A-3850 or i-2105 - Anaxtech review confusing me

[AnandThenMan]

The mass market appeal here is obvious, surely?

Some here seem downright desperate to downplay Llano for whatever reason. Llano is absolutely perfect for the target market, AMD will sell every one they can make.

 

[RyanGreener]

People are downplaying Llano because it's not really the revolution in CPU performance everyone wants from AMD....but that's not really the target.

 

[Arkaign]

Some here seem downright desperate to downplay Llano for whatever reason. Llano is absolutely perfect for the target market, AMD will sell every one they can make.

I want AMD to sell every llano they make, I think it's a good product, but it only really makes sense for :

(1)- Low end notebooks

(2)- HTPC

At which it's far better than Intel for either at that price point.

A person competent to build his own desktop system who wants to play games? That's the absolute worst-case customer for llano. That's not downplaying it, that's just telling the honest truth. For the $, a decent AM3 build with a decent discrete GPU will run circles around it in gaming. You really only give up two things : USB3 (which is nice, but a very cheap add-in via small PCIe card), and power usage, of which I would think Llano would consume a bit less power than say a PhII 955 + 5750.

I don't really know how you follow the logic of dismissing people who are saying to gamers : "Don't buy this AMD product for your use, buy these AMD products instead!"

If a typical gamer has a ~$100ish 20" 1920x1080 display, llano + new/recent game experience is mostly going to be borderline to terrible at native resolution.

 

[Martimus]

Is the 3850 really slower than the 5570?

The X2 4200+ is way weaker, but I actually would think that you have a little more GPU grunt than the APU.

I don't know. My GPU has 320 shaders running at I think 668MHz, while the APU has 400 shaders running at 600MHz. That seems like a wash, although the APU uses shaders that are 2 generations more advanced (although that doesn't necessarily mean faster).

My card uses 256MB of GDDR3, and a 256b bus. This has more bandwidth than the APU, so if memory bandwidth is an issue, then the HD3850 would likely be faster there, although the low amount of memory might make the APU less likely to run out of memory to fill its frame buffer.

In all, it looks like a wash to me, but that was what I liked about the design. The HD 3850 was fast enough to run most modern games at 1280x1024, so a similar performance on a laptop would be nice. I ran Crysis on my computer in DX9 with mostly high settings and it rarely slowed down at all. (I actually can't remember a place where it slowed down, but I think it might have in the icy area during a battle.)

 

[sm625]

If a typical gamer has a ~$100ish 20" 1920x1080 display, llano + new/recent game experience is mostly going to be borderline to terrible at native resolution.

The reality is that very few gaming hours are spent doing things that llano cant do. All the real game time is put into games like WoW, SC2, Sims 3, LoL, etc. All can run fine on llano, worst case scenario is they run with slightly reduced settings that are actually rather common in the real world. The vast majority of gaming hours right now are put in using hardware that is substantially inferior to llano. Most of these people will be quite impressed when they go to best buy and try one of the $449 llano notebooks. Unlike the intel notebooks of the same price bracket...

 

[Arkaign]

Ah yeah, Martimus you're right, the 3850 is indeed a lot slower than I thought, it's actually slower than 2900XT

I agree about the 1280x1024 issue, though some newer titles will even slog to crap there (Witcher 2), as well as having the wrong aspect ratio for the art direction in the game.

For 1280x800 notebooks, it makes a compelling option for sure, and even at 1366x768 it's passable in many titles.

For desktop gaming at native resolution of typical (cheap!) widescreens, for the AAA titles coming out, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

 

[Arkaign]

The reality is that very few gaming hours are spent doing things that llano cant do. All the real game time is put into games like WoW, SC2, Sims 3, LoL, etc. All can run fine on llano, worst case scenario is they run with slightly reduced settings that are actually rather common in the real world. The vast majority of gaming hours right now are put in using hardware that is substantially inferior to llano. Most of these people will be quite impressed when they go to best buy and try one of the $449 llano notebooks.

Notebook? $449? Hell yeah the llano is a great choice.

And sure a lot of people just play WoW or Sims, and that's fine, llano is fine for that as well.

For a desktop build, gaming oriented, it's just a bad choice.

 

[AnandThenMan]

For a desktop build, gaming oriented, it's just a bad choice.

Target market. If you wanted a speedy portable, you didn't buy an Atom based system. But if you wanted cheap with long battery life, it delivered. And it sold in large numbers. People are coming on here listing off all the components that will make a better gaming box than Llano. That's nice, but Llano is for OEM's primarily, its design enables a simplistic and compact (not to mention cost cutting) system.

BTW, looking over the FM1 motherboard choices, we're already seeing sub $70 choices.

 

[nonameo]

Target market. If you wanted a speedy portable, you didn't buy an Atom based system. But if you wanted cheap with long battery life, it delivered. And it sold in large numbers. People are coming on here listing off all the components that will make a better gaming box than Llano. That's nice, but Llano is for OEM's primarily, its design enables a simplistic and compact (not to mention cost cutting) system.

BTW, looking over the FM1 motherboard choices, we're already seeing sub $70 choices.

I agree with you on the OEM part. However, this guy sounds like he wants to build.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Completely misleading statement.

Llano can do far more then play Farmville and Angry Birds. Or have you forgotten that PC games were, in fact, being made before 2010? Games that Llano is fully capable of rendering at respectable speeds.

Why would you want to limit yourself to a system that is only able to play old titles, not even current ones, much less future games coming out???

If you already have a system that is slow and only can play old titles, and dont want to upgrade, that is one thing. But it makes absolutely no sense to me to get a new system that cannot play current games at decent settings.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Some here seem downright desperate to downplay Llano for whatever reason. Llano is absolutely perfect for the target market, AMD will sell every one they can make.

I dont think anyone wants to downplay Llano. I was really hoping for a system that OEM builders could use that would give decent gaming out of the box without having to add a discrete card and worry about upgrading the power supply. And having such systems available to those not knowledgable about computers and gaming might give PC gaming a much needed shot in the arm.

However, desktop Llano is just not adequate graphically to be even a basic gaming box. And on top of that, the CPU is an old architecture that is underclocked. Facts are facts, Llano is a disappointment on the desktop for any sort of gaming use. And I dont understand all the talk about using fast ram, overclocking, etc. Anyone that knowledgable about computers will use a faster AMD quad core or intel CPU and add a discrete card.

 

[jvroig]

However, desktop Llano is just not adequate graphically to be even a basic gaming box.

Of course it is adequate. Not every gaming box is set up to have highest detail, 16xAA and AF, with vsync and triple buffering, and using hi-res monitors.

There are not a lot of them here on Anandtech Forums, maybe, but in the real world, there are many gamers who play the same games we do, and probably with just the same frequency and intensity we do, but on far inferior machines and on lower settings, probably due to budget concerns.

Anecdotally, a couple of years ago, a budget constrained friend of mine had to settle on a very lowly Nvidia GT 220 (or perhaps even a GT 210, I forgot which) and a lower-end Athlon II. After he got to try it out, he thanked me for helping him out with the build given his very tight budget (he has not upgraded for about 6-7 years, and is coming from a really ancient machine, and he kept all he could - pretty much just keyboard, mouse, case and low-res CRT monitor), and said that "Left4Dead plays perfectly". Using our enthusiast definition of "perfectly", he would be far off base. But that's just the thing. We enthusiasts do not hold the monopoly on determining what is "good enough" and what is "perfect", because I doubt we are the most significant portion of the market. Not all of the target audience needs, wants, or even knows about the joys of hi-res, vsync and triple-buffered gameplay with AA and AF maxed and never going below 60FPS.

 

[Pijoto]

Not all of the target audience needs, wants, or even knows about the joys of hi-res, vsync and triple-buffered gameplay with AA and AF maxed and never going below 60FPS.

Personally, there isn't much difference to me between playing games at 1080p or 720p; or maybe I just haven't been able to be spoiled by fully maxed-out games at 1080p, but most games (Mass Effect 2, Batman: AA, Dragon Age, and Fallout 3 to name a few) I've played runs and looks fine at 720p (and btwn 20-30 FPS) on my crappy Radeon 4650 (I'm waiting for Radeon 7000 series to finally upgrade from this POS). Jaggy edges, blurry textures, and slowdowns in fps can be annoying, but for the most part, you learn to look past them.

Llano is perfect for people who are content mucking around at 720p, and don't want to spend too much money. IMO, PC gamers everywhere should welcome Llano, even if they don't buy them; if AMD sells million of these chips, that will mean millions of more potential gamers to PC developers able to run their games at respectable settings.

 

[jvroig]

Personally, there isn't much difference to me between playing games at 1080p or 720p; or maybe I just haven't been able to be spoiled by fully maxed-out games at 1080p, but most games (Mass Effect 2, Batman: AA, Dragon Age, and Fallout 3 to name a few) I've played runs and looks fine at 720p (and btwn 20-30 FPS) on my crappy Radeon 4650 (I'm waiting for Radeon 7000 series to finally upgrade from this POS). Jaggy edges, blurry textures, and slowdowns in fps can be annoying, but for the most part, you learn to look past them.

Llano is perfect for people who are content mucking around at 720p, and don't want to spend too much money. IMO, PC gamers everywhere should welcome Llano, even if they don't buy them; if AMD sells million of these chips, that will mean millions of more potential gamers to PC developers able to run their games at respectable settings.

I certainly appreciate you getting out of at least 2 months of lurking to contribute your experience and thoughts on the matter.

Welcome to the forums! :thumbsup:

 

[Pijoto]

I certainly appreciate you getting out of at least 2 months of lurking to contribute your experience and thoughts on the matter.

Welcome to the forums! :thumbsup:

Thx, been visiting AnandTech for years

 

[ed29a]

I want AMD to sell every llano they make, I think it's a good product, but it only really makes sense for :

(1)- Low end notebooks

(2)- HTPC

(3)- General desktop PCs for the vast majority of the population.

(4)- General notebooks for the vast majority of the population.

There, fixed it for you.

 

[Arkaign]

There, fixed it for you.

Can't say I argue too much with that really. Intel CPUs might be slightly faster for most things, but for general desktops I'd have to assume that most are tied to kind of crappy hdds, mediocre memory, and running pretty light workloads to begin with. All of that will run great on an i3 or a Llano (hell, even an AII-X2 or C2D!).

Not so many years back, 3 years meant a monumental, earth-shattering improvement level (say ~98 w/Celeron 300A, K6 to ~01 w/Athlon K7 and 1Ghz Coppermine) that really paid off with everyday tasks.

Now? Not so much. I bet a lot of units get trashed/replaced just due to the ignorance of the buyer. I recently saw a customer replace a really nice C2D notebook that was about 2 years old with an i3 notebook, and he went from having an HD4650 to Intel HD crap on an i3 platform, the big difference being 8gb of ram and windows 7 64-bit instead of 3gb of ram and windows 7 32-bit. He even unintentionally downgraded from a 1600x900 screen to a 1366x768 one. A fraction of the $ could have been spent on getting 8gb of ram, an ssd, and a windows reload (he paid idiotsquad to copy his data), and he would have had a more capable/fast overall system.

 

[AnandThenMan]

However, desktop Llano is just not adequate graphically to be even a basic gaming box.

This is a flat out lie, and I'm sure you are well aware that it is. If we were to take the average system performance of all systems out there right now, Llano would be much better graphically. And Llano is between 2x to 4x higher performance than the i3-2100, its direct competitor.

So stop with the trolling BS.

 

[Blue Shift]

Why would you want to limit yourself to a system that is only able to play old titles, not even current ones, much less future games coming out???

If you already have a system that is slow and only can play old titles, and dont want to upgrade, that is one thing. But it makes absolutely no sense to me to get a new system that cannot play current games at decent settings.

I've said this before, but...

Remember that Llano is also quite adequate for console ports (since it's far faster than the 360 and ps3), MMORPGs/MOBAs, and Indie games, at decent resolutions (1440x900 or 1680x1050).

The vast majority of PC games that have been released in the past couple of years fall into one of those categories, and I don't see that changing any time soon. There's also a large number of gamers who mostly play only a particular MMORPG or MOBA (DoTA-like arena game) exclusively for years, and a Llano rig would work well for those users.

Additionally, since you can build one for under $400, there's basically no reason to buy a PS3 at all now that Llano is on the table.



So, I'd like to append the following to Arkaign's list:
- MMORPG and MOBA players
- Traditional console gamers