AMD Llano (desktop) reviews

[xBanzai89]

Both sockets gives you an option to upgrade, either to Zambezi or Trinity.

Really I am looking more towards the future then you guys are. If you can get a proper motherboard with Zambezi support while getting a better deal then Llano go for it. If a gamer is budget orientated the cheapest FX processor is going to cost $200 according to current estimates anyway. That maybe out of their reach for the time being until major price drops. Like I said before and you guys keep ignoring these processors are meant for your average consumer to take advantage of, which is what AMD is marketing towards. Not enthusiasts like us who are willing to spend $200 on a CPU or $250 on a GPU.

In regards to BD 2.0 being on FM, was that ever confirmed to be an APU? BD 2.0 is orientated to servers still and last I knew JF said there is no current plans to be putting a GPU on die with server processors.

[Greg83]

Well Llano is already running on socket FM1 , which is an FM socket, since it is called FM1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_FM1
The roadmap that shows it on socket FM1 also shows trinity on FMx
x prob being a designation for a new number coming after one and not conflicting with the same number as the one used for the server boards.
Since komodo , the 8-10 core that comes after bulldoser is also being shown to be socket FMx on the same roadmap. They could even share the same socket, trinity and komodo.
I also remember that post by JF, but he was sneaky with his wording. he specified a # after FM and did not say FMx on purpose. So that he can not say and not lye at the same time.

[Mats]

Really I am looking more towards the future then you guys are.

Good for you, I wish I had that skill.

If a budget buyer gets a X4 together with an AM3+ board today, he won't get a new CPU in this year, so the initial prices for BD is irrelevant. Is that so hard to figure out? If a budget buyer is prepared to pay for a $140 3850 today, you don't think that he can afford a 4C Zambezi next year when he already have the RAM and board? That's not a realistic view on AMDs future pricing, maybe you're not that good at predicting the future after all.
As an example, the 1055T have dropped from €180 to €120 in one year, and that's even before any successor have showed up: http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?phist=517723&age=365

And no, there are no confirmations of Komodo being an APU, but the server counterparts will have integrated PCIe, just like every new gen desktop CPU's (Llano, Bobcat, Sandy Bridge), except Zambezi.
Integrated PCIe will require a new socket, according to JF.

[-Boris-]

I really do not think you can get more bare bones then the semi builds I already listed. Maybe with combos you can get at most $15, but the FM1 package will be having more combos soon as it was just released.

Really what I do not think you guys see is the bigger picture. First off AM3 is really EoL at this point. Once the full line of the A series and FX series are released AM3 will be harder and harder to find. I bet by the beginning of 2012 between price cuts and specials we can write of AM3 entirely even it if it sstill around. Most of all though is OEMs. This is perfect to them as it combines good CPU power with a good GPU for once and it will be marketed as such. Regular consumers will be buying these and will have a chance of having a semi gaming PC for once. Thats the reason I was so excited for Llano as to opens a lot of doors for lower end gaming on the PC. Valve even noted interest in developing specifically for the platform, so that shows gaming companies are paying attention. This is only the first step, I think we are going to be blow away by Trinity once it is released as well. BD cores plus vga with the power around a 6790 (a bit lower of course). That is just awesome.

The bigger picture about APUs being the future and OEM doesn't matter to a consumer that just want a new computer. And if AM3 offer more performance to a lower price, theres no reason to recommend Llano if the consumer isn't having some special needs. For most people building their own computers there really isn't many reasons to go with Llano. And no AM3+ is not EOL yet. Besides, there are reasons to believe both AM3+ and FM1 are being replaced by a socket capable of both Trinity and BD 2.0 next year. So upgradeability after that is zero, except that for AM3+ there is a big performance jump you can get until then with BD if you get the money. Of course there won't be any more Athlon II or Phenom II processors, so in time they will loose their edge as Llano gets cheaper, but we are not there now so that shouldn't change the situation today.

I don't say Llano is bad, just that there is no reason to choose Llano instead of Phenom II for a build if you don't have very special needs, for the average guy AM3 is much better, especially since you can adjust the price level much more.

Power consumption on Llano is head and shoulders ahead of AM3 chips paired with competitive GPUs. It also seems to take little to no effort to erk an extra 40-50% more performance out of it. I cannot say the same for comparable discrete GPUs or Propus CPUs.

--Matt

In how many cases does power consumption matter when we are talking those levels? And great, if you can get 50% more graphics performance out of Llano you have got one step further, to bad you need some leaps to get up to the speed of the AM3 solution. And on the CPU side people report 10-15% overclocking since they have to lower dividers to get the bus up. Hardly enough to beat the Phenom II at standard frequencies, and Phenom II does close to 4GHz without to much trouble. Besides, I smell trouble overclocking Llano since it's bus clocking without control via dividers. So if you take overclocking to account it will hardly be a point that favours Llano.

[Aruffell]

Another one published today to add in to the mix - http://www.eteknix.com/motherboards/...d-review-1477/

[xBanzai89]

Good for you, I wish I had that skill.

If a budget buyer gets a X4 together with an AM3+ board today, he won't get a new CPU in this year, so the initial prices for BD is irrelevant. Is that so hard to figure out? If a budget buyer is prepared to pay for a $140 3850 today, you don't think that he can afford a 4C Zambezi next year when he already have the RAM and board? That's not a realistic view on AMDs future pricing, maybe you're not that good at predicting the future after all.
As an example, the 1055T have dropped from €180 to €120 in one year, and that's even before any successor have showed up: http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?phist=517723&age=365

And no, there are no confirmations of Komodo being an APU, but the server counterparts will have integrated PCIe, just like every new gen desktop CPU's (Llano, Bobcat, Sandy Bridge), except Zambezi.
Integrated PCIe will require a new socket, according to JF.

I am looking towards the future, because that is where these APUs will be. Deneb/Propus is going to be phased out by years end, so that is why I do not have any interest in them anymore. OEMs will be selling a lot more A series CPU then any online retailer will be selling Phenom IIs from this point on anyway. We do not make up that much of the market to make that much of a change.

I do not know why you are bringing up the Bulldozer pricing either. I already stated the pricing on the initial FX will be out of their reach thus the user will have to wait until the price drops later on in its life cycle to able to buy the processor.

Do all these people you know that buy computers and keep them for years ever switch up the CPU? None of the people I know do that. Some are lucky if they go as far as upgrading from a crappy integrated GPU to a discrete. You still have no wrapped you head around this. You are basing on your argument on someone going out and buying these from a online retailer putting the system together themselves.

Again the reason why I am interested in these APUs is what brings to the table for video gaming. If enough are sold you have a entire platform ready to be optimized for games. You can say it is akin to the console market where devs can specifically work on that hardware to get the best performance from it. Valve has already made it public it is highly interested in AMD's APU technology. With this I am sure other big wig companies are thinking the same. This maybe enough of a drive to get more PC exclusive titles and allowing for more high detailed graphics as it is easy enough to scale up from a 3850 APU to a 6970 for instance. These APUs already are far stronger then anything the PS3/360 had to offer.

[mattkosem]

In how many cases does power consumption matter when we are talking those levels? And great, if you can get 50% more graphics performance out of Llano you have got one step further, to bad you need some leaps to get up to the speed of the AM3 solution. And on the CPU side people report 10-15% overclocking since they have to lower dividers to get the bus up. Hardly enough to beat the Phenom II at standard frequencies, and Phenom II does close to 4GHz without to much trouble. Besides, I smell trouble overclocking Llano since it's bus clocking without control via dividers. So if you take overclocking to account it will hardly be a point that favours Llano.

With all due respect, what rock are you living under where power consumption doesn't matter? Power consumption always matters.

In any event, a Propus system with similar capabilities to that of a Llano will generally consume ~50% more power at idle where it spends most of its time. That is a substantial difference. If you were to take an Athlon II X4 630 system with a GPU comparable to what is provided on the A8 3850, you would never obtain 50% more gaming performance than it produces stock with conventional cooling. 25% OCs to 3.6Ghz seem common enough to me, and neither of the two Propus chips I've had will push much past 3.7 without obscene voltage on air.

A Phenom II system, the real Phenom II with proper cache & clocks and 4 or 6 cores, uses even more power than the Propus and costs even more. Not in the same class really. That coming from someone with a Propus, a Deneb, and a Thuban also running in other PCs at his house.

--Matt

[Mats]

I do not know why you are bringing up the Bulldozer pricing either.

Stop making things up, you were the one who started talking about BD prices.

If a gamer is budget orientated the cheapest FX processor is going to cost $200 according to current estimates anyway.

You said AM3 was EOL, and I had to point out that Boris example was an AM3+ board.
AM3+ isn't EOL, so when you say:

If I needed more performance I would later drop in a 6570/6670 for crossfire or maybe even trinity if it is supported by FM1.

it's just fair to look at the upgrade options for AM3+ as well, don't you agree?

If a buyer makes his decisions based on whether a certain socket will be EOL soon, I'd say he have some ideas about upgrading the CPU, even if the actual upgrade never takes place.

[xBanzai89]

Stop making things up, you were the one who started talking about BD prices.



You said AM3 was EOL, and I had to point out that Boris example was an AM3+ board.
AM3+ isn't EOL, so when you say:

it's just fair to look at the upgrade options for AM3+ as well, don't you agree?

If a buyer makes his decisions based on whether a certain socket will be EOL soon, I'd say he have some ideas about upgrading the CPU, even if the actual upgrade never takes place.

I am not making anything up. I brought up the FX line prices as to what they are being speculated in recent articles. The point I was making with the pricing structure was only at first a person on a low budget will be out of luck due to that and will have to wait. You made almost the same point as me in that relation, so I can assume we agree there.

By AM3 I was referring to the line of Phenom II processors as I never said AM3+ that was another poster as being EoL. With BD being released early September (hopefully not shocked if not) then there really is no point in buying high end AM3 processors such as Thuban. With the 1100T price its a no brainer to go for a 2500K at this point due to how much it runs circles around it. I completely understand the want to go for a lesser processor in the $100 range to get similar performance to an A8 3850 with a discrete GPU, I already said this as well. Even getting a cheaper processor and wanting to upgrade later on to it is viable too. You still have not responded to my whole OEM argument/general consumer. Which is why I am so interested in this APU.

I think we can both agree that the Llano chip is more targeted towards the mobile sector. There is far less options customizable on a laptop due to it being limited obviously as a OEM has to make it. Reviews I have seen Llano chip in the mobile area is indeed competitive in the $750 area due to its combination of CPU/GPU power in especially gaming. Seems like this will be the chip that will finally allow AMD to make a dent into Intel's hold on the mobile market, which has been a long time. Yet, using a current gen CPU did limit the potential in the desktop arena due to this otherwise I am sure we would not be having this discussion . Let us all hope AMD does some kind of marketing to make all this clear as AMD is a household known name like Intel. Once Trinity rolls around with the BD core and Cayman arch GPU this will change the playing field to allow no questions asked even on the desktop. We will likely not be seeing lower end FX chips priced below it if we go with the current price structure as well. That in itself throws out any possible CPU/GPU config that would out do it.

[Mats]

I am not making anything up.

Yes you did. You said I bought up the BD pricing, when you're the one who did it. See my last post, which you obviously didn't read.

I'm talking about Boris example, not OEM, and I didn't think you talked about OEM either since you mentioned upgrading to Trinity.
Changing CPU in OEM systems is quite unusual and in many cases impossible due to restrictive BIOS code.

[xBanzai89]

Yes you did. You said I bought up the BD pricing, when you're the one who did it. See my last post, which you obviously didn't read.

I'm talking about Boris example, not OEM, and I didn't think you talked about OEM either since you mentioned upgrading to Trinity.
Changing CPU in OEM systems is quite unusual and in many cases impossible due to restrictive BIOS code.

Yes I am the one who originally brought up the FX pricing structure. You responded with your take on that point. What you said in response with how I read it was basically what I said I believe. A budget orientated person will not get an FX at first, but wait until that CPU is within their price range.

Boris' example is an acceptable alternative to an FM1 setup as it does allow a guaranteed upgrade path. I mentioned Trinity in regards to if it does support FM1 that will allow for a upgrade path for users with a A8 3850. Again this is most likely only possible with users building their own system from scratch. You just said it yourself as OEMs limit this through BIOS codes.

My whole OEM point was the A8 3850 being targeted at your everyday user who does not build his own system, but instead goes to say HP or Dell for that. These consumers will not even be looking into all the options we are mentioning anyway as they are looking for a computer to last them for years. The A series will be the refreshed mainstream product line for AMD, so those are what will be AMD is selling and far exceeding Deneb/Propus shipments. The benefit of having the A series APU is that it is a good balance of CPU power, but a discrete level GPU as well. This will actually open them up to allowing them use their computer for gaming even if that computer is not the intended purpose.

[-Boris-]

With all due respect, what rock are you living under where power consumption doesn't matter? Power consumption always matters.

In any event, a Propus system with similar capabilities to that of a Llano will generally consume ~50% more power at idle where it spends most of its time. That is a substantial difference. If you were to take an Athlon II X4 630 system with a GPU comparable to what is provided on the A8 3850, you would never obtain 50% more gaming performance than it produces stock with conventional cooling. 25% OCs to 3.6Ghz seem common enough to me, and neither of the two Propus chips I've had will push much past 3.7 without obscene voltage on air.

A Phenom II system, the real Phenom II with proper cache & clocks and 4 or 6 cores, uses even more power than the Propus and costs even more. Not in the same class really. That coming from someone with a Propus, a Deneb, and a Thuban also running in other PCs at his house.

--Matt

Yes it matters, but how much? And why would you cripple the AM3 system with worse graphics only to point out that it isnt better? Did you read my example earlier? When building an AM3 system at a lower price than an FM1 system I was able to get a Phenom II and graphics twice as fast as Llanos graphics. It doesn't matter if you is able to overclock Llanos graphics 40% then. It's still not near the discrete graphics in my example.

So, why would the avergage buyer who wants a very cheap computer capable of games choose Llano? For most twice the gaming performance and higher performance overall is more important than powerconsumtion at those levels, and most won't overclock if it isn't easy multiple overclocking.


And xBanzai89.

What are you talking about? You talking about OEMs and upgradeability to Trinity, even if we don't know if you can upgrade it, and no one will actually upgrade a OEM machine. And how does it matter?! It doesn't matter at all in this discussion. What is the best choice for the average 16 year old that saved some money and want a cheap gaming machine? I won't recommend Llano for that. As I see it, when building computers, the cases where a Llano is better than AM3 will be very few. Llano will only win the budget battle when Phenom II and Athlon II is phased out.

[mattkosem]

Yes it matters, but how much? And why would you cripple the AM3 system with worse graphics only to point out that it isnt better? Did you read my example earlier? When building an AM3 system at a lower price than an FM1 system I was able to get a Phenom II and graphics twice as fast as Llanos graphics. It doesn't matter if you is able to overclock Llanos graphics 40% then. It's still not near the discrete graphics in my example.

So, why would the avergage buyer who wants a very cheap computer capable of games choose Llano? For most twice the gaming performance and higher performance overall is more important than powerconsumtion at those levels, and most won't overclock if it isn't easy multiple overclocking.

This isn't simply a matter of overclocking the GPU by X percent. This is a matter of measurably increasing the performance of the graphics subsystem by 50%, which is fairly major and typically unattainable in configurations with conventional mainstream PCI-E graphics cards with conventional cooling. Just because the power consumption aspect doesn't matter to you doesn't make it unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Some of us care about preserving the planet and reducing our carbon footprint.

Regarding your example. That Phenom II X4 840 is still a Propus so it's not really better than an Athlon II, which would OC comparably and be cheaper. I believe it was also mentioned that your pricing seems to be a local anomaly, and isn't consistent with my country of residence where the FM1 setup is cheaper by more than $10. I'll also play devil's advocate and say that I couldn't care less about the "ease" of OCing the platform if the numbers are still fairly easy to attain with simple air cooling.

--Matt

[xBanzai89]

And xBanzai89.

What are you talking about? You talking about OEMs and upgradeability to Trinity, even if we don't know if you can upgrade it, and no one will actually upgrade a OEM machine. And how does it matter?! It doesn't matter at all in this discussion. What is the best choice for the average 16 year old that saved some money and want a cheap gaming machine? I won't recommend Llano for that. As I see it, when building computers, the cases where a Llano is better than AM3 will be very few. Llano will only win the budget battle when Phenom II and Athlon II is phased out.

You guys do not get it do you? I said if FM1 is upgradeable to Trinity that is a viable upgrade path. With this upgradeable path I am referring to people who build their own systems. Please get this idea of your I am saying an OEM computer will be able to get upgraded to Trinity.

What neither of you understand is that you figure every single person on this planet is going to be building a system from Newegg or that Swedish site you listed with their own parts. That market is nothing compared to what Intel or AMD sell to companies such as Dell, HP, and Acer. Many of these companies have a had a high interest in Zacate and the same applies to Llano as well. AMD is going to be shipping tons of chips to these manufactures and I see no reason why by the end of the year it will be outselling their Propus/Deneb line of CPUs. Llano is the direct replacement for Propus and the lower end Phenom IIs, these will all be phased out due to the product refresh. The average consumer who does not build not build their own computer will be the ones buying these chips. Thankfully these chips are well balanced when it comes to everyday CPU usage on top of being able to do moderate gaming. This is win win for everyone.

To be perfectly honest you guys are blowing the entire performance gain going from a roughly same clocked Propus core instead of a A8 3850 way out of proportion. Most cards that are with in the price range are going to be offering nearly the same performance as the GPU in the APU anyway. Maybe you can get an advantage of 20%. You guys make it out to be your configs will be out doing the A8 3850 by two times or better. Come on.

[-Boris-]

This isn't simply a matter of overclocking the GPU by X percent. This is a matter of measurably increasing the performance of the graphics subsystem by 50%, which is fairly major and typically unattainable in configurations with conventional mainstream PCI-E graphics cards with conventional cooling. Just because the power consumption aspect doesn't matter to you doesn't make it unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Some of us care about preserving the planet and reducing our carbon footprint.

But it doesn't matter at all if you can increase the speed of your GPU over 9000% if it in reality still looses to the other alternative. My alternative has nearly twice the real world performance. And that's without expensive memory.
And no, it's lots of talk about energy effiency, but it's mostly from a cooling perspective, low power is easier to cool. Most computer users want a quick, cheap PC that don't sound to much. I've work with this and never has any customer asked anthing about power usage. So no, for the average buyer who wants a cheap gaming PC power consumtion doesn't matter much.

Regarding your example. That Phenom II X4 840 is still a Propus so it's not really better than an Athlon II, which would OC comparably and be cheaper. I believe it was also mentioned that your pricing seems to be a local anomaly, and isn't consistent with my country of residence where the FM1 setup is cheaper by more than $10. I'll also play devil's advocate and say that I couldn't care less about the "ease" of OCing the platform if the numbers are still fairly easy to attain with simple air cooling.

--Matt

People have confirmed that this isn't just a local anomally. And yes, Phenom II 840 is propus, but a unlocked Deneb at 3.2GHz was 6$ more than the Llano alternative.

You guys do not get it do you? I said if FM1 is upgradeable to Trinity that is a viable upgrade path. With this upgradeable path I am referring to people who build their own systems. Please get this idea of your I am saying an OEM computer will be able to get upgraded to Trinity.

What neither of you understand is that you figure every single person on this planet is going to be building a system from Newegg or that Swedish site you listed with their own parts. That market is nothing compared to what Intel or AMD sell to companies such as Dell, HP, and Acer. Many of these companies have a had a high interest in Zacate and the same applies to Llano as well. AMD is going to be shipping tons of chips to these manufactures and I see no reason why by the end of the year it will be outselling their Propus/Deneb line of CPUs. Llano is the direct replacement for Propus and the lower end Phenom IIs, these will all be phased out due to the product refresh. The average consumer who does not build not build their own computer will be the ones buying these chips. Thankfully these chips are well balanced when it comes to everyday CPU usage on top of being able to do moderate gaming. This is win win for everyone.

To be perfectly honest you guys are blowing the entire performance gain going from a roughly same clocked Propus core instead of a A8 3850 way out of proportion. Most cards that are with in the price range are going to be offering nearly the same performance as the GPU in the APU anyway. Maybe you can get an advantage of 20%. You guys make it out to be your configs will be out doing the A8 3850 by two times or better. Come on.

What YOU don't understand is that we are not talking about Llano as a business model or a good idea for OEMs. We are talking about Llano being a good option for the average joe who wants a very cheap gaming system. He don't care whats best for AMD, OEMs or what future chips will look like. He just wants his cheap gaming PC. No more, no less.

My alternative was cheaper and offered twice the gaming performance. And it's more versatile and can be adjusted to a variety of price points.


AGAIN. There is no reason to buy Llano for a cheap gaming system if you don't have very special needs as long as AM3+ offers more performance for less money. And that OEMs like Llano is NOT a reason for me to buy one.

[-Boris-]

Ok. This is from newegg. AM3 system has twice the performance in games and is cheaper. But, to be fair you can cut 25$ from the FM1 option if you get an Asrock board. And you can save around 15$ on the AM3 to get a cheaper board there as well. Then FM1 have a lead of 9$, but then again. The AM3 option has twice the game performance and you have plenty of room to save money and still outperform the Llano option in games.


GIGABYTE GA-MA78LMT-S2 AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813128455
$59.99

XFX HD-667X-ZHF3 Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
Item #: N82E16814150542
$83.99

AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX635WFK42GM - OEM
Item #: N82E16819103881
$89.99

Subtotal: $233.97



GIGABYTE GA-A75M-S2V FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813128516

$94.99

AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU AD3850WNGXBOX
Item #: N82E16819103942
$139.99

Subtotal: $234.98

[Stevethegreat]

Almost two weeks in and no word about Llano A8-3800 and ITX motherboards...
Too bad and that was a special setup for tiny HTPCs, sadly I'd have to go with Intel knowing that -most probably- those two parts are going for Q4 release...

[xBanzai89]

What YOU don't understand is that we are not talking about Llano as a business model or a good idea for OEMs. We are talking about Llano being a good option for the average joe who wants a very cheap gaming system. He don't care whats best for AMD, OEMs or what future chips will look like. He just wants his cheap gaming PC. No more, no less.

My alternative was cheaper and offered twice the gaming performance. And it's more versatile and can be adjusted to a variety of price points.


AGAIN. There is no reason to buy Llano for a cheap gaming system if you don't have very special needs as long as AM3+ offers more performance for less money. And that OEMs like Llano is NOT a reason for me to buy one.

Average Joe is your average consumer going to OEMs for a computer. He does not build computers for himself, which is where all of your points are coming from. That is the problem right there. I am arguing the benefits of this APU to your average consumers who will be going to OEMs. Not your low budget friendly guy who can build systems for himself who you are advocating for.

I will withdraw my point that I made in regards to the performance. I read a few A8 3850 reviews, but none of them included anything higher then a 5570 in the review if at all for comparison purposes. Just dug through 10 review sites before coming across one showing even a 6670. Boggles my mind as to why they would not show at least that to make the point clear. Just make people confused, like it did to me.

With your last point I already said a numerous times if a user can build a system that allows for the same or greater performance then an A8 3850 around the same money, then that user should buy that instead.

Anyway I am done with this specific discussion in this thread. We just keep going back and forth on our own points. I don't want a vacation from XS due to cluttering the thread as I see far to often.

[Manicdan]

when someone goes to a store to buy a PC, the llano box will be the size of a college textbook, and the old phenom/athlon system will be a midtower PC, the price will be similar, the power consumption will be vastly different, and the user will believe that they both act near identical (if somehow the phenom/athlon system EVEN comes with a discrete card)

llano is pure win for average joe, the power consumption difference will help them save money, and the performance difference between the two IGPs will let them actually game on the machine. its damn near perfect for a living room pc

[N19h7m4r3]

when someone goes to a store to buy a PC, the llano box will be the size of a college textbook, and the old phenom/athlon system will be a midtower PC, the price will be similar, the power consumption will be vastly different, and the user will believe that they both act near identical (if somehow the phenom/athlon system EVEN comes with a discrete card)

llano is pure win for average joe, the power consumption difference will help them save money, and the performance difference between the two IGPs will let them actually game on the machine. its damn near perfect for a living room pc

I have to agree here. Every person I know that buys an OEM system buys the smallest one they can simply because they dislike large computers of old.

I myself will never again build a normal ATX system, it's M-ITX for me.

[-Boris-]

Average Joe is your average consumer going to OEMs for a computer. He does not build computers for himself, which is where all of your points are coming from. That is the problem right there. I am arguing the benefits of this APU to your average consumers who will be going to OEMs. Not your low budget friendly guy who can build systems for himself who you are advocating for.

What average joe does and whats best for him is different things. The discussion was, what is the best budget gaming rig. Llano can't compete. It doesn't matter if OEMs like Llano more and average joe will buy them despite it isn't fitting his needs as good. Llano is, still, not as good value if you want a cheap gaming PC. That is my point. And if Llano will sell more due to the fact that OEMs like them and no longer can make systems unbalanced with underpowered graphics doesn't matter.

The question is not what will sell more, or what OEMs prefer, or what average joe buys. It's about what is the best choice for a gaming rig, AM3 wins over FM1 in all pricepoints, even at FM1s narrow price range.

when someone goes to a store to buy a PC, the llano box will be the size of a college textbook, and the old phenom/athlon system will be a midtower PC, the price will be similar, the power consumption will be vastly different, and the user will believe that they both act near identical (if somehow the phenom/athlon system EVEN comes with a discrete card)

llano is pure win for average joe, the power consumption difference will help them save money, and the performance difference between the two IGPs will let them actually game on the machine. its damn near perfect for a living room pc

Come back when we see a college book sized PC based on Llano with such a low price. They will either be much more expensive than regular tower PCs or based on much slower Llanos. And that's not what the question was about.

[Manicdan]

Come back when we see a college book sized PC based on Llano with such a low price. They will either be much more expensive than regular tower PCs or based on much slower Llanos. And that's not what the question was about.

lower speed llanos are still going to be just fine. a weaker llano IGP >>> any AM3/AM3+ IGP
price will also be lower due to using a cheaper cpu making those boxes just as good. people will just read the GB of ram and HDD and think they are all the same, lol

and what question did you think i was answering? i was just posting my thoughts on what average joe will think when at bestbuy

[-Boris-]

lower speed llanos are still going to be just fine. a weaker llano IGP >>> any AM3/AM3+ IGP
price will also be lower due to using a cheaper cpu making those boxes just as good. people will just read the GB of ram and HDD and think they are all the same, lol

But such small systems is always expensive since you can't use any parts, they are more customized and there are higher demands on components.

Check the price on Fujitsu Esprimo Q. They aren't that special inside but it's enough to raise the price a bit. And I would consider them larger than a book.

and what question did you think i was answering? i was just posting my thoughts on what average joe will think when at bestbuy

I thought it was a comment to the ongoing discussion. Got carried away a bit I guess. Sorry.

[mattkosem]

Almost two weeks in and no word about Llano A8-3800 and ITX motherboards...
Too bad and that was a special setup for tiny HTPCs, sadly I'd have to go with Intel knowing that -most probably- those two parts are going for Q4 release...

Look around. I'm pretty sure I've seen pics at least two different FM1 mITX mobos posted. They should be along shortly.

--Matt

[Mats]

The 3800 will show up later.

No word about ITX huh?

http://motherboardnews.com/2011/06/0...get-previewed/

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...o-FM1-mini-ITX