Reviews - AMD Llano A8-3500M APU review: redefining mainstream computing

[HEXUS]

Heralding a significant change in design, AMD's Llano APU attacks the mainstream laptop market.

Read more.

[cptwhite_uk]

Well I'd be tempted for my next laptop that's for sure.

[Jedibeeftrix]

while A4, coming later, is based on a smaller die and throws in a dual-core CPU and HD 54xx-series graphics.

does this confirm that the duals and quads are entirely separate dies?

there were some shots that seemed to indicate they were the same size, which would indicate the dual to be nothing more than a partially disabled quad, but this could just have been the heat-spreader...........

if it is a separate die, then i like the look of the 35W dual-core.

who will put this APU in an 11.6" chassis?

[Tarinder]

does this confirm that the duals and quads are entirely separate dies?

there were some shots that seemed to indicate they were the same size, which would indicate the dual to be nothing more than a partially disabled quad, but this could just have been the heat-spreader...........

if it is a separate die, then i like the look of the 35W dual-core.

who will put this APU in an 11.6" chassis?

We were told that the bulk of dual-core APUs will be based on separate dies, explaining why they're coming later, though there's nothing stopping AMD hamstringing present quad-core parts and launching them as dual-core variants, should the need arise.

[Jedibeeftrix]

cheers, i think anand got a similar answer too:

"The little Llano is a 758 million transistor dual-core version with only 240 GPU cores. Cache sizes are unchanged; little Llano is just a smaller version for lower price points. Initially both quad- and dual-core parts will be serviced by... the same 1.45B transistor die. Defective chips will have unused cores fused off and will be sold as dual-core parts. In the coming months AMD will eventually introduce a dedicated little Llano die to avoid wasting fully functional big Llano parts on the dual-core market."

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

For the desktop review of Llano is it possible to see how DDR3 speed affects performance??

[keithwalton]

Why wasn't it put up against sandy bridge laptops ? As surely that is it's main competition and not the older first gen parts

[Zhaoman]

I would also like to see Llano benched against price equivalent Sandy Bridge processors, particularly how it fares on the graphics front compared to Intel 3000 graphics found on Sandy Bridge.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would also like to see Llano benched against price equivalent Sandy Bridge processors, particularly how it fares on the graphics front compared to Intel 3000 graphics found on Sandy Bridge.

For the desktop review it will be HD2000 as only the K series processors ATM have HD3000 IGPs.

[kingpotnoodle]

I would also like to see Llano benched against price equivalent Sandy Bridge processors, particularly how it fares on the graphics front compared to Intel 3000 graphics found on Sandy Bridge.

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

In summary: CPU performance is pants in comparison to Sandy, GPU performance mostly better and is good enough for light gaming at 1366x768 (or 1280x800) but still doesn't match a decent discrete unit. Crossfire is immature and sucks. Battery life is now on a par with recent Intel chippery, finally.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

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

In summary: CPU performance is pants in comparison to Sandy, GPU performance mostly better and is good enough for light gaming at 1366x768 (or 1280x800) but still doesn't match a decent discrete unit. Crossfire is immature and sucks. Battery life is now on a par with recent Intel chippery, finally.

The Core i7 laptops with the GTX460M are £1200+ and the A8 based laptops will be well under a £1000. The Dell Core i7 laptop with a GT540M is around £800 to £1000.

An A6-3410MX based laptop with an additional HD6750M discrete card seems to be around £500 to £550 including 19% VAT in Germany. I would suspect the A8 laptops to be under £700.





















It seems Llano has decent power consumption.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some more IGP benchmarks:

http://www.tomshardware.de/a8-3500m-...240809-14.html

[Blackmage]

Is the A8 AMD's top of the line of laptop cpus?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is the A8 AMD's top of the line of laptop cpus?

Yep! AFAIK,the mobile A8 is more of a Core i3 and lower end Core i5 competitor. The desktop A8 is more of a Core i3 competitor.

[Blackmage]

Yep! AFAIK,the mobile A8 is more of a Core i3 and lower end Core i5 competitor. The desktop A8 is more of a Core i3 competitor.

Don't you think AMD need a mobile version based on the Bulldozer design; did they forget about the i7?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Don't you think AMD need a mobile version based on the Bulldozer design; did they forget about the i7?

Llano is a volume part and I suspect even Intel makes more money out of their Core i3 and Core i5 mobile processors. You forget AMD is a smaller company than Intel with less R and D budget and much less production capacity. In fact one of the reasons they delayed Bulldozer is since they needed to be able to fulfill the orders for Llano. The current version of Bulldozer is targetted towards servers and higher end desktops.

Trinity is being released in 2012 with second generation Bulldozer cores and probably a VLIW4 based IGP.