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The AMD Llano Notebook Review: Competing in the Mobile Marketby Jarred Walton & Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/14/2011 12:01 AM EST
177 Comments
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CyanLite - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkLooks very interesting. Getting one ASAP. Looks like AMD is back. Reply
therealnickdanger - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkYeah, back behind Intel yet again. If the price is right (cheaper than Intel) and the form factor is right (super thin and light notebooks), then I would consider this over SNB. Right now you can get entry-level SNB with medium-quality discrete AMD or NVIDIA graphics for under $700 that will more than match this notebook on GPU performance, battery life, and then proceed to run circles around it in CPU performance. $650 isn't a very good starting point. I hope they work down into that $500-600 bracket soon. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI dont get all the talk of $600-$800. There is fundamentally no reason why we wont see these chips in $449 back to school specials, or black friday specials. It is only $50 more in parts vs what we're seeing on slickdeals for $400.
For example, this is from today: Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 15.6" Notebook Laptop: Core i3-2310M (2.10GHz), 4GB DDR3, 320GB 7200RPM, DVD Super Multi, Intel HD Graphics, HDMI, Win 7 Pro $434 Shipped
That is a $200 ripoff chip from intel. In a $450 notebook deal. Reply
mino - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkGo troll somewhere else.
Intel managed to book a bunch of Quad+Discrete while preventing any dual+HD chips in this review providing a fine level of reality distortion field.
But that field does not reality change. Period. Reply
Samus - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkWell considering it will be cheaper than Intel (significantly when considering the additional cost of a comparable $50+ graphics card) and it uses less power than just about any SNB configuration, I think you answered your own questions. Reply
8steve8 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkeh, while this offers modest improvements over sandy bridge in games, the general cpu performance is pretty poor. If gaming is that important to you, then you won't be happy with EITHER IGP, so you'll still be better off with sandy bridge (paired with another gpu).
That said, if they were free, I'd buy one. So they could still be a winner in the market if the price is right. Reply
ash9 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkoperative word is mobile - Who number crunches on a laptop anyway? Reply
8steve8 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkwell mobile computers are becoming primary machines for many people. It's not just about "crunching numbers" everything non-3d-gaming is limited by storage,cpu, or memory bandwidth. try using a netbook, they aren't a pain to use because of their graphics, storage or memory bandwidth, they suck cause of their cpu performance. Reply
duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkthat is why you probably have an Atom :) perhaps try an E-350 and see how much usable it is in a daily task. Reply
Broheim - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkE-350 isn't an improvement over Atom in the CPU department,. Reply
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI disagree emphatically. Having used Atom-based and E-350-based netbooks (and let's not kid ourselves, the E-350 is a netbook chip), the E-350 machines just feel snappier. I'd never buy an Atom-based computer, but I love the E-350. Reply
ppeterka - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAbsolutely agree with Dustin... Recently bought an E-350 to replace my wife's painfully struggling Atom n455 netbook. The user experience went through the roof. My wife is happier than ever (and that's a very good thing, and a very good benchmark! :))) )
She is a "not-professional-but-quite-demanding" user. (20-30 browser tabs, Office, and video streaming at once, Twitter with multiple accounts, and so on). She used to have a C2D T6600 + GeForce 310 (or 210 , don't exactly remember) Toshiba notebook too, but since we acquired the Brazos one, she didn't turn the old one on. Have to sell it now...
I know, Brazos is weak if compared to anything other than Atom. But magically it manages to absolutely fill its role. Hats off to AMD on that one! Reply
Broheim - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI wouldn't describe your wife as a "quite demanding" user.
Browser tabs don't take up CPU cycles once loaded (unless the page uses AJAX, and even then a simple http request isn't a daunting task even for a 20 year old processor) and only uses a little bit of memory.
I'd call MS Office pretty basic computer usage .
today video decoding is almost always hardware accelerated, so most of the work is offloaded onto the GPU (where E-350 has the upper hand).
but I digress.
just look at the benchmarks, there isn't much of a difference between the E-350 and a D525 (or similar) in CPU intensive tasks...
any percieved "snappiness" on your part is down to other aspects of the system (such as HDD for instance). Reply
Iketh - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkare you forgetting single-threaded results? Reply
Broheim - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link1 synthetic benchmark... big whoop.
they are equal in everything else Reply
duploxxx - Friday, June 17, 2011 - linkperhaps actually read some reviews, they all agree on one thing, the system feels much smoother for daily tasks. I am sure you don't have both or used both so have no idea what you are talking about. just launching OS or any application is enough to notice the difference. I owned a n570 so i do know. Reply
Broheim - Monday, June 27, 2011 - linkthat is subjective opinion and the only subjective opinion that matters to me is my own. You fail to realize that the perceived user experience is a product of the system as a whole and not just a single component.... Reply
sinigami - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linki've only gotten to run two single threaded benchmarks on the E-350, and out of those two, the bench that showed the biggest improvement over the Atom was CPUMark99, by 6% percent, over an N455 in an MSI netbook.
Granted, i didn't get to run all four of my single-threaded benchmarks on the E350 against the N455, but i will, and soon. Reply
maroon1 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAtom N455 is single core.
There are new and better Atoms like N550 Reply
sinigami - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkand, BTW, the N455 even plays 720p MKV. Who would expect any more than that out of a $250 netbook?
But at the price of the E-350, i do expect more. And by more, i mean more than just ION level graphics that might let you send out 1080p to an external display. I want some significant CPU horsepower. Reply
phantom505 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI went with a K325 in a Toshiba with a Radeon IGP. Nobody I have lent it out to has every complained about it being slow or incapable of doing what they wanted/needed to. I get about 5 hours of battery life consistently. I don't do too much that is CPU intensive but I hear people moan and groan about the E-350 and Atom both when they try to open 50MB+ ppt files. I have no such problems.
I for one an quite happy to see that AMD is still leading this segment since most users will be quite happy with AMD. I'm finding it more and more that Intel may own the top end, but nobody I know cares in the slightest. Reply
mino - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkE-350 is generally faster than K325 + IGP. Then than that, I fully agree. Reply
ash9 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkIn this price range, I think not, besides Open(X) applications will reveal the potential - its up to the application developers now Reply
GaMEChld - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkMy netbook is a pain to use precisely because of its graphics. It cannot properly play youtube or movie files fluently. Aside from its multi-media problems, I don't try to do ridiculous things on a netbook, so the other components are not much of a factor for me. But if I can't even watch videos properly, then it's trash.
Luckily, I got that netbook for free, so I'm not that sad about it. I'll probably sell it on eBay and get a Brazos netbook at some point. Reply
hvakrg - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkYes, they're becoming primary machines, but what exactly do you need the CPU part for in a primary machine today? Let's face it most people use their computer to browse the web, listen to music and watch videos, all of which are either relying on the GPU today or is clearly moving in that direction.
Intel will have an advantage in the hardcore CPU market probably forever due to them being years ahead of the competition in manufacturing processes, but what advantage does that give them when it comes to selling computers to the end user? Things like battery life and GPU performance is what will be weighted in the future. Reply
Broheim - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkpersonally I need it to compile thousands of lines of code sometimes several times a day, if I were to settle for a E-350 I'd die of old age long before I get my masters in computer science.... some of us actually gives our 2600k @ 4.5ghz a run for it's money.
th G in GPU doesn't stand for General... the GPU can only do a few highly specialized tasks, it's never going to replace and will always rely on the CPU. Unless you're a gamer you benifit much more from a fast CPU than a fast GPU, and even as a gamer you still need a good CPU.
don't believe me? take a E-350 and do all the things you listed, then strap a HD6990 onto it and try and see if you can tell the difference...
trust me, you can't. Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkCompiling code is a minority application, although I did that at a pinch on a 1.2GHz Pentium M, so the E-350 would do as well. Certainly won't use it for my main development machine, I agree.
Still, as hvakrg said, most users do web browsing, listen to music, watch video. The E-350 would work well enough for that. Reply
sinigami - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link>most users do web
>browsing, listen to music,
>watch video. The E-350
>would work well enough
>for that.
The Atom also works well enough for that, for less money.
You might be pleasantly surprised to find that current Atom netbooks can play 720p MKVs. For netbook level video, that's "well enough".
As you said, for anything tougher than that, i wouldn't use it for my "main machine" either. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkWhy would you spend $2000 for an intel powered laptop when you can build a desktop to do computations for a quarter of the price at 20x the speed, and get a laptop for $400 to run code on the desktop remotely and use it for lighter tasks? I'm surprised that you are a masters student in computer science, because your lack of logic doesn't reflect it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but why would you compute on the go when you can let the code on a desktop or cluster while the laptop is safely powered down in your backpack?
Also, I can run Super Mario Galaxy using dolphin (CPU intensive) emulator at full frame rate on my AMD Phenom II X2 BE, and the cores in the A8 are improved versions of Phenom II X4. You really need to get your facts straight, since the CPU is actually VERY good. Go look at the benchmarks and do your research Reply
Broheim - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkhe clearly said primary machine, so before you go around insulting me I'd suggest you learn how to read.
the 2600K is a desktop CPU you douchebucket, I never said my main machine was a laptop, quite to the contrary.
what you can and can't do is of no interrest to me, but first off, I never mentioned the A8 I said E-350, again with the failure to read.
K10 is not even a match for Nehalem, and so far behind Sandy bridge it's ridiculous.
I've seen the benchmarks, I've done my research and concluded that the A8 CPU is far from "VERY" good, have you done yours? Reply
duploxxx - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - linktalking about crap??? men you are good at that, as if you need a 2600K for some compiling and add a 6990 to an e-350.
men you do know someting about computers :) your a joke Reply
BushLin - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - linkIf you're going to accuse someone of talking crap (correctly or otherwise) it helps if you know the difference between you're and your when attempting to insult them. Reply
Broheim - Monday, June 27, 2011 - linkI use a fast CPU for compiling because I actually like being productive rather than just staring at the screen.
my point about the 6990 was that a faster GPU != a better user experience for the vast majority of users, but logic seems to be lost on you. Reply
Regenweald - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI'm currently playing the Witcher extended with a 2Ghz X2 ,a 4670 and 800 Mhz memory on a desktop with no complaints. In game settings medium and high. Are you saying that 2 more tweaked 32nm cores, 80 more shaders and ddr3 1600 or 1800 memory will not offer a good mobile gaming experience ? please. Reply
jollyjugg - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkWhat kind of super computing application are you going to do in your laptop that you would need that "tremendous CPU power" that you are talking about. As somebody who has used both intel and amd machines for years I can tell you that for most user applications, you will hardly notice any difference in performance. The main complaint was that AMD machines were running hot particularly after intel cameup with power gating in nehalem in 2008. With this part you get a machine that runs way way cooler and almost 150- 200 bucks cheaper than comparable intel machines plus you get discrete quality graphics for free. Nobody can change cynics like you. Because you cant expect Intel to sell anything cheap you would want to AMD to sell things cheaper. Well if you want good things in life you should be prepared to pay. Dont write trash. Like gaming is not important for average user, tremendous computing power and 3 GHz CPU speed is also not important for the average PC user. But multimedia and movie rendering etc is. So go Llano!!! Reply
Seikent - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThis platform offer some good things, but if the prices aren't low it won't go well. Now it's quite easy to find a sandy bridge notebook with discrete gpu for a few more dollars.
If ACF does achieve to work like CF in the future, it would be great! Reply
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkFinally we have an intergrated graphics solution that's worth really talking about. Reply
aegisofrime - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkJudging by the performance, this part won't be priced very high. And that's a worry, considering that it packs 1.45 billion transistors. In comparison, Sandy Bridge is 995 million transistors, and sells for more money. Profit margins are gonna be tight on this one. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAMD has a slide that points out that compared to their previous generation, they're packing a 66 mm2 Northbridge, 200 mm2 CPU, and 1080 mm2 dGPU into a 228 mm2 package. They've made money this past quarter, so this should do better than Athlon/Phenom II. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkNote: that's supposed to be 108 mm2 GPU, not 1080. Whoops. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkJust looking at transistor count misses most of the story. The highly repetitive layout in the GPU allows for much denser transistor layout, the die is only 5% larger. That's close enough that factors like yield and raw per wafer cost become at least as important. Reply
Lunyone - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkLooks like we're finally getting close to having integrated graphics good enough for some good light gaming :) Hopefully these won't be priced to high to sell. There are sooo many Sandy Bridge based laptops out there that are within the $500-600 price range it isn't even funny. I hope we can get the top of the line Llano for about $600-650. I think the C50 or E-350 have been relegated down to tablet only now, since Llano is where it's at now. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkBrazos will likely keep its place at the lower price point and smaller size laptops. It would be interesting to see if the larger E-350 laptops will be replaced by Llano or will survive. I was surprised they were even introduced, but it's possible that if people are buying them they will continue to do so.
Still, I'm hoping that Llano can make it into small form factor laptops. Reply
Beenthere - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI am definitely ready to buy a Llano powered laptop. I suspect Llano will suit the needs of the largest notebook segment and deliver better graphics at a lower price point. AMD is bound to take notebook market share from Intel. I wouldn't ever consider an Intel product. Reply
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWhat? The largest notebook segment doesn't care about GPUs in a laptop. Look at Apple - a non-gaming platform more or less - and quarter after quarter has the highest growth in the notebook market share. The fact that Intel HD graphics command #1 market share in the mobile and desktop space also shows that the the majority of consumers don't care about mobile graphics beyond watching HD content.
So with Llano you get a GPU that's still only fast enough for 1368x768 resolution gaming at the lowest settings and CPU performance that's only as fast as a Q6700 from 2007. Llano only makes sense if you are on a budget to buy a laptop. If you care about CPU performance, it's too slow. If you care about GPU performance, it's again too slow. So the only customer it will find is a niche one until they can create an APU with Bulldozer cores inside and a much faster GPU.
We have also seen a significant surge in consumers that desire premium made notebooks. Llano designs will likely be relegated to cheap looking and cheap quality laptops. Certainly it wont be able to compete with Ultrabooks.
I am almost certain that most of today's consumers will care about screen resolution, an SSD, the quality of the screen/materials build quality of the laptop before even thinking about the fact that Llano's GPU is faster than Intel's. Then there is AMD's past history of having unimpressive mobile CPUs over the last 5+ years. It's going to take 2-3 generations before consumers even think about switching brands in such a scenario. Most people will just buy an Intel based SB notebook simply because Intel has made the best mobile processor for the last "forever".
This is a good step for AMD, but they have a long road ahead. Reply
duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe share count is no longer relevant since an IGP is deployed anyhow with each system, while there are many delivered with discrete it still counts as an IGP also.
Have a look at your so called apple highest growth market... it ships with discrete ATI graphics.....
Actually most don't know that the IGP is crappy, they are fooled by adiot sales and large electronic vendors who try to push there margins.
THis is the introduction generation that will shed some light, just look at the brazos also, it has been a success and even atom refresh wil not be able to take this back. Reply
nickb64 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkarguably the most popular Apple laptop, the 13" Pro, now ships with Intel Integrated graphics, not discrete ATI/AMD graphics
Overall, you're right, but I just wanted to point out that Intel is probably getting a pretty solid boost out of 13" MBP sales this year. Reply
jjj - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linklol that's quite something to give Apple as an example for what the average user needs.Macs are niche products and will remain so without fundamental strategy changes.
ps:how outraged would you be if tomorrow the new Air shows up with a Llano in it?
pps:today's average consumer makes a few hundreds $ per month and is not looking for high resolution (not that he knows wtf resolution is anyway) or SSD. Reply
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkIntel wouldn't ship Air with Llano, not until they can deliver Bulldozer cores. Why would they ship a laptop with 50% slower CPU speed and go backwards? Not to mention, they'd lose Thunderbolt if they ditched SB. Reply
mino - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThunderbolt is PCIe. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkI'm honestly sick of the fact I can't play TF2 on high settings on my laptop AND I cannot find an affordable computer to do so while I'm not paying attention during class. Several people I know feel the same way. Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe GPU performance hits dues to the shares bus is very low. Getting NV 540 /ati 5650 performance is far better than most expected.
Battery life is simply amazing. Far better than expected.
The OEM is standing at a very long line for this. Reply
GeorgeH - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThat battery life is incredibly impressive. That AMD will finally have a competitive mobile offering is huge news; their engineers definitely deserve a pat on the back. Let's just hope that OEMs don't mess things up by cutting costs and shipping Llano laptops with tiny batteries.
Unfortunately AMD will almost certainly struggle to get the message across that their CPU performance deficit is pretty much irrelevant for the vast majority of mobile usage models. It'll be especially difficult to get across to the huge number of consumers that think a 2GB 6570 is better than a 768MB GTX 460, but I wish AMD's marketing department the best of luck. Reply
Dribble - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThey'll struggle because cpu performance deficit does matter, cpu performance matters more then gpu performance for most of us. While llano might be *enough* today everyone buys a notebook and expects it too last several years.
If llano currently only has the performance of a notebook several years old (core 2 intel) then you can bet in 3 years it'll be dog slow.
Really its only a winner for a pretty small margin of people. If you don't really care about gaming you go intel because cpu's are faster, if you really care about gaming you go intel + discrete. That leaves those who really care about gaming but are on an extremely tight budget. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI think that you underestimate the effect of price. If you really care about gaming you go desktop, anyway. If you want a reasonable size laptop with good battery life and capable of some gaming, Llano will fit the bill, and if it sells considerably lower than the competition, then I'm sure a lot of people will buy it. It won't be anyones main gaming rig, but it will surely serve many as a secondary one.
I agree that Llano is disappointing at the CPU level, but it really should be enough for most people. How well it sells will depend on pricing. There are big E-350 laptops being sold, which boggles the mind, and there wouldn't be if all people really cared or had any clue about performance. Reply
ppeterka - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI strongly disagree with you. My first notebook was exceptionally crappy in terms of raw CPU power. Desktop P4 Celeron 2.6GHz was used to power it. Yet I could use it for more than 4 years, after which I changed the CPU to a 2.8GHz P4, only to discover that the "user experience" was left unchanged except of the rare cases when I used the computer to work on it. Compile times were not left unchanged...
But even with the Celeron in, the casual usage was just fine. Why? Because of the quite nice VIA IGP in it. I could actually play GTA San Andreas on the poor thing - even though there were times it was not very much fun, but it did work. Swapping the CPU didn't make it much better, only considering work duties.
Today "everything" is about multimedia. By "everything" I mean 80% of what the people are doing. Youtube, Facebook, who-knows-what, all. None of my friends ever regretted heeding to my advice to choose a notebook with a reasonable graphics solution even when there would be an altenative type with a stronger CPU. (of course not to the extremities). Granted, they were not primarily interested in scientific calculations, or heavy duty software development. Reply
Dribble - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkMultimedia doesn't need llano's gpu - SB graphics accelerates video just fine. Hence why you are recommending something that has better 3D graphics performance they'll never use, over something with a faster cpu which they will use all the time? Reply
GeorgeH - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkYou claim that CPU performance matters. That's true, but can you answer the following -
1) Consider two laptops side by side. One has a ~2.5GHz C2D, one has a quad-core Sandy Bridge. Name a single task more than 5% of mobile users run that would allow you to definitively tell which laptop is running the C2D and which has the SB. (Task Manager doesn't count, I'm talking actually using an application.)
2) Name a single task or application that theoretically might let you do the above once it's widespread in the next 3-5 years.
3) What percentage of laptops are sold for <$1000 with roughly Llano or below levels of graphics?
4) What percentage of laptop buyers care about battery life?
My answers are -
1) No clue
2) No clue
3) Most of them
4) Most of them
That's why I say that Llano's battery life is huge and its CPU performance really doesn't matter. Even Intel agrees, which is one reason why you're seeing them move towards lower-power CPUs. Ivy Bridge will have "configurable" TDP, and Haswell will move from 35-35W to 10-20W:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4378/ivy-bridge-a-ti... Reply
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link3) The fact is you can get a laptop with better GPU performance and faster CPU performance for $700-750 on the Intel side:
i5 480 + HD5730 for $700:
i5 480 + GT 540M (which beat 6620 in almost every gaming benchmark in this review) for $700:
i5 480 + HD6550M for $700:
i5 2410 + GT 540M for $750:
Every single one of these provides faster CPU & GPU performance (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards...
So Llano A-8 would need to be less than $700. Reply
GeorgeH - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkCan you find faster GPUs for <$1000? Sure, but that wasn't the question. Go to Dell or HP's website and look at the number of laptops priced under $1000, then look at the percentage of those that come with significantly better than Llano-level graphics.
There's much more to determining the value of a laptop than raw CPU and GPU performance; you could easily pay more than $700 for a Llano laptop and still be getting a very good deal.
I'm not saying whether or not Llano should target this or that price point, though - I'm just trying to give a little perspective. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkTotally agree with the pricing. The highest performance A8 laptops are going to need to be $700 with fGPU only, and maybe $800 with dGPU, because that's where dual-core i5 + Optimus laptops are currently sitting.
Of course, I'd still pay more for good build quality and a nice LCD and keyboard.
Oh, and the people saying CPU is the be-all, end-all... well, even though I have a couple Core i7 Bloomfield systems in my house (and many Core i5/i7 laptops), my primary work machine is running... Core 2 QX6700 (@3.2GHz) with an HD 5670 GPU and 4GB RAM. The area I want to upgrade the most is storage (currently using RAID0 Raptor 150GB), but I have no desire to reformat and start transferring apps to another PC, so I continue to plug along on the Raptors. This CPU is now over four years old, and yet the only thing I really don't like is the HDD thrashing and slow POST times. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkNone of those GPU's match the power of the 6620, which you can find in even the A6 series, so your point is invalid. Reply
Dribble - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkActually you can normally tell quite easily which laptop has the slower cpu. It's the one with the fan whining away. With laptops having a more powerful processor that isn't having to work so hard is important just to keep the thing quiet.
As for cpu power - well windows and it's software just isn't that efficient. Even a fairly complex word 2010 doc (few pictures/charts/etc) can start to feel slow on a 2.5Ghz C2D (I should know my laptop has a 2.4Ghz C2D). The flash games my kids seem to be forever finding are also cpu only and will run it flat out and the game won't seem as smooth as it would on a faster machine.
Sure you can get by with a slower machine, but it doesn't make for such a pleasant experience.
It has been the case since PC's arrived that over time software needs more and more power. e.g. I could run word 6 on a 486, I now really need a dual core 2Ghz machine to even run word 2010. I don't see that changing hence the faster your cpu the longer your pc will remain usable. Reply
lukarak - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkI've been using a 2007 tech MacBook white up until a few months ago with a 2.0 GHz C2D. Over time i upgraded it to include 6 GB of memory, a 64 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD, and then i transitioned to a 2011 MPB 13 with a SNB CPU and 4 GB of memory. Aside from a better screen, once i put in the SSD, i couldn't see the diference in speed. I usually use a lot of VM, use Eclipse and XCode, and most of the time watch 720p and the more than 3 years newer CPU isn't all that revolutionary. Sure, it may not use 30ish % of the CPU to play movies, but only 20ish, but until that's 50ish% when the fan gets louder it doesn't really matter for me. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkThe CPU looks relatively slow to the i5/i7, but its really not that slow. Seriously. Compare it to an atom and see that its not that bad. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkThe CPU isn't even bad. I don't know what you guys are all on but A8 cores are improved phenom II x4 cores... I would say its about the same performance as the i5 series. All the benchmarks online are measured on the WORST A8 chip, which has the worst CPU performance. All of the reviews are on A8-3500M. Just wait until the A8-3850 gets benchmarked.
All I'm saying is that its not fair to compare the worst A8 to the best i5 or best i7, plain and simple. Reply
sundancerx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkfor most of the charts, yellow bar is assigned to INTEL asus k53e(i5-2520m+hd3000), but on asymetrical crossfire, this is assigned to AMD llano (18-3500m+crossfire). kind of confusing if you dont pay attention or am i the one confused? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkDark yellow = K53E, bright yellow = CrossFire. If you have a different color you think would work, I'll be happy to change it. Purple? Brown? Orange? Reply
adrien - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI agree Brazos looks less interesting now but it still has one huge advantage: price. If Llano notebooks are going to sell for $600 (or $500), Brazos are 40% less expensive. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkBrazos E-350 (which is already 60% faster than C-50) start at around $425. They come with 2GB RAM and a 250GB HDD. AMD is saying $500 as the target price for A4, $600 for A6, and $700 for A8, but I suspect we'll see lower than that by at least $50. So if your choice is Brazos E-350 for $425 or Llano A4 for $450, and the Llano packs 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD, there's no competition--though size will of course be another factor. I figure Llano will bottom out at 13.3-inch screens where Brazos is in 11.6" and 12.1". Personally, I'd never buy a 10" netbook; I just can use them comfortably. I'm happiest with 13.3" or 14" laptops. Reply
sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkthese prices, are definitively NOT in the netbook range:
$500 - thinkpad x120e
$550 - HP Pavilion dm1
$600 - sony vaio YB
who the hell would pay that much dough for Atom level performance? Reply
sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkeven AMD's slower 1.0GHz C-50, costs more than the Atom in the SAME MODEL netbook (while benchmarking slower than the atom!):
$250 - Acer Aspire One 255 with the FASTER Intel Atom
$330 - Acer Aspire One 522 with the SLOWER AMD C-50 Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkFirst of all, the (lowest) prices I found at Amazon.com were $250 for the 255 and $310 for the 522, which is a smaller margin.
Acer 522 has a 720p display vs. the 255's 1024x600. That alone is worth a significant price difference. It also has a HDMI port and a CPU (APU) that can play 1080p HD videos (or 720p on the internal display). The 255 is worth crap for video playback, a very common laptop use these days.
The C-50 can also play some games. Sure, older ones and at low settings, but it's something the 255 simply can't do.
In terms of general performance, the C-50 should be competitive with the Atom when it comes to web browsing and word processing.
In short, the 522 is so much better than the 255 that a $60 premium is really not a lot. Reply
sinigami - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link"But, but, the 522 has an HDMI port on it!".
Personally, i wouldn't pay $80 more for a netbook that is even SLOWER than an atom, no matter how much lipstick they put on that pig -- i mean, no matter how many hdmi ports they stick on that snail.
And they could stick whatever size screen they want on it, and i'm sure they would charge a whole lot more if they put a 55" on it, but i'd surely NOT buy it with a C-50 in it....
more bluntly: Acer could put a 1080p display on it, add USB 3.0, give it an amazing sound system, etc, and then charge $1000, but who wants a Ferrari with a Yugo engine? Reply
ET - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkForget the C-50 vs. Atom. Would you pay more for an Atom netbook if it had a higher resolution screen? If not, then fine, but I'm sure many people would. 1024x600 is too low for comfort.
From your post it looks like you're just trolling, since you stick to "$80 more" even though it's $60 in reality, ignore any comfort from higher resolution and continue to insist that the C-50 is "SLOWER" in caps even though it would beat the Atom in the 255 on SunSpider and probably other benchmarks of real world usability. So I think the prudent thing to do would be to refrain from replying to you, and I will try to do that in the future. Reply
sinigami - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkSorry mate, i'm just slow, not a troll... though it's easy to confuse dain bramage with trolling.
When i looked at amazon i saw their black one was "Currently unavailable", and the colored ones were $330. I didn't spot the black BZ465 that IS available for $310, so i cede to you that it is only a $60 difference.
My apologies.
"Forget the C-50 vs. Atom. Would you pay more for an Atom netbook if it had a higher resolution screen? If not, then fine, but I'm sure many people would."
That is a reasonable point. $60 is worth it to many people for a better netbooking experience. There is a LOT of value in a highly portable 10" netbook, with hours and hours of battery life, that you can toss anywhere (even a purse), and it does it's intended job of surfing and playing video (not 1080p, of course, but why would it, it has a freaking tiny screen), with a real keyboard and trackpad (and USB ports - take that, ipad). And with a dirt-cheap price, it's all smiles for "many people".
BTW, i did pay more, lol, except i had to go for an 11.6" screen (@1366x768), even though it isn't as tossable.... i also sprang more for an ultra-low-voltage, dual-core, U/SU chip, so i can have a little more fun, wasting hours on boxcar2d! Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkWhere did you get these prices? The HP is $450 (3GB RAM, 320GB disk). The Lenovo is normally $440 for the E-350 version (though currently backordered). It's not rare to be able to get them for less.
This is still more than netbooks, but it's for a better spec and better performance. Reply
sinigami - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link(sorry, i admit my prices were not current, the price has gone down and i haven't kept track)
still, that is getting very close to the price range where you can get a much better spec, and way, WAY better performance.
the performance that becomes available, for a few dollars more, first jumps to twice that of an Atom or Zacate, and then you get to the budget i3's, which are, at the least, FOUR times as powerful as an atom or E-350.
sinigami - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linki fully appreciate netbooks for what they are, and i know better than to do anything more demanding than play my 720p MKV anime on a netbook (yes, even the latest Atom machines can do this).
I'm just pointing out that, currently, with the Brazos and Zacate Fusion APUs, AMD is NOT hitting the price/performance spot that i expected them to.
the Zacate 1.6GHz E-350, should be priced the same as the Atom machines, up to the price of the Atom/Ion machines.
i was hoping for AMD's tradition of price/performance to continue, and that would have meant beating or at least NOT being more expensive than Intel!
and the C-50 is even worse! Reply
iwod - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI was wondering if they used the latest drivers from Intel, which offer some performance increase. And on the notes of Drivers, GPU drivers these days matter a lot more then Hardware. And ATI has had YEARS of Hard Work on their drivers. While Intel is working hard now, although in terms of catch up they are rather slow.
Which brings the questions, If Intel really did improve their drivers and bring extra 10 - 20% increase. The Liano doesn't look that attractive at all. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkCiv5 and TWS2 are both tested with the latest drivers. The K53E was also tested with drivers that are at most a couple months old. Intel current lists the latest laptop drivers as 18.104.22.168.2361 from 4/13/2011, which is what I'm running on the Intel units right now. If there are some newer drivers that I'm missing out on, let me know and I'll go try them. Reply
duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkNice review, it seems like there is a lot of work on CF.
Actually I reviewed the Liano already months ago, I mentioned in the last mobile reviews that it will be better performing then the Toshiba with the P920 with really good battery performance. So it is a win -win for the budget line anyhow. Top line remains intel for the CPU power.
Regarding the quote:
Now if you want to have your cake and eat it too, the APU to wait for would be Trinity. Due out somewhere in the 2012 - 2013 timeframe, combine a Bulldozer derived architecture with AMD's next-generation GPU architecture and you've got Trinity.
Trinity will not only be an improved GPU it also has the BD core inthere which will offer much more punch. THe reason LIano is late is because of the 32NM process. It could have been released much sooner. Sure they took an outdated K10 and that is the main issue together with the not enough aggressive Turbo for single thread, they should have adapted this more aka BD.
But assumin Trinity is a rather late 2012 project (by stating 2012-2013) you are way way off... Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkQuote probably reflects an increase in pessimism due to recent events. Bulldozer is still not out, and AMD is said to have had a hard time getting clocks up. So sure, we're all hoping to see Trinity early in 2012, but anyone setting their expectations a little farther are less likely to be disappointed. Reply
duploxxx - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkdidn't i mentioned it would be launch faster then expected?
the delay of Zambezi BD has nothing to do with real architecture issues..... Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkThat's not the sites which posted on it, including Anandtech, said based on what AMD said (that is, that Bulldozer was not up to speed). Reply
Jamahl - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWas that really needed? I mean...really? Who the hell would do that and for what reason? Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI already got my E-350 laptop, but as Jarred says, Brazos just became less interesting. I'll be waiting to see what price point and performance the dual core Llano will have. What impressed me most was battery life, which is competitive with the E-350 laptop, and it'd be interesting to see how small and light Llano laptops will get.
The other takeaway I have from this is that as usual I'm impressed at how far Intel has gone with its integrated graphics. Sure Llano gives it a good beating, but that's at the expense of a lot more die space. I imagine that Intel will continue to tweak its 3D cores and I can't wait to see how this race will develop. Reply
Anosh - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWhat happened to power consumption?!
Some of us get laptops due to the optimization in the power department over similar desktop parts! Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkPower = [Battery Capacity] / .98 [efficiency] / ([Battery life in minutes] / 60)
So if you take the battery life charts, you can determine roughly what the total system power draw is using the above. Or you can look at the "Relative Battery Life" charts and get the same information as Minutes/Wh instead of converting into Watts. Reply
jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkIn my work I get a lot of laptops to fix. If there is one game or genre that appears on 80% or more of them its......
The Sims.
I also get asked a lot "if I buy this laptop will it play The Sims?"
Never ever been asked if a laptop will play Crysis or any of the games you use.
Just saying. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkSo, what do you tell them? The only benchmarks of The Sims 3 I could find are pretty old and didn't offer much detail, but I think based on them that high quality would require more than the lowest IGP. (Then again, normal or low quality should probably run fine on anything.) Reply
msroadkill612 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkta 4 the post - but dont salesmen have a duty to sell them a bit of insurance against the next game fad Reply
ash9 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkBring on the OpenCL apps, excuse me applications- Excel rewritten to take advantage of heterogeneous computing would silence everyone about Star CPU cores. The ball is in the hands of the people (to buy them), then the software developers (to program for them) - that's why Star cores? APU apps needed Reply
msroadkill612 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI think it will happen. Big mobs will identify niches that can profit from OGPL & profit from using it - open languages always win in the end.
I see fusion server apuS in the future. Reply
FISHRULE - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWhat a terrible CPU, who would want something that performs like a Phenom in a new computer circa 2011. The future might be fusion AMD, but you sure as heck aren't part of the future anymore. Reply
jabber - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link90% of laptop owners wouldnt know if they were using a Brazos or an i5 in their laptops.
The only real differential is in transcoding, ripping etc. and very few folks in the real world actually do that. Especially on laptops.
Price is far more important than outright performance. Has been for some time now. Reply
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkFalse. My gf doesn't know anything about computers. But she somehow knew that Intel makes the best mobile CPUs even before asking me what to get. Clearly Intel marketing > AMD's. All of my current friends who just bought a computer all went with i3/i5/i7 processors only because they "heard" Sandy Bridge is the fastest CPU around.
Llano is nothing more than a Phenom with a faster GPU. Phenom already didn't sell well against C2D/C2Q/Core i7 (1st) gen and isn't getting any better against SB. The only way AMD is gaining market share is if they ship cheap laptops with Llano to users for whom the price of a laptop is the most important factor. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWell, you have pretty computer literate friends. Most people I know would have no idea what Sandy Bridge is, probably not even what i3 and i5 are, and would only buy i3 or i5 because: a) AMD had very little market presence until now; b) I'd recommend them. That said, most of the people I know have no idea that AMD exists and is making CPU's (I mention it occasionally, and they're always surprised, so I guess it doesn't register), so it does look like AMD's marketing is pretty crappy.
That said, I think that your analysis of why Llano will fail isn't right. For most people the CPU power really doesn't matter that much. They'd have no idea if i3 or Llano is better, and most likely won't be able to tell the difference in practice (unless they run a game for which the HD 3000 is unsuited). Sure Llano is for the low end market, but that's where most sales are, and it's certainly much improved in terms of power usage, which is an important enough measure to help it gain market share. Reply
RussianSensation - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkYou are probably right that most people won't tell the difference between a Llano or an i3/i5/i7. But to them the perception of knowing that they have a slower CPU is what matters. One of my friends was building a PC for browsing the net only. I told him he'd be perfectly fine with a $100 CPU but he insisted that the system must have Sandy Bridge because it's the latest modern CPU. I gave up trying to convince him that his internet browsing experience will be more limited by his ISP latency and speed rather than CPU performance.
So as long as AMD convinces the average consumer that Llano is at at least as good, they will do well. The problem is AMD's marketing department is worse than a 1st year undergrad student studying marketing in business school. They think if they pay millions of dollars to put AMD on F1 cars, people will notice?
You made a very important point - a lot of people don't even know what AMD is or that there is another competitor to Intel. Imagine if GM, Ford or Chrysler made cars that were more reliable than Honda or Toyota. It would still be a while until the average consumer would abandon the Japanese brands since the perception of reliability would lag behind reality. AMD has this similar problem with their CPU brands, which only marketing can fix. Reply
jrs77 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkReally... that's rather unimpressive.
The GPU of Llano beats intels HD-graphics in games, what a surprise. But how many people do I know personally, that play games on their laptops anyways? Laptops are primarily used as mobile office-computers and they do still rely more on CPU-performance.
From all the experience I've made the HD3000 graphics of mobile SNB CPUs are perfectly fine for all tasks I throw at them (excluding games). So the question is, why would I buy a Llano-based laptop instead of a SandyBridge one?
Llano doesn't offer better battery-life so the only reason might be the price, but with i5-2xxx laptops starting at $600 I really don't see alot of competition there for intel, if we're talking anything else then gaming. Reply
whoaaaaaaaa - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkA lot. I think you are very out of touch. No one buys desktops anymore, everyone uses a laptop - and quite a few people want to WOW or COD on them. Reply
luniq - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAgreed. A lot of people I know uses laptop although they rarely need to take it with them and they game too. Reply
swaaye - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI don't think he is. Most computer users don't play games. All they need is a GPU that can run the OS's UI. Reply
cotak - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe sort of people who use laptops and are pushing the CPUs hard are in the reality of the real world a limited bunch. Those who really need the power aren't going to be on a laptop anyhow like you say. Most office staff never use to the full potential of their issued computers even when they were using pentium 4s. And I actually think you'll find a lot of office workers are still humping around a P4 in their laptop bag.
This is especially true as a lot of work now a days are done server side. About the only "office workers" who pound their CPU are those with big spread sheets. Even there I do not think you'll find many office workers who'd have an issue with most modern CPUs. They'll just go for a smoke or coffee break while it crunches.
And what review did you read that say there's no advantage in battery life? If you are pushing a game Llano lasts twice as long on the same battery. Reply
voidi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkLots of potential, they managed to find a valid niche in Intel's Netbook Hardware Portfolio. I think it's futile to argue about the success of this solution already, as the price will be the determining factor.
As I see it, Llano has the potential to bring AMD back in the mobile market on a reasonable scale, but it also has the potential to utterly fail. Since it can't compete in the high-end area in either CPU or GPU performance, it will all depend on the value for your money. If the price is low enough, Llano will fill its niche quite comfortably.
Personally, I will wait for Trinity and Ivy Bridge, as both promise significant improvements and will likely be priced close to their predecessors. Reply
jaydee - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkOn the one hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that AMD was able to bring the power draw of a K10/10.5 down to those levels, while adding decent GPU. It's a big step up for the to be in the discussion again for laptops. I don't think anyone could have reasonably expected them to go from Danube up to Intel's SB performance level overnight, so from that perspective, it's a big jump for them.
On the other hand, it couldn't be more obvious that this product should have been competing against Arrendale about 18 months ago at the price point introduced today. I want to like this product badly, but it's so hard given it's CPU performance. Sure it's great for mid-range mobile gamers, but why would anyone else look at llano? Hopefully AMD can make just as big of a stride with BD-based mobile Fusion within the next 24 months, and then we can perhaps take AMD seriously in the bigger mobile market segments. Reply
Gunbuster - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWill this mean the lowest common denominator HP $450 laptop of the week the everyone on a budget inevitably buys at retail when they are in a time crunch will suck less?
I sure hope so. Reply
Boissez - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI actually like the performance as it seems better balanced than in the dual-core Sandy bridges, ie., about 50% performancethe in single threads apps, 80% in multi-threaded apps and 200% in gaming. IOW better suited towards consumer needs. And battery life is good too.
What AMD needs to work on though is lowering the TDP. A8-3500 performance in a 25W enveloppe would allow this to be a good alternative in the upcoming ultrabooks (especially because you can't fit a discrete GPU in those) Reply
Boissez - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkOh yeah and make all of those APU's compatible with 1600 and 1866 Mhz RAM. RAM speed seems to be a major bottleneck in this platform. Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkI think that even lower performance in 25W would be attractive, but it might eat into the E-350 market, unless it's priced significantly higher. I don't think it'd be a big problem for AMD to lower power to that point (certainly for A4), but they're probably waiting to see where the market goes with the current Llano APU's. I believe we'll see a 25W version later this year. Reply
Brian23 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkJarred/Anand,
Based on the benchmarks you've posted, It's not very clear to me how this CPU performs in "real world" CPU usage. Perhaps you have it covered with one of your synthetic benchmarks, but by looking at the names, it's not clear which ones stress the integer vs floating point portions of the processor.
IMO, a test I'd REALLY like to see is how this APU compares in a compile benchmark against a C2D 8400 and a i3 380M. Those are both common CPUs that can be used to compare against other benchmarks.
Could you compile something like Chrome or Firefox on this system and a couple others and update the review?
Thanks! I appreciate the work you guys do! Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkPCMark tests common applications. You can read more details here: http://www.pcmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/P...
While I would find a compilation benchmark interesting, are you suggesting that this will be more "real world"? How many people would do that compared to browsing, video, gaming? Probably not a lot. Reply
Brian23 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThanks for the link. I was looking for something that described what the synthetic benchmarks mean.
As for "real world," it really depends from one user to the next. What I was really trying to say is that no-one buys a PC just to run benchmarks. Obviously the benchmark companies try to make their benchmarks simulate real world scenarios, but there's no way they can truly simulate a given person's exact workload because it's going to be different from someone else's workload.
If we're going down the synthetic benchmark path, what I'd like to see is a set of benchmarks that specifically stresses one aspect of a system. (i.e. integer unit or FPU.) That way you can compare processor differences directly without worrying about how other aspects of the system affect what you're looking at. In the case of this review, I was looking at the Computation benchmark listed. After reading the whitepaper, I found out that benchmark is stressing both the CPU and the GPU, so it's not really telling me just about the CPU which is the part I'm interested in.
Switching gears to actual real world tests, seeing a compile will tell me what I'm interested in: CPU performance. Like you said, most people aren't going to be doing this, but it's interesting because it will truly test just the CPU. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkHi Brian,
I haven't looked into compiling code in a while, but can you give me a quick link to a recommended (free) Windows compiler for Chrome? I can then run that on all the laptops and add it to my benchmark list. I would venture to say that an SSD will prove more important than the CPU on compiling, though. Reply
Brian23 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkJarred,
This link is a user's quick how-to for compiling chrome:
This is the official chrome build instructions:
Both use Visual Studio Express which is free.
I really appreciate this extra work. :-) Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe first links at the top is sponsored
3 times exactly the same i7 + 460 ! ROFL
Then 1 i7 with a 540
Damn - looks funny, but at least it not 1024 *768 like the preview, but the most relevant resolution for the market - thank you for that Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkMan what is it with this dumb yuppie nonsense. No I dont want to save $200 because I dont actually work for my money. Hell, if you're even reading this site then it is highly likely that the two places you want more performance from your notebook is games and internet battery life. All this preening about intel's crippled cpu being 50% faster dont mean jack because ... well its a crippled cpu. It cant play games yet it has a stupid igp. Why get all yuppity about such an obvious design failure, so much so that you'd be willing to sneeze at a $200 savings like it means nothing. It actually means something to people who work for a living. Most people just dont need the extra 50% cpu speed from a notebook. But having a game that runs actually does mean something tangible. Reply
madseven7 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI'm not sure why people think this is such a crappy cpu. Am I missing something? Wasn't the Llano APU that was tested the lowest of the A8 series with DDR 1333? Doesn't it give up 500MHz-800MHz to the SB notebooks that were tested? Wouldn't the A8 3530mx perform much better? I for one would love to see a review of the A8 3530mx personally. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkGood comment. This is the highest end 35W CPU, but not the highest end Llano. So it gets commended for battery life but not performance. It will be interesting to see the A8-3530MX results for performance and battery life. It would still lose to Sandy Bridge quite soundly on many tests, I'm sure, but it's still a significant difference in clock speed over the A8-3500M.. Reply
Jasker - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkOne thing that is really interesting that isn't brought up here is the amount of power used during gaming. Not only do you get much better gaming than Intel, but you also get much less power. Double whammy. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkLegit Reviews found a big difference in game performance between AC and battery (see here: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1636/5/). This made Llano and the i5 perform about the same on battery in Resident Evil 5. I assume that benchmarks here are on AC, so it would be interesting to test on battery. Reply
DXM1 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkGreat Review Anand! Once again we know intel is the best at all things computing. I liked how you included the i7 with 460m up to THREE times in some benchmarks. It was like you kept reminding us and casual consumers that massively more expensive parts perform better... Even if you test the same set-up 3 times in a row!
I have to tell you that seeing the 3 intel blue bars on the top made me sigh with relief, I was worried that you may actually compare llano to the parts like i3 and i5 where it is actually meant to compete (like some other silly reviewers). My only gripe is you didnt add i7-2600kand gtx 580 OC'ed as those would have made the gap even wider from the AMD system.
One question I did have for you is, how much does Intel pay nowadays for dishonest reviewing practices? Im short on cash because my job doesnt pay well and I was hoping to open up a website and promote intel just like you. Maybe we could even become partners and link to each other websites I think that would be cool.
PS, could you post how much your integrity was worth before you auctioned it off to Intel? Im sure some of your fans would be eager to know.
Your ex Reader, DXM1 Reply
Sharken03 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkDont feed this troll, Anandtech is a great hardware site. Reply
Jamahl - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkTroll? it's the truth. What was the fucking point in showing 3x identical intel systems except to put 3x intel systems at the top of most benchmarks? It's goddam pathetic. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkOr, I included these laptops because they're the only ones I still had where I could rerun all the benchmarks (specifically, PCMark 7 and 3DMark 11). Oh, snap! Heaven forbid we think about that. And if you read the 8000+ words of commentary, you'll notice how often we praise Intel's placement at the top of the charts -- and of course we completely ignore when they fall to the bottom of the battery life charts.
I wish I had a secret stash of all the laptops I've tested in the last six months, because then I wouldn't have even bothered with including more than one GTX 460M + SNB. But your suggestion that we *not* include laptops because it pushes Llano down is even worse than what we've done. Should we only show laptops where AMD is better? Or maybe just laptops that cost under $700? Maybe we need to dig out an old CULV setup and then benchmark GMA 4500MHD again so we can laugh at Intel's IGP from two years ago?
If you want a look at every laptop we've tested and where Llano falls in the grand scheme of things, I suggest checking into our Mobile Bench results. Hint: it's in the upper part of battery life, and in the middle to lower part of CPU and GPU tests; if you only look at IGPs, though, it's the fastest IGP. Hmm... that sounds a lot like what we said in our conclusion. Reply
pfastovsky - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkJarred
I think its a fair comment that asks Anandtech to keep their graphs in an article consistent with the same laptop set across a testing segment. As you said, you had to rerun all the benchmarks so why are the Civ laptops listed so different from Mass Effect, Starcraft etc?
Thanks Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe comment may be fair, and it's been mentioned before, but accusing Anandtech of being paid by Intel isn't. Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkNone of this explains the 3 identical setup.
How on earth to you think it looks like?
Its simply utterly pathetic, and an insult at our IQ
I am no fan at this Llano apu, and from the start. think AMD should just have posponed it, and used the capacity for BD and serverspace, but this review is just far out.
The important issue about llano have always been the power profile, and AMD just deliver in spades here. Far beyound expectations. The OEM will sell this like zakate, and the new trinity will not make it significantly better on the market than this with upgraded star cores. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkYou know what's utterly pathetic and an insult to people's IQ? The suggestion that they can't actually comprehend the graphs. But just to show you that I have no "agenda" and I'm not trying to make AMD's Llano look worse than it is, I have taken a couple hours to go through, remove all the extra data, and regenerate all the graphs. (Yes, folks, creating all of these things does take time and our UI for doing this is not as easy as you might expect.) Of course, not all of the i7-2630QM + GTX 460M notebooks performed equally, so now I've "punished" Intel by showing worse results in some tests. Oh noes!
Anyway, thanks for the input and sorry if the inclusion of more laptops was deemed offensive by some. They're just charts, people, and I even colored the "high-end" laptops bright blue so that you could easily filter them out in your mind. You know, something like: "Oh, those lines at the top are bright blue, so they're for quad-core Sandy Bridge laptops that cost about twice what the Llano laptop is expected to cost." Reply
AnandThenMan - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAlthough I don't like the approach of the poster taking issue with the graphs, I completely agree on principle. This site has shown a clear pattern of making sure certain hardware always occupies the top of the graphs. Always. And don't insult our intelligence and pretend otherwise, please.
Need I also remind people that this site included hand picked, overclocked Nvidia supplied cards (to the insistence of Nvidia) despite a policy that forbids this. I would caution people to take all results on this site with a grain of salt. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe only way to make sure that Intel's current processors aren't at the top of most charts is to leave them out, particularly on notebooks. If we only look at IGP/fGPU, AMD comes out on top of graphics charts, but is that fair to NVIDIA's Optimus technology that allows dynamic switching between IGP and dGPU in a fraction of a second? The overall tone of this article (apart from the CrossFire section) is positive, but still people look at the charts and freak out because we didn't manipulate data to make Llano look even better. It's not bad, but it's certainly not without flaws. Reply
kevith - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkOh too bad.
I would like to use a laptop for music production with Nuendo and Win 7.
It actually reqires a little more graphics-musclle than you might think to run an app like Nuendo.
And,up to now, it has not been possible to get both a powerful CPU and GPU in the same machine for the money I have.
So now the fGPU is powerful enough, that's great. But it seems, that the CPU-part of these APU's are too weak.
Øv... Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkØhhh
Just make sure your computer have 1Gb ram and win xp sp2, Nuendo even runs on single core 2Ghz whatever old shit.
I would save the money and buy a e350.
Heck you could even buy an Atom 510, acording to Anandtech, its just as fast as e350 for the cpu side.
When i think about it. Just do that. Reply
ET - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkAs madseven7 commented correctly, this isn't the fastest Llano CPU. There are 45W parts which perform better. They will have less battery life, but a significant increase in core speed. If you're interested in Llano you might want to wait until they get reviewed. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI suspect the 45W Llano parts will only have less battery life if you're specifically doing CPU/GPU intensive tasks. At idle, SNB and Llano should both bottom out at similar levels. For example, if you have a 2630QM and a 2820QM doing nothing, they both run at a very low clock and voltage. We'll test any other Llano chips we can get and report our findings, but other factors (BIOS and firmware optimizations) will generally be more important than whether the TDP is 35W or 45W, at least for our particular battery life tests. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkI dont get the Cinebench single threaded results. An N660 is about the same as a desktop X2 250/255 on that benchmark. Yet this A83500M scores only 61% of what an X2 250 does. That would seem to indicate that it is only running at 1.8GHz during that single threaded test. Why so low with 3 idle cores? It should be running at 2.5GHz and scoring 2500, or just neck and neck with a P520. Turbo is clearly not working anywhere near as well as it should be. Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWell this is AMD business at work. They are in a constant learning process and have been for the last 40 years.
Next time they might consider the following:
1. Dont send some half baked prototypes to the reviewers. Wait fx. 3 more weeks. This is just old Jerry Sanders style.
2. Consider not sending stuff to Anandtech. As anandtech lives from backlinking also, the site needs the new product. And AMD, - and for the sake of the consumers right decisions, can live without 3 similar i7 plus high end discrete gfx, at 1.200 usd at the top of each chart. If AMD dont understand they have other interest than Anandtech - its business for all - they cannot serve their own interest. And its about time they start to earn their own money. They are competing against Otellini not some stupid schoolboy. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThanks, krumme; always a helpful response. Lenovo has taken this to heart, I'm sure you'll be happy to know, and is not sending any review samples our way. Amazingly, we're still able to survive. And FWIW, if AMD hadn't sent us anything, we'd have had more content earlier through other sources. The only way they can get us to abide by NDAs is by actually working with us. Reply
krumme - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkWell thank you Jarred. That was an helpfull answer! that explains a lot.
I hope AMD gives you attention and work with you in the future, its in all your readers interest.
That means AMD giving you priority, broad access to the right people and more time to do the reviews. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThis is something I discussed with AMD numerous times, and it's one of the reasons we want a utility that will show us true CPU clock speeds in real time. Unfortunately, they don't have anything they're willing to share with us right now. They said they have test units where they can monitor this stuff, but it requires special BIOS hooks and those are not present in our preview samples. In theory, Turbo Core should allow the single-threaded Cinebench result to run up to 60% faster than non-Turbo. Of course, we can't even disable Turbo Core either, so we don't know how much TC is actually helping.
P920 is clocked 6.7% higher than A8-3500M, but 3500M has twice the L2 cache and some other enhancements. With 3500M coming in 17% faster than P920, that would suggest that 3500M averages around 1900MHz, but that could mean it runs at 2.4GHz for a bit and then 1.5GHz for a bit, or somewhere in between.
Given the way AMD does Turbo Core (monitoring instruction workloads and their relative power requirements), I think that at least right now, it's not being as aggressive as Intel's Turbo Boost. It feels more like Bloomfield and Arrandale turbo, where you got an extra 2-4 bins, rather than Sandy Bridge where you can get an extra 5-10 bins. Hopefully we'll see refinements with Turbo Core over the coming months and years. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, June 20, 2011 - linkCan you try setting the affinity manually so that it has to use only one core? I notice that even though I'm running only one thread, that thread will jump around to all my available cores, making them all look like they are running at 25%. Maybe by the time AMD's turbo kicks in, the thread is already moved to another core. Reply
GullLars - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkLooking forward to the re-test with an SSD.
IMHO all machines over $600 meant for general purpose use in 2011 should include at least a 32GB SSD of Indilinx Barefoot performance or better.
My laptop from 2007 with 2,2GHz C2D and a 32GB Vertex (retrofitted in 2009) still wipes the floor with new $800+ laptops with HDD-only for general use. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkHaving played with a bunch of laptops using 64GB SSDs, they all feel snappier, though of course it doesn't help with gaming frame rates or CPU computations. Still, I have to say that 64GB isn't big enough for me. If you can get a 32GB mSATA SSD and some sort of SSD caching, and then have a main 500GB HDD, that would be the sweet spot. If you're going SSD-only, I need at least 120GB, and for anything that can run games I'd want 240GB. (By the time I install most of the games I'm currently interested in playing on a regular basis, I easily fill up a 120GB drive.)
Anyway, I'm swapping in the SSD now and will start testing during the week, with the follow-up article hopefully ready next week. I've got DC SNB, Arrandale, DC Phenom II, E-350, and now Llano for the article. Anything else you want to request before I call it quits? I've still got the XPS L502x and an AMD K625, but I figure the five laptops are a reasonable representation of what's currently out there. (Note that I have currently focused only on IGP equipped laptops.) Reply
Boissez - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkResults with/without DDR3 RAM would be interesting as it seems RAM speed is a bottleneck. Reply
Boissez - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkdang... That should have been with/without DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM Reply
Brian23 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkApplication compile benchmarks. ;-) Reply
Cloudie - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - linkThe battery life has exceeded my expectations although battery life is a low priority for me when buying a laptop. As long as it gets 4 hours or so at idle is fine by me.
Both the GPU and CPU performance has disappointed me somewhat but on the plus side I was not aware until now that the APU being tested was a 35W version, I simply assumed it was the fastest 45W one. Hopefully the CPU perfomance will be just that little bit better on the 45W APUs. And OEMs better get out some decent compact systems with this in... I'd say 13-14" chassis will do me just fine. Reply
just4U - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkIf they can get this priced out in a $600 laptop with all the bells and whistles... It will sell. Looking locally (and online) decent gaming laptops start out at about $800. Looking at the numbers it's more then acceptable I think. Profit has to be in there though for AMD.. If their not turning an acceptable profit on each chip then... it will be a wash. Reply
duploxxx - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkLooking at the recent preview of anandtech on the desktop Liano part and the increased performance from DDR1333 to DDR 1866 i would like to see what it would bring on a Mobile platform. Afterall LIano mobile does support ddr 1600
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-deskt... Reply
Germanicus - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link1600 MHz DDR3 - lets make this accurate, since Llano can utilize it.
Thank you. Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkIt may be impossible to know the exact speed the cores run, but it would be interesting to run a test to get some relative numbers.
You can run a single threaded CPU bound program such as SuperPI, then run it again with the other three cores at 100% (for example by having another three instances of SuperPI running). Do this on AC and battery, and it might generate some interesting numbers. At the very least we'll be able to tell whether the 1.5GHz -> 2.4GHz ratio looks right. Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkBy the way, I just read Tom's Hardware review, which was unique in that it compared to a Phenom II X4 running at 1.5GHz and 2.4GHz. It looked from these benchmarks like the A8-3500M is always performing around the 1.5GHz level of the Phenom II X4 (sometimes it's a little faster, sometimes a little slower), which suggests that Turbo Core doesn't really kick in. Reply
i_am_the_avenger - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkMaybe this will cheer the AMD Fans a bit
This article did not mention some nifty features the APUs have (or maybe it did I did not read it line by line)...................................
Watch the video below from engadget:
It shows how these APUs can smooth out shaking videos real time, even while streaming from Youtube! and it does a very good job.
Another feature is how it en-chances videos (colour etc.)
This improves general user PC experience.......... something very desirable
The video also shows how AMD wants to target general users and not work enthusiasts
Another video shows comparison between the i7-2630QM and A8-3500M while multitasking video related applications.
---Interesting to note that the APU Gradually increased its power consumption while i7 was like bursting to and fro, something the way turbo core acts maybe-----
I think it is work vs general performance,
Intel's great for work, when you need to finish tasks and it needs to be done quickly,
while AMD APUs give you a good over all pc and multimedia performance - you watch videos, play games, so what if the zip file extracts a minute late and the fGPU performance is great....
You may buy a i7 SNB with discreate GPU but that has a battery life hit (for same battery capacity) and also extra heat generation which requires more fans, also the extra weight..
Please don't start judging me or something....
I am getting confused myself, while intel looks great in every way except stock gaming and battery life(not that bad)... I think I don't need that much power, even if I work - my work isn't so CPU oriented that an i7 would matter, a 30 second task finishes in 20 ok but it does not matter to me..... but improved video and battery seems more useful to me
I don't think that all of us have to tax our CPUs to full potential -- a few have to, not considering them -- so even if Intel have faster processors for many it does not affect them as much. Reply
psychobriggsy - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkFor all your moaning about not getting Asymmetric CrossFire to work, you didn't read the reviewers guide that says it only works in DX10 and DX11 mode, not DX9. So your Dirt2 benches for example clearly state DX9 for this test. I don't know about the other titles on that page - you say 5 of the others are DX9 titles. Do these titles have DX10 modes of operation - if so, USE THEM.
Otherwise it just looks like you are trying to get the best results for the Intel Integrated Graphics.
Just put "0 - Unsupported" for DX11 tests by HD3000 like other sites have done. Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkThe article said:
"AMD told us in an email on Monday (after all of our testing was already complete) that the current ACF implementation on our test notebook and with the test drivers only works on DX10/11 games. It's not clear if this will be the intention for future ACF enabled laptops or if this is specific to our review sample. Even at our "High" settings, five of our ten titles are DX9 games (DiRT 2, L4D2, Mafia II, Mass Effect 2, and StarCraft II--lots of twos in there, I know!), so they shouldn't show any improvement...and they don't. Actually, the five DX9 games even show reduced performance relative to the dGPU, so not only does ACF not help but it hinders. That's the bad news. The only good news is that the other half of the games show moderate performance increases over the dGPU."
I agree that at least in the case of DiRT 2 that's blatantly false, since that game was one of the first to use DX11, and was given with many Radeon 58x0 cards for this reason. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, June 17, 2011 - linkDiRT 2 supports DX11, but it's only DX9 or DX11. We chose to standardize on DX9 for our Low/Med/High settings -- and actually, DX11 runs slower at the High settings than DX9 does (though perhaps it looks slightly better). Anyway, we do test DiRT 2 with DX11 for our "Ultra" settings, but Llano isn't fast enough to handle 1080p with 4xAA and DX11. So to be clear, I'm not saying DiRT 2 isn't DX11; I'm saying that the settings we standardized on over a year ago are not DX11. Reply
jitttaaa - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkHow is the notebook llano performing as good, if not better than the desktop llano? Reply
ET - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - linkAt least as far as CPU power is concerned, the desktop part is obviously faster. The benchmarks are mostly not compatible so it's hard to judge, but in Cinebench R10 the mobile Llano gets 2037 while the desktop gets 3390. I agree that for graphics it looks like the desktop part is performing worse in games, which is strange considering the GPU is working at a faster speed.
Only explanation I can think of is that the faster CPU is taking too much memory bandwidth, but it doesn't make much sense since it's been said that the GPU gets priority. It's definitely something that's worth checking out with AMD. Reply
ionave - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - linkhttp://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-deskt...
On average the A8-3850 is 58% faster than the Core i5 2500K.
Boom. Delivered. You think its slow? It really isn't. The A8-3850 has about the performance of a DESKTOP i3. If you think that is bad performance, then you don't know what you are talking about. The battery life is amazing for having that kind of performance in a laptop. I'm sorry, but it totally destroys i7 and i5 platforms because of the sheer performance in that amazing battery life. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, June 17, 2011 - linkLet me correct that for you:
On average, the A8-3850 fGPU (6550D) is 58% faster than the Core i5-2500K's HD 3000 IGP, in games running at low quality settings. It is also 29% faster than the i5-2500K with a discrete HD 5450, which is a $25 graphics card. On the other hand, the i5-2500K with an HD 5570 (a $50 GPU) is on average 66% faster than the A8-3850.
Boom. Delivered. You think that's fast? It really isn't. The 6550D has about the performance of a $35 desktop GPU. If you think that is good performance, then you don't know what you are talking about.
At least Llano is decent for laptops, but for $650 you can already get i3-2310M with a GT 520M and Optimus. Let me spell it out for you: better performance on the CPU, similar or better performance on the GPU, and a price online that's already $50 below the suggested target of the A8-3500M. Realistically, A8-3500M will need to sell for $600 to be viable, A6 for $500, and A4 for $450 or less. Reply
jollyjugg - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - linkAnand,
you are making such a big deal of performance between Intel and AMD machines. Most of the folks who buy laptops are not looking to a super computer level performance which matters a lot in the server world or may be even desktop world. They are looking to buy a laptop which has good performace, good battery life and are more affordable. For the kind of applications most of the people use (internet surfing, listening to musing, watching youtube, watching movies, playing solitaire etc etc), thre will hardly be any difference between the offerings from both manufacturers. The fact that you are comparing performance and battery life and rather sneeringly say that if you want a machine which is 100-200 bucks lower then you should go for Llano machine at the cost of less performance makes me see black here. Why is cost not a big deal for you. How can you absolutely say that intel performance/$ and Battery life/$ is better than AMD's metrics. If not for AMD intel will be selling these machines not for 700 but for 1000. So in reality customers see reduced cost from Intel and a further 200 discount on AMD machines. You have to be a bit impartial in your reviews and not make only big deal of performance in portable machines where battery life and cost is also equally important and compare them as such. The fact that Intel's peformance is important win for them over AMD performance is a important one for geeks and enthusiasts like you, but not for comman man in the street. For him bang for the buck is the most important metric in most of the cases. But since your website is a reputed one, whatever you say might influence the opinion of man in the street. Please dont let your or any of your staff's personal opinion cloud their ability to see the bigger picture and tell it as such to PC buyers. Be impartial in your reviews.
A Humble AMD Fan Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - linkWe do our best to remain impartial; if we were partial, we would strongly advocate for or against AMD. When someone calling themselves a "humble AMD fan" talks about being impartial, you've pretty much already shot yourself in the foot. I'm not an Intel fan, despite what many would like to say. Right now, Intel simply has the better processor. AMD now has the better all-in-one design if you value graphics performance, but in order to give AMD the win you have to declare GPUs as being more vital than CPUs. Right now, outside of gaming, we're missing the killer apps to make that true.
What we said here is that AMD is competitive with Llano, and they are, but the pricing is really the big question. We *guess* that you might get AMD laptops for $100 to $200 less than Intel, but that's being generous. AMD says the laptop used in this review should have a target price of around $800 (because it has the 6630M in addition to Llano). At that price, this is not a clear win for AMD--not even close. Yes, Intel would be priced differently if AMD didn't exist, but you can't judge the quality of a product by what would happen if it disappeared. "Duke Nukem Forever would be an amazing game if no other FPS titles had come out in the past 15 years!"
For $800, ASUS already has the U41JF with similar graphics performance and better battery life (mostly because of the larger battery, but that's still important). Besides the MSI CX640 (i3-2310M with GT 520M for $650), there are five other laptops at Newegg that have Optimus graphics and Arrandale CPUs for under $750 (and in terms of performance, Llano is still slower than Arrandale on the CPU side). For $900, you can get a Samsung laptop with i7-2630QM and Optimus GT 540M. Dell's XPS 15 can be had with an i5-2410M and Optimus GT 525M for $800. That's what AMD has to compete with, and right now every one of those is significantly faster than Llano, offers better graphics performance than the Llano IGP, and battery life is similar or slightly worse.
Last year when I ripped on AMD's laptops for having okay performance with horrible battery life, AMD fans tried to tell me battery life didn't matter. We were looking at 2.5 hours with Athlon II/Phenom II compared to 5+ hours for Arrandale, and it "didn't matter" because people just wanted what was cheaper. Now we're looking at 6-7 hours battery life for Intel compared to 7-8 hours for Llano, at a similar price (at least going by AMD's suggestion), and battery life has suddenly become a lot more important. I recognize hypocrisy when I see it....
In summary, once more: Llano is a good step forward, but it will really depend on pricing. It cannot compete at $800. Period. Core i5-2410M is already 30-50% faster on the CPU side, offers similar battery life, and can be had with an Optimus GPU for $800. If AMD can't beat the performance or battery life, the only thing they can do is reduce pricing, so A8-3500M will need to start closer to $600, not $700. The A8-3530XM is the fastest mobile Llano chip, and it's only clocked 27% higher than the A8-3500M, likely with a $50 price premium (at least), so we can't really take that as a potential win either. 3530MX for $700 on it's own (no dGPU) would be reasonable, though, which is why I say that 3500M needs to be at the $650 (or lower) price range.
There's still the matter of getting a good quality laptop, regardless of whether it's AMD or Intel based, and that has been a seriously weak area for inexpensive laptops. Personally, if I were going out and spending my own money on a laptop right now, I'd lean heavily towards business offerings (Dell Latitude, Lenovo ThinkPad, or HP ProBook/EliteBook), just because their keyboards and build quality are so much better. That means I would be paying $1000+ for even a moderate laptop, and at that price it's no surprise that all the business offerings use Intel's CPUs. You can go the other route and buy an okay $600 laptop today, and in 18 months you replace it with another $600 laptop; the only problem is you're stuck with the crappy keyboards if you do that.
If there's any bias in my above statements, please let me know where. About the strongest bias I express is for good build quality and keyboards -- chiclet need not apply. AMD or Intel really doesn't matter to me; the question is who can offer the more compelling package overall, and determining a winner there requires listing out all the various aspects and then making a personal decision. I won't say that a faster CPU is always superior, just as a faster APU/GPU isn't always superior. They're different is all, but looking at the entire market right now the CPU will win out for the majority of users. Remove all the teenagers and 20-somethings from the population, and I'd say gamers (like myself) are less than 10% of the notebook buying population. Even with the younger generation included, I'd still say only 20% of laptops purchased will ever run anything more complex than Facebook games. Reply
mga318 - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - linkWell, we can look at prices now.
HP is currently selling their 15 inch dv6z laptop with the same processor as this one for $659 without the additional graphics card. Which means that your statement of these laptops needing to be priced closer to $600 is right on the money for what we're getting. Likewise, HP's upgrade to AMD's fastest APU is precisely what you guessed $50. So that places the A8-3530XM right at $709 without an additional graphics card. HP doesn't say exactly what card they're offering for their $50 and $100 dollar upgrades, but they're both listed as having GDDR5 instead of your DDR graphics card here:
512MB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI,VGA]
1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI, VGA]
So now you're getting the premium processor and graphics card for $809 (assuming you stay with the other standard components, with are 6GB RAM (speed not listed) and a cheapo 500GB 5400 RPM hard drive.
What do you think, Jared, are those competitive enough prices? Reply
mga318 - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link*which are (not "with are"). Reply
choikwa - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link512MB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI,VGA]
1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI, VGA]
You can verify these as
- if you click "help" on upper right corner.Reply
choikwa - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - link6400m has 160 stream procs
6700m has 480 stream procs Reply
rick1725 - Thursday, June 30, 2011 - linkIs this place full of Intel fanboys or what? The e-350 is far superior to any Atom configuration available. This has been proved over and over again. Stop flamming and get you head out of Intels overpriced a** Reply
strawhat pirates - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - linkbaka...baka...bakaaaa!!! <--- japan language... mention it to you, rick1725!!
intel only win on advertising alone ...
the rest? thumbs down for InteLosers!! #boooo ...
and intel is only a theory core ...*core fuck!! there is no definite proof .. :@
FORZA AMD!! AMD till die!! Reply
tuRnitUpsuM - Monday, July 04, 2011 - linkIm typing this on a Samsung nf210 (Atom n550) and external monitor. 4 threads Gig ram ... fold it up throw it in a rugsack. Life is good. Only two things could possibly make it better.
1) the above machine (in the header)
2) same form factor but Cortex A-15 chip running off ARMv7-R instructions.
first one to market gets the CASH!!!
technology is a beautiful thing. Reply
SMSAssembly - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - linkWe have the Llano processors for sale,
AM3400DDX43GX 4-Core 1.4GHz
AM3500DDX43GX 4-Core 1.5GHz
AM3530HLX43GX 4-Core 1.9GHz
EM3000DDX22GX 2-Core 1.8GHz
Contact Jeff at SMS Assembly for inquiries
email@example.com Reply
strawhat pirates - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - linkintel only win on advertising alone ...
the rest? thumbs down for InteLosers!! #boooo ...
and intel is only a theory core ...*core fuck!! there is no definite proof .. :@
FORZA AMD!! AMD till die!! Reply
msroadkill612 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkNot many economists here. can u say SUPPLY & DEMAND
Its silly to make a fuss about relative prices att this stage - will always be a supply shortage for a good new product & early adopters happy to pay a premium. Its the learning curve that really costs. Going down a dead end is the real bummer.
b/ its a business - if u keep waiting for the ideal product - u go broke - amd & intel alike
personally, i think brazos shrunk to 28nm or a native 2 core llano that could be a killer product - sub 10w/25w very functional apuS.
I also think if amd get marketing right, we are at a watershed. Intel have made amd dance to their cpu tune, now amd can do the same w/ gpuS
Interesting battle betw intel & tsmc in fabbing. tsmc could win - which proves the amd model right Reply
Lugonux - Thursday, September 08, 2011 - linkI think AMD might have hit the sweet spot with this one, no amazing technology breaks as such but as everyone is keen to point out business/general computing doesn't require much processor power while at the same time multimedia is becoming more and more important and the amd destroys the intel on this front. Serious gamers will still want to go intel/discrete as its simply the best but i suspect the amd laptop would be very appealing for a lot of people like myself who have a 'main rig' and wouldn't mind a backup for when we're travelling/at the gf's without spending a crapload of money on cpu power we'll never use which sadly seems to be the only way of getting a laptop you can game on atm (HD3000 just isn't enough). Overall i'd say good move AMD with limited resources, a shrewd move.
Btw i read to like page 10 then skipped to the end as i was getting tired so sorry if i've simply aped someone.
Lugx Reply
MrGaZZa - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - linkAnandtech,
I always read your reviews and this is by far the worst comparison in ages!!
And i know the AMD llano APU and discrete graphics can be hard to work out, but I feel that comparing a i7 with a 540m against the lowest A8 model with only a 6630m is wrong.
try comparing the A8 3530mx with the 1gig 6750m. This would be atleast 15% faster than all the benchmarks on here.
People are really getting the wrong idea and figures from here and other poor reviews.
And intel fan boys, I know the Intel i5/i7 would walk all over the AMD APU's in single thread,
but in realworld tests 'media / gaming' these AMD llano laptops walk all over the Intel for performance and battery life.
I own a A8, I was going to get a i7 2730m with 1gig 6770m but my mate at harveys benchmarked that against the 3530mx with the 6750m crossfired with the onboard 6620G 'which is the interaged graphics' and honestly it was like i said 10-15% better.
given that the AMD llano drivers and crossfire can only can get better from now on .. i really feel these bring a new oponent to the table.
I will run benchmarks on my A8 laptop and post youtube links for you people to show you. Reply
lazymangaka - Monday, December 05, 2011 - linkBarely anybody will read this comment, but I have to say: Intel must design their processors with synthetic benchmarks in mind. In making the step from a Core2Duo to an A4-3300m, I noticed a huge jump in performance in everything I do. Everything simply runs snappier. Synthetic benchmarks can throw a million different numbers against the wall, but at the end of the day the performance that I feel is all that matters to me. And AMD gets my vote in that category. Reply
Tuberocity - Saturday, December 31, 2011 - linkUnfortunately, mine is cosmetically not perfect, but I noticed it was also warped, the base that is. the lid won't even touch the base when closed. too much, I must return, and get another, or buy off HP's site. Anyhoo, havn't read all the posts in this thread, but I think the review lacking also. The AMD Llano APU, meaning the 3500M & up series are considerably underclocked as supplied in your laptop. Since I must return mine, I havn't fooled around with overclocking yet, but from what I understand, it is so easy, a child of 2 could do it. Just some simple, very simple overclocking, and you have an AMD APU that competes with high end i5 chips, and the standard graphics on the AMD die, radeon 6620G runs circles around intels offering, the HD 3000. The 6620G will play games intel's chip won't even load! I am in a quandry as to whether to get both, the on board graphics, and the extra 1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD 6750M Graphics card as I have heard they have driver problems, but I will probably go fo it anyway, and hope they have been worked out, or will be worked out in the near future. This laptop top with both graphics on board, the 3510MX APU, 6 GB ram, CD/DVD, 15.6, Windows 7 Premium, and the coup de grace, BEATS AUDIO, Iv'e listened to them all, and with headphones, Beats is the best. Speakerwise, Beats takes seconed over the Harmon Kardon I heard on a Toshiba laptop, but then again, if you opt for an HP 17" model with the subwoofer, i may sound a lot better. I havn't heard one, but I would expect it to be on par or better than the Harmon Kardon option. I'm an Audiophile who had over 10K in stereo gear at one time when lifes outlook was far batter than it is now so I have some experience in this area. This was 2 speakers, an amp, preamp, turntable, cartridge, cd player, and that's it, ten big ones, but oh what joy, and that fuzzy feeling it provided, worth every cent, at least to me. You will never that kind of sound out of a laptop, you must spend 10k or more, and I bout most of my gear second hand as I had some money, but was certainly not rich by any stretch. Had to shop around, bout some blemished spekaers, used amp, brand new preamp which was $2800 alone. Whew, some are thinking this guy is nuts, 3k for a 2 channel tube preamp? crazy, lock him up, but if you are into sound, you understand. Anyhoo, back to the laptop, hook some high end headphones in this thing, and you are set, computerwise, soundwise, gamingwise, nothing will touch it at this point unless you want to, or have a $1000 or more to spend. The HP, ordered custom as the dv6zqe series on HP's site is $629 + tax, no shipping, but you must find a $50 coupon code avaiable on the net. The one I found expeires today so hope they have another, or I may just order it today. Problem is, I still have the one I bought fro Best Buy which has 4GB ram, Beats Audio, the AMD 3500m APU, 6620G graphics, basically the same without the extra graphics, 500gb HD instead of 640GB, 4GB vs 6GB, those are the only differences, but I also paid a whopping $429 on thanksgiving weekend, and didn't have to wait in line, but of course they are out not, and have another, simular model for sale at $699!!!! They are willing to sel it to me for $599, but another $30, and I have the same computer, and the extra graphics card, minus 2GB ram as it comes with 8GB. In the end, it's still $170 more than I lanned on spending, and on the HP site, it's another $30 on top of that, but also the better choice I think. decisions decisions. lol In the end, if you have money, by all means get the high line i7 with seperate graphics, and a true HD screen, but if on a budget, the AMD chip at this stage of the CPU wars, is you best bet, moneywise, and performance wise, throw in Beats audio, and it's a no brainer. If you can wait, Intel's Ivy Bridge is likely to be Direct X 11 capable, and will probably include graphics comparable to AMD's, but until then, AMD is the choice for anyone on a budget who wants top grade graphics while still getting i5 comparable performance, once overclocked that is, otherwise i3 performance is not shabby either should you choose to not overclock. The way I see all this, AMD knew they were aiming at the i5, but due to battery constraints, dialed it back, but also made it very easy to safely overclock those 4 cores which as I understand it, is not doable with the Intel mobile i series chips. AMD, the poor folk, gamers dream chip for 2011-2012 or until Intel comes up with something better? But Intel has always been high line, preferred, and expensive, but I myself when funds permit, buy Intel, but like a lot of folk now-a-days, i'm poor! Thanks AMD & HP for giving me a top of the line computer, in looks, sound, and power for a cost I can bare. I might add as well, HP's support has been fantastic. Reply
Alouette Radeon - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - linkIntelTech, err... AnandTech has once again proved that Intel's almighty $$$ are enough to buy the integrity of the greedy. Laptops priced in the range of the A8-3500M all have that god-awful Intel HD 3000 GPU (And I'm surprised AMD hasn't sued Intel due to trade-name infringement). Seriously guys, do you really think that stacking a bunch of Intel-based laptop configurations that cost more than 2x the price of a Llano laptop is relevant? Or dedicating more than half of the review to showing just how superior Intel's CPU portion of SB is compared to AMD's A8? This review deliberately missed the entire point of Llano, a low-cost laptop that can play Skyrim smoothly with just the IGP! And yes Anand, I have an A8-3500M with no extra graphics on top of the 6620G and I DO play Skyrim on it! In most other tests you have far more games than you showed here but since at the same price point Intel gets massacred, its superior CPU cores be damned, you did your best to just go over it quickly and not point out the obvious! AMD didn't design the A8 to compete with the i7 and because of that, I call this review pathelogically dishonest. It's amazing how tomshardware and techreport managed to get it right and stuck with Llano's immediate competition which it handily destroys. It doesn't matter what fancy CPU Intel throws into a laptop when doing gaming comparisons with Llano. If it has the HD 3000 (Which all-too many Intel laptops do), it's toast. Let's look at it this way... The Acer Aspire 5560-8480 is a perfect example of a perfectly good A8 APU that costs $550 at newegg. It has a 500GB HD and 4GB of RAM to make it perfect for gaming. Now, what can be had at that price point from Intel? The Lenovo G570 which has (you guessed it) the Intel HD 3000 GPU. There is one anomaly in the list as for $20 more you can get a better laptop in regard to pure gaming performance with the Acer Aspire 7739G-6676 with an i5-480M and nVidia GT 610 but you can expect about half of the battery life from it because it doesn't have the power saving and management features of SB which makes it alright as a desktop replacement but doesn't touch the A8's mobility. Keep in mind that tomshardware showed that the A8-3500M can game for a full 50 minutes longer (despite its vastly superior IGP) on batteries than an i5-2520M using only its HD 3000! Intel has 109 laptops for under $700 listed on newegg. Of those, only 8 have some kind of graphics other than the HD 3000 and 27 of them are not SB-based, despite the fact that several of them are more expensive than Llano with its vastly superior battery life. I'm more than glad about the choice I made despite the FUD that is as commonplace on anandtech.net as it is in the bloody Tea Party. Reply