of Llano we will have much better graphic thanks to HYBRID CROSSFIRE with IGP 6550d and exterior HD6570 or HD6670!!!
For this reason Llano kills the sandy in gaming performance, in comparison with incorporated cards (IGP), but still more compared to same exterior ( discrete GPU).
rem82 - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
Llanos overclock resultsCPU: AMD APU A8-8350 @3.77GHz aircooling
MB: Gigabyte A75M-UD2H
DDR OC 2320MHz
FSB: 145 MHz ( Stock is 100MHz, oc 45%)
iGPU: 870 MHz, (stock is 600 MHz)
3D Mark 06:
Stock Settings: 7650 3D Marks
Overclocked Settings: 10,492 3D Marks
(10K Barrier broken by a single IGP is a world record)
3D Mark Vantage:
Stock Settings: 4400 3D Marks
Overclocked Settings: 6160 3D Marks (New IGP World Record)
3D Mark 11:
Stock Settings: 1148 3D Marks
Overclocked Settings: 1591 3D Marks
That why Llano is unstoppable in gaming performance! With Hybrid crossfire with small discrete HD6670 we can run everything game with very small total cost !!!
realneil - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
What if you add a faster GPU i to the mix? Such as a 6870?Does the on board graphics mixed with something more powerful make much of a difference to your numbers?
How about adding a GTX Card? (now I'm being silly)
nick80 - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
- When I run game or graphic benches in low resolution I throw the weight in CPU and no so much in GPU (IGP) !!!
Then i cannot show clearly the superiority graphic card ( 6550D) toward a other (intel 3000), if in the feeblest card I have placed stronger processor.
This has made anand and it is absurd because we speak for graphic and try to bring the resolution which is near the current levels so that it has also value what we measure!
In the review anand we see that he is used ΑΤΙ 5570 in 1155 for comparison.What wanted to show us with that?
Thoughts…
1) If anand. wanted to shows us techno -economic results in construction of system, it would be supposed in the platform of Llanos it places an exterior card graphic (ATI 6670), so that system comes in the same pecuniary cost with sandy-bidge 2500k/2600k with their incorporated intel graphic card (igp hd 3000& 2000). And ιn this case exists a surprise!!! Lianos platform makes HYBRID CROSSFIRE (ΙGP & DISCRETE GPU) and doubles the force !!!
2) If anand. wanted to shows us what becomes adding a discrete card in the two platforms of this dynamic range category (5570,5670, 6570,6670 etc.) would be supposed to add one of those card in two platforms, not only in sandybridge!!!
Ιn this case in Llano platform you achieve Hybrid crossfire and you simultaneously have 400 STREAM PROCESSORS from the IGP and 480 stream processors from the discrete card in the system, so you you can play comfortably your games !!!
That is to say, you have in your disposal more and more rapid stream processors from the core 4850 (brought from the line of 6000 amd/ati)!!!! Ιs this little for the speed of games?
Νo I do not believe that ..............
Ηybrid crossfire he is dynamic crossfire. Depending on the intensity graphic in a program it activates automatically crossfire the internal card with the exterior card graphic. With this way you have big force and small consumption in your system.
Also with hubrid crossfire you simultaneously have complete management of all material graphic for achievement of max records in a game, while in case lucid virtu, which exists case you find in the 1155 platform, you only have alternation between internal and external card!
This possibility however does not appear in this review !!!
If this therefore is review then…. lollololololoollol!!!
rnssr71 - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link
what's the A8-3850? pricing previews in late may showed the A8-3550P(unlocked multiplier) as the top Llano desktop model. http://www.techpowerup.com/146236/AMD-Bulldozer-Ll...what gives? is the one reviewed here just an engineering sample? that might explain why it didn't seem to overclock well.
markontije28 - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link
Like 2000 Mhz +? Will it add graphics performance significantly?doylecc - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Comparing Sandy Bridge and Llano is not truly relevant because they address different market segments. SB is a high-end chip; Llano is a budget chip. The only reason they are being compared today is that they are the first two CPUs with on-chip graphics. However, they could scarcely have more different intended uses. Soon-to-come Bulldozer is the proper chip to compare to SB.Llano was not designed for performance; it was designed for economy by integrating the graphics onto the CPU chip. This can be seen by the fact that it is based on the low-end Athlon II, not the higher performance Phenom II.
Llano's target market is the OEM market for "cheap PCs", not the enthusiast market or high-end market like SB. Expect to see Llano in a large part of the sub-$500 desktop PC marketplace. Once the initial surge of demand is satisfied, Llano's price will drop steeply to where it will cost half of what SB costs.
Given it's 32nm manufacturing process, AMD should be able to sell this CPU + GPU combo chip for around $100 or less. This will position it where Intel has no direct competition for it, allowing Llano to quickly achieve deep penetration in its target (budget) market.
Llano was designed to address the huge mid-range and budget segments of the PC marketplace where its CPU power is plenty sufficient and where consumers largely buy based on price.. This is the same strategy that AMD/ATI successfully employed against Nvidia in the discrete video card market: give up the high end, but take the middle and low end where the real volume and profits are made.
The fact that Llano's superior graphics performance (relative to SB/HD 3000) allows it to compete with SB in gaming is an unexpected gift to buyers. It's really not in SB's class by design, but it is able to compete in gaming because it is a better balanced chip, performance-wise. That is, SB has a very strong CPU, but a weak GPU. The performance of Llano's CPU and GPU are much more closely matched, designed to provide the performance levels necessary for the midrange and budget markets at maximum economy (lowest cost).
If you want an AMD CPU that can (hopefully) compete with Sandy Bridge, you will have to wait for Bulldozer. Llano is a cost-effective solution for the mass market (especially OEMs) for which Intel currently has no answer unless they drop the price of SB and gut their profit margins.
The question is: will Intel be forced to introduce a lower cost CPU+GPU combo chip to compete with Llano?
magmojo - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
thanks buddy.it would be interesting to see how 'Bulldozer' fares against Sandy Bridge when its out.
However, I guess pre-bulldozer if one is looking at a medium range computer with a separate graphics card Sandy Bridge is no brainer.
Lolimaster - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Chart with:HD6550 + DDR3 1333 CL7 / 1866 CL9-CL7
Overclocked 6550 + the above
Overclocked 3850 + (OC 6550) with maximum stable mem frequency (2300+Mhz)
Drool.
rachotilko - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
What a triumphant boasts were made of Bobcat & Bulldozer. The lauch of chips have been postponed several times, only to reveal that in its core the Bobcat is still the same Sledgehammer Opteron of 2003. It took AMD 3 years to shrink the Phenom II to 32 nm and pair it with GPU (that I admitt is very decent). What a disgrace !qqgoodhao - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
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