AMD Llano "A8 3500M" (Fusion) review's

[ajaidev]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-apu,2959.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4444/a...n-apu-a8-3500m

Yep a great chip has lot and lots of potential, i need a laptop before Aug and i have my sight on the A8. If its not available will have to get some i5 with a 5650/6630...

[zerazax]

The battery life was the clincher. Good GPU performance and enough CPU for a < 15" notebook will be perfect for a personal use / travel pad

[flippin_waffles]

Game changer. 400 GFLOPS gives developers an enormous amount of performance to develop for and take advantage of. Since apps developed now will only get faster on next generation hardware, this gives developers good incentive to program for the next era of computing, heterogenous computing.

[mockingbird]

My impressions:

To start, I am very upset with the barrage of marketing from AMD this time around. "BULLDOZER COMING SOON!" being posted on shill hardware sites everyday is annoying, especially given AMD's recent track record for mediocre products.

Now, with regards to their latest mobile chip and integrated graphics:
"We don't want you to call it IGP anymore, call it fGPU", shut up AMD, I'll call it what I want. Having said that, it is faster than the latest Intel integrated stuff which is good, but they're going to fail the same way they failed with the previous architecture (Puma in laptops). They won't be able to market this to the general public because laptops with nVidia GT540m will start springing up at a slightly higher cost but with much better performance.

The new IGP falls somewhere between a mobile Radeon 5570 (If there is such a thing) and a GT540m (Well, that's exaggerating a bit). With nVidia, you get much better drivers, better compatibility with Linux, and a proven product. People are going to be hard-pressed to invest in AMD given their recent track record for not fixing their graphics drivers...

Let's also consider the subsystem... The northbridge. AMD has stated that SB9xx is the same as SB8xx - that is to say - it still has that comparatively awful SATA performance and nonexistant SDD support. Again, why would anyone invest in this when the new Intel southbridge is vastly superior!?

What can I say about AMD today? Since their aquisition of ATI, they produce mediocre videocards, and their engineers cannot even design decent subsystems to play catchup with Intel.

In conclusion, I would much rather prefer a Sandy Bridge/Nvidia Optimus combination over this drek.

[Chaserjzx100]

^ hmmm it's okay go ahead buy a sandybridge laptop ^_^

[aintz]

pretty good. but id much rather have sandybridge and nvidias optimus for that price.

amd drivers are just beyond trash

[blindbox]

^ hmmm it's okay go ahead buy a sandybridge laptop ^_^

^^ Win. Thanks for the summary lmao. (oh man the smilies went for vacation)..

Anyway, I'm still not done with reading anandtech's review yet, but they said it's ~$700 for A8 series lappy. That's pretty darn cheap if you convert it into my currency. I haven't really kept up to date with notebooks today, but where can you find a sandybridge+nvidia optimus for that price?

[naokaji]

From the Anand review:

In general the chip is somewhat faster than the Athlon II X4 635

Next please.

[Sgt.McRuff]

Me want! Me want! Give me 11in version with big battery!
Now the wait for them to show up on websites

[DarthShader]

From the Anand review:

That was not a review, it was a preview and it was garbage too.

[kl0012]

Looking at Anand's Llano desktop review I would say that the price which AMD is going to ask for top of the line Llano is too high ($170). You may get a way better gaming performance from Athlon x4 630 + HD 5570 ($140). At least until AMD will figure out all the issues with hybrid-CF.
But I think OEMs will love Llano.
Mobile Llano notebook looks very good in battery life tests (still we need to see production models). But I failed to see the point of having HD 6620G in the top of the line models. It seems like OEMs are going to put external GPUs with the top Llano models, so interated IGP with 400sp is useless in this case (again, at least until AMD will figure out all the issues with hybrid-CF) . On the other hand AMD is going to cripple IGP performance on the middle/lower end model. Any way, the IGP perf is worse then expected (I remember predictions that this one is going to be on HD 5670 level of perf and 3-4x faster then HD3000). CPU perf of quad-core Llano is also nothing to be excited about - it seems like it going to be ~30% slower then my dual-core i5-2410M on average. But the battery life is good.

[kl0012]

^^ Win. Thanks for the summary lmao. (oh man the smilies went for vacation)..

Anyway, I'm still not done with reading anandtech's review yet, but they said it's ~$700 for A8 series lappy. That's pretty darn cheap if you convert it into my currency. I haven't really kept up to date with notebooks today, but where can you find a sandybridge+nvidia optimus for that price?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-110-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-245-_-Product

[AAbenson]

My impressions:

To start, I am very upset with the barrage of marketing from AMD this time around. "BULLDOZER COMING SOON!" being posted on shill hardware sites everyday is annoying, especially given AMD's recent track record for mediocre products.

Now, with regards to their latest mobile chip and integrated graphics:
"We don't want you to call it IGP anymore, call it fGPU", shut up AMD, I'll call it what I want. Having said that, it is faster than the latest Intel integrated stuff which is good, but they're going to fail the same way they failed with the previous architecture (Puma in laptops). They won't be able to market this to the general public because laptops with nVidia GT540m will start springing up at a slightly higher cost but with much better performance.

The new IGP falls somewhere between a mobile Radeon 5570 (If there is such a thing) and a GT540m (Well, that's exaggerating a bit). With nVidia, you get much better drivers, better compatibility with Linux, and a proven product. People are going to be hard-pressed to invest in AMD given their recent track record for not fixing their graphics drivers...

Let's also consider the subsystem... The northbridge. AMD has stated that SB9xx is the same as SB8xx - that is to say - it still has that comparatively awful SATA performance and nonexistant SDD support. Again, why would anyone invest in this when the new Intel southbridge is vastly superior!?

What can I say about AMD today? Since their aquisition of ATI, they produce mediocre videocards, and their engineers cannot even design decent subsystems to play catchup with Intel.

In conclusion, I would much rather prefer a Sandy Bridge/Nvidia Optimus combination over this drek.

are you paid to post like this?
this post looks exactly like the paid posters on the HardOCP forums

[Manicdan]

But I failed to see the point of having HD 6620G in the top of the line models. It seems like OEMs are going to put external GPUs with the top Llano models, so interated IGP with 400sp is useless in this case (again, at least until AMD will figure out all the issues with hybrid-CF) .

top end llano is not top end from amd, they will still have BD+discrete gpu laptops which are the ones going for 1000$ when they come out

[zerazax]

The win is for mobile.

And I'd stay far far away from Optimus. So many issues

[Olivon]

But I think OEMs will love Llano.

Yeah right kl0012 ^^

And that's Llano main purpose, AMD will gain marketshare, for sure, and it's a good newz ^^

[Hornet331]

The most important thing is there for the mobile platform -> runtime. Now lets see what the oems come up with and at what price point.

[LightSpeed]

My impressions:

To start, I am very upset with the barrage of marketing from AMD this time around. "BULLDOZER COMING SOON!" being posted on shill hardware sites everyday is annoying, especially given AMD's recent track record for mediocre products.

Now, with regards to their latest mobile chip and integrated graphics:
"We don't want you to call it IGP anymore, call it fGPU", shut up AMD, I'll call it what I want. Having said that, it is faster than the latest Intel integrated stuff which is good, but they're going to fail the same way they failed with the previous architecture (Puma in laptops). They won't be able to market this to the general public because laptops with nVidia GT540m will start springing up at a slightly higher cost but with much better performance.

The new IGP falls somewhere between a mobile Radeon 5570 (If there is such a thing) and a GT540m (Well, that's exaggerating a bit). With nVidia, you get much better drivers, better compatibility with Linux, and a proven product. People are going to be hard-pressed to invest in AMD given their recent track record for not fixing their graphics drivers...

Let's also consider the subsystem... The northbridge. AMD has stated that SB9xx is the same as SB8xx - that is to say - it still has that comparatively awful SATA performance and nonexistant SDD support. Again, why would anyone invest in this when the new Intel southbridge is vastly superior!?

What can I say about AMD today? Since their aquisition of ATI, they produce mediocre videocards, and their engineers cannot even design decent subsystems to play catchup with Intel.

In conclusion, I would much rather prefer a Sandy Bridge/Nvidia Optimus combination over this drek.

This post is so full of misinformation and FUD, its sad. Anyway, mobile Llano looks great, absolutely tremendous increase in battery life over previous mobile chips (from AMD) and graphics performance looks very strong indeed, only ~20% slower than Llano + 6630m discrete. Thats impressive considering the bandwidth limitations of the APU.

Good work AMD. I kinda regret getting my Lenovo E420s with the i5 2410M now, gaming performance is poor compared to what im seeing with Llano

[dave_graham]

top end llano is not top end from amd, they will still have BD+discrete gpu laptops which are the ones going for 1000$ when they come out

don't forget about Scorpius.

dave

[BeepBeep2]

Let's also consider the subsystem... The northbridge. AMD has stated that SB9xx is the same as SB8xx - that is to say - it still has that comparatively awful SATA performance and nonexistant SDD support. Again, why would anyone invest in this when the new Intel southbridge is vastly superior!?

What can I say about AMD today? Since their aquisition of ATI, they produce mediocre videocards, and their engineers cannot even design decent subsystems to play catchup with Intel.

In conclusion, I would much rather prefer a Sandy Bridge/Nvidia Optimus combination over this drek.

First of all, AMD's SATA performance is not as bad as you say, just because it doesn't come up with false burst rates like ICH10R doesn't mean its the end of the world. Secondly, mediocre video cards? What are you smoking, every GPU since 4800 has been very competitive to NVDIA, and when NVIDIA flopped first time around with Fermi, AMD had not only the performance crown, but the perf/price/power ratio crown. The HD69X0s are still competitive with GTX5X0.

...Sandy Bridge/Nvidia Optimus is $300 more, so have fun with your SB laptop.

[[XC] hipno650]

hmmm it looks like overall a really mixed bag. here is my impression thus far.

The Good:
-AMD finally has competitive battery life
-IGPU performance is almost twice the fastest Intel which is always welcome to see
-Hybrid Crossfire looks like it could do some cool things

The bad:
-CPU performance is nothing short of terrible for a quad core part
-Hybrid crossfire is almost completely broken at the moment and in most games causes more harm than good.
-For the RUMORED (yet to be determined) price it's not the best value considering the lackluster CPU performance

While the IGPU gaming performance is a step in the right direction they have littlerally changed nothing on the CPU side. AMD was already trailing Intel by a good amount laptop CPU performance. now they have released a whole new CPU that does absolutely nothing to make up that gap. if they boosted the CPU performance by about 15% i might have a whole different opinion about the system as a whole but in some cases it is even slower than past gen mobile AMD cpu's

I could see it being a good platform for a cheap student or something that wanted to play really basic games and had no more than $600 to spend but other than that there is virtually no reason to go for it over the similarly priced Intel chips in every other usage situation. for basic usage you will want a faster CPU over a faster GPU and for any more intensive tasks you will want a faster CPU AND a faster GPU that only a dedicated card can provide.

like I pointed out somethings are nice to see but overall I hoped for more from the mobile parts

[EniGmA1987]

My impressions:

*snipped Intel rant*

Someone is a pretty hardcore Intel fanboy...
If you arent going to comment on the product and just say how much better Intel and Nvidia are then please just dont post.

[Manicdan]

i wonder if the turbo is not working very well.

based on CB11.5, 4 core score was 1.88 points, single core was .64, which is nearly 1/3 exact
if scaling was perfect, which it almost is with CB11.5, then 1 core of 1.88 is .47 points
.68 is 36% faster than .47, so if .47 is 1.5ghz, then .68 would be 2.04ghz, assuming inaccuracy and scaling efficiency, turbo seemed to be no more than 2.1ghz

i honestly did expect MUCH more from that, there is no way a single core of 2.1ghz is pushing the chip to its TDP, so the only assumption i can make it that its being toned down for battery life or something. it would be nice to see a power consumption comparison between SB and Llano is single thread efficiency.

[qcmadness]

hmmm it looks like overall a really mixed bag. here is my impression thus far.

The Good:
-AMD finally has competitive battery life
-IGPU performance is almost twice the fastest Intel which is always welcome to see
-Hybrid Crossfire looks like it could do some cool things

The bad:
-CPU performance is nothing short of terrible for a quad core part
-Hybrid crossfire is almost completely broken at the moment and in most games causes more harm than good.
-For the RUMORED (yet to be determined) price it's not the best value considering the lackluster CPU performance

While the IGPU gaming performance is a step in the right direction they have littlerally changed nothing on the CPU side. AMD was already trailing Intel by a good amount laptop CPU performance. now they have released a whole new CPU that does absolutely nothing to make up that gap. if they boosted the CPU performance by about 15% i might have a whole different opinion about the system as a whole but in some cases it is even slower than past gen mobile AMD cpu's

I could see it being a good platform for a cheap student or something that wanted to play really basic games and had no more than $600 to spend but other than that there is virtually no reason to go for it over the similarly priced Intel chips in every other usage situation. for basic usage you will want a faster CPU over a faster GPU and for any more intensive tasks you will want a faster CPU AND a faster GPU that only a dedicated card can provide.

like I pointed out somethings are nice to see but overall I hoped for more from the mobile parts

The initiative for Fusion / integration of GPU into CPU is cost.
Reducing cost is always welcome by the consumers.

From AMD's charts, the A8 series is targeted to i3 setups.

[LightSpeed]

hmmm it looks like overall a really mixed bag. here is my impression thus far.

The Good:
-AMD finally has competitive battery life
-IGPU performance is almost twice the fastest Intel which is always welcome to see
-Hybrid Crossfire looks like it could do some cool things

The bad:
-CPU performance is nothing short of terrible for a quad core part
-Hybrid crossfire is almost completely broken at the moment and in most games causes more harm than good.
-For the RUMORED (yet to be determined) price it's not the best value considering the lackluster CPU performance

While the IGPU gaming performance is a step in the right direction they have littlerally changed nothing on the CPU side. AMD was already trailing Intel by a good amount laptop CPU performance. now they have released a whole new CPU that does absolutely nothing to make up that gap. if they boosted the CPU performance by about 15% i might have a whole different opinion about the system as a whole but in some cases it is even slower than past gen mobile AMD cpu's

I could see it being a good platform for a cheap student or something that wanted to play really basic games and had no more than $600 to spend but other than that there is virtually no reason to go for it over the similarly priced Intel chips in every other usage situation. for basic usage you will want a faster CPU over a faster GPU and for any more intensive tasks you will want a faster CPU AND a faster GPU that only a dedicated card can provide.

like I pointed out somethings are nice to see but overall I hoped for more from the mobile parts

An average IPC improvement of 5% compared to previous AMD CPU's (excluding turbo, but that doesnt seem to be very aggressive tbh)

So yeah, I kinda agree with you about the CPU performance, but the thing is, Trinity is the next APU with BD cores + next gen graphics. So they already have another architecture waiting in the wings to be 'fused'. Hence, it makes absolutely no sense to spend time and $$ to try and get a 15% IPC improvement for this architecture when theres another one which will give them exactly that for 'free' in the next gen