Quote Originally Posted by Helmore View Post
Oh that's true, but I don't think that Llano will be of much importance to us, not on the desktop at least. It would be useful as a nice HTPC though, but for us it's mainly interesting for laptops.
Nope.

If mainstream uses a K10 based Fusion (Llano), you are going to be missing Bulldozer in that market segment/socket. The market segmentation that AMD will do is basically what Intel did with Bloomfield at high end (LGA 1366) and Lynnfield for mainstream (LGA 1156), with the exception that AMD had a real reason for having a new Socket. AMD way to do this is to launch a new Desktop Socket for low end and mainstream for Fusion and leaving existing Socket AM3 (Well, a compatible revision for it) to Bulldozer.
From a performance standpoint, Lynnfield and Bloomfield didn't had any major differences (If at all), and the available products in each Socket were similar. This was until Intel released Clarkdale aiming at low end in LGA 1156, then Gulftown aiming at ultra high end in LGA 1366, that things become much more differenciated. However, in AMD, that differenciation bewthem Fusion K10 and Bulldozer could be even higher and you know about it beforehand.

Basically, current Socket AM3 users will have a happy upgrade patch to Bulldozer when it is launched, but people that starts their build from a Llano (That possibily arrives earlier than Bulldozer) would be unable to upgrade to it without changing the platform for an earlier one. Until AMD decides to do a Fusion based Bulldozer, but so far we don't know.