Hardware AMD Launches Llano APU

I really expected more from this community. I expect Bit-Tech's readers to be a bit more informed and technologically rational than Johnny Lowbrow dragging his knuckles around his local big box store.

There are some serious misunderstanding of what Llano is and isn't. You'd think the article would have helped.
It isn't a new CPU architecture, it is an evolved CPU architecture.
It isn't a competitor to to Intel on CPU intensive tasks (how could it with PhII-based cores?), it is a competitor for CPU+GPU intensive tasks.
In fact, it isn't even a competitor to Intel i3/i5 laptops (including battery life), it is a competitor to Intel i3/i5+discrete graphics laptops.

AMD looked at the laptop market and saw that there was a lot of laptop users who don't need/want more CPU performance but who do want more GPU performance (the fact that they couldn't compete on the CPU-side in the short term probably helped!).
I happen to be one of these users. My 2GHz C2D laptop is fine for CPU tasks. Word processing and spreadsheets open/close/transform just as fast as my quad-core desktop. Program compiling and multimedia encode/transcode is within an acceptable number of seconds that I don't much notice. I do more intensive tasks on my desktop anyway.
I do miss the lack of GPU power though. The power of a discrete GPU when I want it, but that also doesn't break battery life when I don't? Yes, please.

There is often an assumption among comment authors that what they want is what everyone wants. Just because this subjectively isn't for you, or even for a business environment (although I would dispute this), doesn't mean it is objectively a failure or a poor product. A Llano laptop without an additional discrete GPU would be the best fit if I was in the market for a replacement laptop right now.

 

This Mainstream APU solution would make a good general purpose Mini-ITX based system.

Although, from a performance standpoint, it looks like AMD had to make design compromises...I think its best to wait for the 2012 replacement: Trinity. (2nd generation Bulldozer cores with Radeon HD 6700 class IGP.)

Llano is a good first step in the right direction. Now all AMD has to do is give it some serious gonads!

 

AMD didn't look at the market and decide anything. They have strengths (their Ati gpu's) and weaknesses (their AMD cpu's). They reacted to Intel who have already put the cpu and gpu together.

Llano was what AMD could make. The gpu is significantly better, the cpu significantly worse. Unfortunately as people keep pointing out that cpu performance is very important - after all this is a cpu first and foremost, if it can't do that well then it doesn't matter how powerful the on-chip gpu is or how many fancy names you give it.

 

I dont really think that cpu performance is all that important. Netbooks are popular for one, and laptops are generally pretty poor for another.
Laptops are bought so that people can do productive tasks on their lap. They can also browse and watch films with them. Throw in a spot of The Sims or some other fluff for casual gaming.

4 gigs of ram and an SSD + llano is a winning laptop looking at this kind of usage. There is a definite ceiling on price; a llano laptop should not be an expensive laptop, but at that price it is compelling.

 

AMD is targeting the market for $500-$600 laptops, but...

...the problem is that Llano-based laptops won't be any cheaper at this price then what you can get an i3 or i5 based laptop for and the HD3000 graphics is more then enough for all the people who are not interested in playing any games.

Stop talking about playing games on $500 laptops please, when the vast majority of laptops is used for productivity-tasks that need nothing else then CPU-power, aslong as the software isn't made for using the GPU to do this.
People who want to play games on their laptops grab something with discrete graphics for $700, which again destroys Llanos APU.

Seriously. I'm not against the idea of what AMD tried there, but it just isn't good enough compared to the other solutions allready on the market.

 

In Germany you can get the following laptop for around £500 including 19% VAT:

http://www.notebooksnochgünstiger.de/eshop.php?action=article_detail&s_supplier_aid=0693537

It has an HD6750M discrete graphics card and a 320 shader IGP too. The A6 APU will have similar CPU performance to the A8 Anandtech has tested and the HD6750M is much faster than the discrete HD6630M tested in the review. The GT540M tested in the review is only found in more expensive Core i3 and Core i5 laptops over £550 to £600.

The GT540M is also slower than the HD6750M:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-540M.41715.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6750M.43958.0.html

The HD6750M is much faster than an HD6630M:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6750M.43958.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43963.0.html

Even,with the IGP switched off the AMD laptop will be faster. Once AMD gets the drivers for asymmetrical Crossfire sorted out the gaming performance will be quite impressive for a £500 laptop.

 

If you look at the tests though, the high end Llano laptop chips are the equivelent to an ATI 5450...which means that no, you can't play resonable games at resonable settings at resonable resolutions and resonable frame rates. Sure, at lower resolutions and settings you can, but not at high resolutions.

Most of the even low end discrete mobile GPUs paired with a Sandybridge chip managed higher FPS in games. Since most laptops, even lower end ones have some kind of discrete GPU.....

All this really does is add a bit more gaming performance to the low end of the laptop market. Notice with the tests you were seeing around 768P resolutions with medium/high settings. Sure plenty of 15" laptops have a screen of that resolution, but there are also plenty with higher resolutions and especially any larger laptop tends to have a higher resolution screen.

This is either a casual gaming laptop, or else something where you just need your gaming fix and don't mind turning the settings way down to do it.

Since this is basically a 5750 I believe baked on to the die, my guess is the two big things holding it back are TDP (for lower clocks) and also sharing the memory bandwidth with the CPU. SB shares the same sin of sharing memory bandwidth.

I hope that in a next generation APU that the APU can have a second memory controller baked on die and have a couple of slots added on the board so that it can have its own memory and seperate memory link as an option. Memory is pretty dirt cheap, and you don't need much of it. A couple of 1GB DDR31600 sticks (or even faster) costing you maybe $25 and a seperate memory link I bet would drastically improve game performance, especially at higher settings and resolutions.

For those who don't care, they don't spend the money on seperate memory and the fGPU uses main memory.

 

The CPU still sucks, if I want to encode videos, render 3d-graphics or do some work in Photoshop etc.

If we're talking about playing games on a 15" 1366x768 screen, then even the GT540M is capable of playing most games in medium settings.

Look at this same priced ASUS X43SV with GT540M and i3-2310M. It'll destroy the Llano in price-performance overall.

 

The £500 laptop I linked to has both an HD6750M which is faster than the GT540M found in more expensive Core i5 and Core i7 laptops and has a 320 shader IGP too. It will be faster than the laptop Anandtech tested as even the A6 CPU used has a higher base clock.

BTW,the HD6630M uses DDR3 and the HD6750M I mentioned uses GDDR5. The latter is also clocked 115MHZ higher too. So the £500 HP laptop will be faster than the GT540M laptop as the GPU faster. The HD6630M is rated as a slower part than the GT540M.

Once you turn up the quality settings to medium the HD3000 falls massively behind.



















BTW,Anandtech also re-tested the desktop A8 with faster RAM too:

"RE: Memory clock speed? by Anand Lal Shimpi on Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Here's some additional data to tide you over

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/llano/review/desktop/ddr3scaling-16x10.png
"











The GPU in the HD5570 runs at 650MHZ whereas the GPU in the HD655D runs at 600MHZ.

 

Most people who buy £500 laptops render don't they??

If anything a slower hard disk is one of the major bottlenecks for a laptop especially for image editing purposes.

It also looks like Microsoft Office is gaining from GPU acceleration too:

http://www.guru3d.com/news/microsoft-office-2010-gpu-acceleration-detailed/

The laptop you linked to uses a slower 5400RPM drive as opposed to the HP which uses a 7200RPM drive.

The GT540M is still slower than the HD6750M:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6750M.43958.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-540M.41715.0.html

The HD6750M is the same discrete graphics card found in the MacBook Pro 15" and 17" laptops.

If an HD6630M DDR3 with an A8 CPU(clocked lower than the A6 in the laptop I linked to) is not that much slower than a GT540M which is rated as a faster part,then an HD6750M which is clocked 115MHZ higher,has GDDR5 RAM(twice the bandwidth) will be faster in any games.

I remember when Zacate was released people were whinging how CULV laptops were around the same price and had a much faster CPU,the X4500 IGP was good enough for video decoding and how Zacate would fail. Funnily,enough AMD has had no issue selling every Zacate chip they have made.

TBH,even though I tend to buy Intel CPUs due to their better SFF PC support I hope AMD does well with their new range.

 

dual graphics, quad core, ddr3 yes, yes, yes, I want to see a sub £500 price tag, with hdmi output for my big telly, its about time the pc gamer went MOBILE, without getting charged £££££££, If my laptop could play crysis in 1080p, (over hdmi), then I could finally see those ps3 fanboys shudder with envy.