The Llano Desktop Preview: AMD A8-3850 CPU & GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2011 12:00 AM ESTIf you haven't gotten the hint, today is all about Llano. The big story is of course Llano's notebook appearance; however, in the coming weeks you'll be hearing a lot more about Llano on the desktop as well. This is AMD's Socket-FM1, the brand new socket that'll be used for desktop Llano parts:
If you read our Computex coverage, the socket should look pretty familiar. Motherboard manufacturers all over Taiwan are busy readying their Socket-FM1 boards for retail release. In fact, there was so much interest in desktop Llano on behalf of the motherboard manufacturers that a number of Socket-FM1 boards and CPUs made their way off the island as Computex ended.
Existing Socket-AM3 coolers will work on FM1 motherboards
By now you may have already seen a lot of information leaked from AMD's Llano presentations, as well as its desktop strategy. In the past few days performance numbers have been revealed as well. While we're hard at work on our full review of AMD's desktop Llano APU, we wanted to chime in with some thoughts on Llano's desktop performance.
AMD isn't ready to disclose pricing or the entire product matrix for Llano on the desktop, but what we do have is the high-end desktop Llano SKU: AMD's A8-3850.
The 3850 has four cores running at 2.9GHz and doesn't support Turbo Core. On the GPU side it has the full Radeon HD 6550D configuration with 400 shader processors running at 600MHz.
Sandy Bridge's GPU performance is the target, but how much better will AMD do on the desktop? Let's find out.
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starfalcon - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Well there's a few ways to look at it.I've played tons of games at 1024x600 resolution, they can still look pretty good.
Console games run around that resolution sometimes too, so apparently millions of people are fine with it. It's still way above a DVD resolution.
It's not much of a change to 1366x768 either.
IGPs are pretty limited on bandwidth so go get discrete to play at 1920x1200 obviously.
Just my 2 cents.
Griswold - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I dont see why you toss consoles or DVD in the mix here. We're not talking huge but low dpi TV screens where resolutions like this are quite normal but screens that are used for computers. A screen with that resolution would be tiny, compared the standard these days - and nobody would accept that unless its a crapbook.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Keep in mind that these are entry level GPUs here, anything above 1280 x 1024 isn't really going to do too well. Llano at least lets us have a conversation at 1280 x 1024 but for the most part integrated solutions are going to keep you to these types of resolutions. I tried to provide both a reference point to older IGP results (1024 x 768) as well as some perspective for discrete cards (page 3 at 1280 x 1024). As you can see by some of the numbers on page 3, at 1280 x 1024 in many benchmarks we're pretty close to 30 fps already.That being said, this is just a preview. If you'd like I'll provide some resolution scaling data in the full review :)
Take care,
Anand
Jamahl - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I disagree. There are plenty of cases where the AMD chip is in the 100's. Nobody expects them to run Metro 2033 on high so don't bother using that as an excuse.1680 minimum, and medium settings - we'll see who holds on to the fps and who collapses. And for god sake put some decent RAM in the AMD system.
Griswold - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
QFTwhoaaaaaaaa - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I have to concur with everyone else, Anand.There were a couple of tests where this setup had 80-100 fps.
I think particular attention ought to be paid to the most popular games in your list, and that's probably Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 + Black Ops and WoW.
Given that the Llano is a budget desktop chip, who is going to buy one? The semi casual gamer who is probably interested in the Call of Duty franchise or World of Warcraft.
And in both of those games this APU gets 100+ fps.
Most screens these days are widescreen, 1366 x 768, 1280 x 720, 1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1080. I think these are the resolutions to focus on.
But I really appreciate the review having just discovered this web site last week it's really nice. Keep up the great work!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
My apologies - I was referencing the data on page 3 which purposefully looks at higher resolution/quality settings. There you're not looking at 100 fps in most situations but more down to earth frame rates.I've already begun work on high resolution testing and varying memory bandwidth, our story at the end of the month will focus much more attention on these questions as a result of your feedback :)
Take care,
Anand
veri745 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
This would be a perfect scenario for the list older games that you guys were putting together a few months ago.Show us some 2005-2008 action at decent resolutions (1366x/1680x)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
Have any specific requests you'd like to see?Take care,
Anand
veri745 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
A couple suggestionsOblivion
Bioshock
Empire: TW
Titan Quest
Stalker SOC
Torchlight
GRID
In no particular order