First full reviews of desktop Llano

D

defaultluser

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Tech Report :cool:

Thanks for the link. Reading now...

I kind of expected it from the leaks, but the clock speeds are pretty low. Nothing's free I guess. The GPU + CPU power together have to be reasonable. As the 32nm process improves clock speeds should go up... probably?

edit: lol, I knew Intel would be pushing the HD Graphics 3000 instead of the 1/2 speed HD Graphics 2000. I don't even know why HDG2K was put into mainstream processors. The die size difference is just 131mm^2 vs 149mm^2 and that 18mm^2 makes a big difference. The TR review has an "i3 2105" model included with the better IGP. In timedemos, HDG3K is still half the speed of HD 6550D. That's a little better than 1/3rd-1/4th the speed.

"We were expecting to see AMD's Turbo Core dynamic clock speed technology deployed across the Llano lineup, but it hasn't worked out that way. Only the 65W parts feature Turbo Core, while the 100W versions stick with the tried-and-true formula of aggressive base clock speeds."

Seems like a fair trade-off.
 
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Well, at least the price is reasonable if you need a cheap system with "good enough for a light game session" graphics. But there's always the threat of people going with a cheap Phenom quad core plus 4200-series IGP for less (or putting the difference toward discrete graphics), so I'm not surprised that AMD is planning on having those phased-out by next year :D

I'm really surprised at those outrageous power consumption levels. It looks like AMD is once-again working VERY hard to cherry-pick their mobile parts (in order to be power-competitive to Intel). I guess the quad cores will be doomed to unbelievably high TDPs just like the desktop 45nm Phenoms, except now they have a low idle power.

I was expecting high TDPs compared to the mobile parts, but I was also expecting significantly less power consumed than current 45nm quads.
 
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Oh yeah, the prices. The early leaks which had the A8-3850 for $170 was less interesting than the official $135 price. That's priced nearly perfectly for the components it could replace.

Most power consumption and power efficiency tests @ TR are good (task energy) to great (idle power consumption). Load power consumption with just the CPU was kind of less impressive. It's not a power hog, but the CPU portion uses more power than the i7 2600K CPU portion under load.

I'm waiting for AT's review because I want to see the GPGPU benchmarks on the desktop Llano this time.
 
defaultluser said:
I'm really surprised at those outrageous power consumption levels. It looks like AMD is once-again working VERY hard to cherry-pick their mobile parts (in order to be power-competitive to Intel). I guess the quad cores will be doomed to unbelievably high TDPs just like the desktop 45nm Phenoms, except now they have a low idle power.

I was expecting high TDPs compared to the mobile parts, but I was also expecting significantly less power consumed than current 45nm quads.
Click to expand...

Yeah im a bit disappointed with the TDPs. At first i believed they would really do some good optimizing of the K10 (also AMD graphics chips are great with perf/watt), but that hope is dead now. Will consider a desktop upgrade only after Trinity.
 
I find power consumption to be better than expected: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-a8-3800_15.html#sect0

Llano CPU + GPU use about the same power as just the Athlon II (no GPU) at idle. HD3000 also uses more than 2 times more power than Llano's GPU when gaming. At idle it's more power efficient than core i3-2100 and core i3 is a far smaller chip in terms of a transistor count.

It only uses slightly more power when all 4 cores are @100% but that's compared to a dual core i3 CPU.
 
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Another Llano article, but no benchmarks. AMD Fusion Architecture and Llano Might be interesting for more technical details than you get from the reviews.

Anand's review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review

Nothing surprising. HD 6550D is 50%-100% faster than HD Graphics 3000, with a couple of exceptions mostly favoring the HD 6550D with even higher performance (Civ 5 has closer to 3x the framerate). The GPU compute performance test wasn't surprising either. It's OK compared to a last gen lower mid-range discrete AMD video card (~15% slower than HD 5570) or less so to a comparable low end end Nvidia card (~30% slower than GT 430). (That demonstrates why VLIW5/4 is on the way out for GPGPU.) HD 6550D GPU video encoding is over 2.5x slower than QuickSync on the i3 2105. By the time desktop quad core Llano is out, it will be competing with the i3 2125 and i3 2130, 3.3GHz and 3.4GHz speed bumps, at the same price.

sirmo said:
So I don't know what you guys are smoking. It only uses slightly more power when all 4 cores are @100% but that's compared to a dual core i3 CPU.
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Reality. :p Under load, the A8-3850 CPU portion uses as much power as i7 2600K CPU cores in Cinebench. The A8-3850 uses 40% more power under load than the i3-2100. System level power consumption under load: http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-a8-3850/cine-power-peak.gif

Even ignoring that the i7 2600K is doing more work (close to 2x more per unit time) in an instantaneous power reading, it's a little odd. That's a 100W Llano A8-3850 vs a 95W 2600K. The IGP in the i7 uses little power and there's no way the HD 6550D IGP uses less power. The Llano A8-3850 doesn't have turbo, so I'd love to see CPU + GPU power consumption simultaneously vs an i7 2600K. It doesn't appear that the 100W rating is really a max. Idle power is impressively low, but load power doesn't seem to be.
 
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Not really- this furthers AMD's ability to compete in the low-end.

They didn't need too much help there, though, considering the pricing of Intel's low-end chips; all this does is reinstate their dominance in an area they already traditionally hold. It speaks nothing for how AMD will do in the high-end at all. AMD isn't "back"; they've put out a good showing in the market which their products were already the best solution for.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
AMD is back!
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I actually agree with that for Llano's place in the lower end segment. That's not an insult really. That's a very high volume segment of sales.

Whatever AMD decided pre-launch was a huge difference from just a few weeks ago in pricing and positioning of Llano vs SB. This and the similar desktop slides were goofy. A8 will only compete against i3 (lower speed i3 models anyways). I'm hopeful for AMD's trek back to reality now.

Llano's GPU performance makes it more appealing than Intel's IGP in some cases (not everyone cares about the performance, particularly corporate users and non-games... i.e. the vast majority of IGP system purchasers), and idle/low load power consumption on the desktop is a nice improvement. But the biggest win IMO is the low mobile power consumption. That addresses AMD's biggest weakness, and the initial prices of dual core Llano laptops are very reasonable at launch. Llano based laptops should do better than its K10 predecessors.

It's not all sunshine though. There is one Llano CPU die: 2 or 4 core, (160 SP E part?), 240SP, 320SP or 400SP configs all share the same 228mm^2 die. Ghetto SB-based Pentium G parts, which will be priced against most 2c Llano models, use a 131mm^2 die (HDG3K equipped i3 is 149mm^2). SB Pentium G is a $70-$80 product at Q1000 prices.

And it looks like that's the only die until Half-dozer and Quarter-dozer 4c/2c next gen Fusion parts come out next year. Margins won't be great in this generation.
 
Reports are that the current 2C 240SP Llano's are from the same 228mm^2 die but that as production heats up and if demand for those increase they will etch out a new die for those like they did for the different Athlon II chips. But I am not sure how big the savings will be. I mean sure you will get a bunch from cutting down the SP's, but the cores themselves are ridiculously small.
 
Topweasel said:
Reports are that the current 2C 240SP Llano's are from the same 228mm^2 die but that as production heats up and if demand for those increase they will etch out a new die for those like they did for the different Athlon II chips.
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I think AMD can execute a 2c chip, but Llano has a short planned lifespan. It would be surprising for AMD to introduce a 2c die then discontinue it months later. It's not just "reports", the 228mm^2 die is the only one ever shown.

Athlon II launched with 2c first and followed with a 4c version shortly after. Both were essentially in production at the same time near launch. Different circumstances than now.
 
I wouldlike to see one of these pitted against a pentium g with a discrete gpu of either ati or nvidia. Pentium g is insanely nice for the price and is very close to the i3.
 
I know they said their focus was dx11 but would like to see them fix the negative fps when combined with a discreet card for dx9 games. Of course people buying this are most likely doing so because they don't want to buy a discreet card so the market it might be too low to make it worth it but still would be nice. Wonder if that's a driver fix or something else.
 
pxc said:
I think AMD can execute a 2c chip, but Llano has a short planned lifespan. It would be surprising for AMD to introduce a 2c die then discontinue it months later. It's not just "reports", the 228mm^2 die is the only one ever shown.

Athlon II launched with 2c first and followed with a 4c version shortly after. Both were essentially in production at the same time near launch. Different circumstances than now.
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Actually most places that talk about it always used the line "for launch the 2c versions will be disabled 2c units". Lets not forget that AMD now has the flexibility to a degree that ATI had/has. They can specially with experience with the 4c Llano, come to GF with an etching and say "instead of 20k wafers a week of the 4c, give us 5k of these and 15k of those".

I also wouldn't be entirely sure if Llano is going to die instantly with Trinity. By the time that trinity hits, they can probably port out Llano production to TSMC. AMD typically had to kill off a production of an older chip because they needed the production numbers for new shiny stuff. But Llano isn't about being new and shiny in raw anything, so there shouldn't be a hurry if they can have someone other then their direct CPU partner, handle production to keep it going as a very low cost alternative to using the much bigger BD modules (CPU wise they are almost twice as big as stars). Specially the 2c units, they can be that intersect that blurs the line between a netbook and notebook.
 
Topweasel said:
Actually most places that talk about it always used the line "for launch the 2c versions will be disabled 2c units". Lets not forget that AMD now has the flexibility to a degree that ATI had/has. They can specially with experience with the 4c Llano, come to GF with an etching and say "instead of 20k wafers a week of the 4c, give us 5k of these and 15k of those".

I also wouldn't be entirely sure if Llano is going to die instantly with Trinity. By the time that trinity hits, they can probably port out Llano production to TSMC.
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Does TSMC even have a GF compatible 32nm SOI High-K/MG process? Especially the disaster gate first method? And I think you missed the point that lacking a native 2c processor at launch, while never showing or even mentioning one, implies that it doesn't exist.

AMD has precedent for this short core life model: Barcelona. There was no 2 core design and it was killed off ASAP when Shanghai arrived. And keeping Llano alive has no point either. The K10-based core is not getting any more competitive. Four brand spanking new Llano cores can only compete with two cut down Sandy Bridge cores released back in February (at Llano's desktop launch, even faster i3 models are appearing at ~$130 price points: the 3.3GHz i3 2125 and 3.4GHz i3 2130). Next year it gets even less competitive against IB.

While lower end chip lives may have been extended before to cover the budget segment, Bobcat and its successors cover that now.
 
The crossfire between the 6570 and the built-in Llano GPU is interesting, but this really just feels like a proof of concept in the desktop sector to me.

How would the A8-38xx stack up against a Q6600 with a G80/G92 GPU? We're talking comparing it to a 4-5year old setup that you could probably get for not much more in FS/FT.
 
ok. so the A8 has the cpu power of a $99 athlon ii x4.
The Q6600 is on par with the athlon x4 630.
so the 4 year old intel still stacks up in computing.

I see that they're pricing this at $130. Appropriate, considering the $99 cpu performance.
gpu performance seems to be like a 9500gt.
all of this in a 100w package.

so when can we see reviews on the lower end apu's?......
I find it funny that amd is scurred to roll them out
 
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Most of the reviews i read of the APU it does really well vs the i3-2105. Legion hardware compared it to the i5, which it compared to...

This Processor is perfect for the average users. It will dominate its market (sub 500$ pc's) for its lifetime.

Its pretty impressive its able to run 1080p in some games! All from a IGP, cough APU.

It doesn't matter if its only faster than the i3 in muti-threaded benchmarks. Its at the same price point as the i3 and it offers superior muti-tasking and gaming.

I will pick up my mother and father a complete A8-3850 setup and upgrade them. They are still running on x2 5000's and ddr2 800 ram. My father added a AMD 5450 discrete gpu for better graphics performance. So he will be pleased that he will gain more graphics performance and overall much faster system.
 
pricing the a8 against an i3 is smart.

I wish the mobile products were priced the same way. Imagine having an A8 mobile for just $450, the price of an i3m these days.
 
If I have one problem with Llano, it's that it's targeted at the wrong use case. The graphics are perfect for the price point, but the slow quad-core is exactly the opposite of what most cheap gamers need.

A lot of games with simpler graphics don't scale beyond 1 or 2 CPU cores (Starcraft 2 and WoW come to mind). So that means that some popular simple games like Starcraft 2 are embarrassingly CPU-limited even using the integrated graphics on Llano. And for games that it can deliver playable framerates, you still often have to turn-off higher-quality physics, models and geometry to make it playable on Llano.

Meanwhile, the Core i3 has enough brunt to run games with much higher non-graphics settings, and the fast dual-core means it works well in any game you can find. If you want a cheap gaming system without compromise, it might be worth the (roughly) $50 extra to go with Intel + discrete.
 
Pentium g will probably beat these in cpu tests too and they are cheaper... cheaper than the a8 and i3.
 
Choosing games that can run on toasters isn't a good example. Most people will be hard pressed to actually find a game that is so CPU dependant that a stars cpu running at 2.5 GHz wouldn't be enough. When you add that it is feeding a 6530 at best it is way more than enough.
 
Topweasel said:
Choosing games that can run on toasters isn't a good example. Most people will be hard pressed to actually find a game that is so CPU dependant that a stars cpu running at 2.5 GHz wouldn't be enough. When you add that it is feeding a 6530 at best it is way more than enough.
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Exactly, source-based games and UE3 games aren't a good example.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-a8-3800_19.html#sect1

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21208/17

Starcraft 2 is pretty popular. Remember that it's also using 20-30W more power than the i3-2100 here as well.

The Llano Crossfire'd with the 6670 loses to it just running the 6670 by itself and the i3 2100+6670.

Looking through other benchmarks, it's definitely possible to become CPU limited even at higher resolutions with a Stars core at this clockspeed, such as the F1 on techreport here. The graphics card is only a GTX460 here.

The CPU cores in Llano are inefficient and dated. If you want to play modern games, the i3 2100 and a budget GPU is the way to go. If you're an AMD lover, you'd be better off buying an X3, overclocking and/or unlocking it, and buying a GPU.

Llano is great for the usage ebduncan is suggesting it for (parents PCs) but I would not expect it to get much use around here.
 
Yeah, now that I see the results I'm really surprised they didn't start with Llano as a triple-core design.

They could have topped-out the series at about 3.5/3.6 GHz (we know Phenom can hit this in shipping products). This would have yielded %25 faster single-threaded performance and slightly slower multi-threaded performance, all in similar TDPs.

Three cores really is the sweet-spot.
 
I agree with MrMike and a few others. The platform is only good for the low-end OEM space. Its on par with i3 and a cheap dedicated card. I just wish the cpu performance was better.
 
ebduncan said:
It doesn't matter if its only faster than the i3 in muti-threaded benchmarks. Its at the same price point as the i3 and it offers superior muti-tasking and gaming.

I will pick up my mother and father a complete A8-3850 setup and upgrade them. They are still running on x2 5000's and ddr2 800 ram. My father added a AMD 5450 discrete gpu for better graphics performance. So he will be pleased that he will gain more graphics performance and overall much faster system.
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This is exactly what I was planning to do. I have been waiting around since the the Sandy Bridge launch to see these APUs, convinced that I would be able to build solid computers for family members without the need for a discrete GPU that would be significantly better than SB lower end offerings in both performance and power consumption. I wanted to build 3 or 4 truly SFF, mini-ITX based desktops/net-tops but all of the sudden I am not sold at all.

They are testing the top-end 100W AMD APU versus the i3 2105 at 65W and I just don't see the advantage at all. Maybe I am bogged down looking at all of these numbers and not seeing it but what actually is the advantage other than the obvious IGPU for gaming (which no one I will be building for cares about)? How is the 65W AMD APU variant going to be a "better multi-tasker" than the i3 2105? The i3 is already faster at most things than the A8-3850 isn't it? Won't it destroy the slower clocked 65W A8-3800? I mean, I am sitting here trying to figure out why I would ever go with the 3800. Someone convince me please. I have already wasted so much time waiting around for these APUs. What real world advantage do the A8's supply to people who want a SFF home office PC to surf the web, Skype with their relatives, run Word and Excel and do the occasional minor photo-editing?

I don't see it. The Intel 3000 graphics can handle all of that just fine right? And, it appears, with a much snappier proc.
 
Price.

Cheap mobo $60, Intel Core i3-2105 (with HD3000) + cheap video card 5570 ($60) will cost you $260, vs Llano $170-200?

Llano will also use less power at idle or when playing games.
 
Llano A8-8500 today will cost you about $235 (cheapest mobo online is $100, quoted price for the chip is $135). That price may fall, but it's not low enough yet for the platform to be interesting to anyone building an entry-level system.

Also, you don't need the Core i3 2105 if you're going to run with discrete: 2100 will bring the intel system down to $245.

$235 versus $245? I think the choice is easy for now. When AMD gets $60 motherboards, then you might want to go Llano.
 
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defaultluser said:
Llano A8-8500 today will cost you about $230 (cheapest mobo online is $100, quoted price for the chip is 135). That price may fall, but it's not low enough yet for the platform to be interesting to anyone building an entry-level system.

So today you get a chip that's much peppier and a better-performing video card for $30 more.

And you don't need the Core i3 2105 if you're going to run with discrete: 2100 will do nicely and cost a little less.
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Fair enough on the price, although I expect the Llano motherboard prices to drop once Asrock, Foxconn or Biostar enter the fray.

But i3 is not that much peppier than Llano. In multithreaded benchmarks Llano generally leads by the same amount it looses in single threaded benchmarks. Having two extra cores should make it generally more responsive under load.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21208/9

It's also important to note that techreport used 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM and as tests have shown Llano really benefits from higher clocked RAM. I've seen benches with around a 10-15% boost when paired with a DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975-6.html
 
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sirmo said:
Fair enough on the price, although I expect the Llano motherboard prices to drop once Asrock, Foxconn or Biostar enter the fray.
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The $99 board is Biostar. What we are really waiting on is A55 boards, which should be as cheap as H61. Unfortunately if the H61 was any indication, it could be a month or two before we see them in retail.

But i3 is not that much peppier than Llano. In multithreaded benchmarks
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Not it's not, but typically the only multithreaded load your average PC user will need is video conversion, and QuickSync has you covered (many times faster than Llano's GPU too). If a person needs more CPU power than the i3 provides, then they're not a typical gamer, and will buy a beefier CPU.

As you can see from the benchmarks, very few games take advantage of the extra cores, so why do you need them?

Having two extra cores should make it generally more responsive under load.
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But Core i3 has extra threads. They will make the system feel just as responsive as having four cores (they just don't perform as fast as four real cores).

It's also important to note that techreport used 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
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No, they didn't. They used DDR3 1600. Check the test config page.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21208/3

I've seen benches with around a 10-15% boost when paired with a DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM.
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Yeah, Anandtech already did a nice graph if you bothered to read their review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/4

The only problem with 1866 is it costs twice as much as 1600/1333 (So the Techreport decision to use 1600 was a good one for the absolute lowest-cost system). If you're going to spend that much of a premium, you might as well spend it on a Core i3 system with a faster graphics card. Core i3 doesn't need anything faster than DDR 1333.
 
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defaultluser said:
The $99 board is Biostar. What we are really waiting on is A55 boards, which should be as cheap as H61. Unfortunately if the H61 was any indication, it could be a month or two before we see them in retail.
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I meant more when all the manufacturers are represented as in once there is more competition, those boards literally just came out days ago.

defaultluser said:
Not it's not, but typically the only multithreaded load your average PC user will need is video conversion, and QuickSync has you covered (many times faster than Llano's GPU too). If a person needs more CPU power than the i3 provides, then they're not a typical gamer, and will buy a beefier CPU.
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Quicksync is a gimmick, it only works with Main profile h.264 at limited resolution settings with two programs. It's a benchmark feature you only get to benefit from when benchmarking.

defaultluser said:
As you can see from the benchmarks, very few games take advantage of the extra cores, so why do you need them?
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Multitasking... and there are games which benefit from more cores.

defaultluser said:
But Core i3 has extra threads. They will make the system just as responsive as having four cores (they just don't perform as fast as four real cores).
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It's a generally accepted notion that more cores make for a smoother experience. Hyper threading can hurt performance in some cases due to context switching and are not a substitute for responsiveness more cores provide.

defaultluser said:
No, they didn't. They used DDR3 1600. Check the test config page.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21208/3
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No they didn't, they used 1333 for all the CPU tests and both 1333 & 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM in GPU tests.. Still not 1866 Mhz.

defaultluser said:
Yeah, Anandtech already did a nice graph if you bothered to read their review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/4
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Exactly.

defaultluser said:
The only problem with 1866 is it costs twice as much as 1600/1333. If you're going to spend that much of a premium, you might as well spend it on a Core i3 system with a faster graphics card. Core i3 doesn't need anything faster than DDR 1333.
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Llano costs the same as Core i3 2100. Core i3 requires an additional $60+ in a discrete GPU to be able to provide playable gaming experience in most popular games. Llano can provide that even with 1333 RAM.
 
man. this apu distraction/stopgap is not amusing.

i need more power than a core i3.

Gimme core i5k power + discrete class........... then we'll talk.

This A8 is made for casual users only.
 
I'm seeing alot of contradiction going around. For a user on a tight budget would the i3-2100 or the Llano be good for a mid end gaming system, assuming one is using a discrete video card. Or would going with the Phenom x4 still be the best bet? The lack of overclocking on the low end intel chips always bugs me a bit as well, as well as the premium on good intel motherboards.
 
If low end graphics performance is sufficient for your gaming needs, Llano is a good option over the i3 2100/2105. The IGP in the A8-3850 overall performs a bit worse than the GT 240 in games, with a couple of exceptions.

If the HD 6550D IGP in Llano A8 models is not fast enough, a discrete card is necessary and choices are wide open. If you want AMD, an Athlon II X4 3.1GHz or faster (645 is $100 at TigerDirect and $105 at Newegg) or Phenom II X4 (840 is $98 at Fry's and $105 at Newegg) will give similar CPU performance to Llano at cheaper prices than the Llano A8-3850 ($135 list price). Why pay for an IGP that you won't use? You lose CPU idle power benefits with other options though.
 
Astronomica said:
I'm seeing alot of contradiction going around. For a user on a tight budget would the i3-2100 or the Llano be good for a mid end gaming system, assuming one is using a discrete video card. Or would going with the Phenom x4 still be the best bet? The lack of overclocking on the low end intel chips always bugs me a bit as well, as well as the premium on good intel motherboards.
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Phenom II X4 or I3 probably would be the best bet. Very limited window of performance benefit going with a discrete card Llano and seeing it beat the other two and those are only in apps where asynchronous xfire work. Even then it can only be with a handful of cards.

AxFire might be a reasonable option on laptops. But on desktops really you should be looking more to how take advantage of its iGPU instead of adding another. Maybe consider it an upgrade option in the future, but if you want to put a discrete card into the box at purchase the Llano is a bad choice.
 
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