a8-3870k availible

[ctsoth]

In stock at newegg!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...01&Tpk=a8-3870

 

[blckgrffn]

Nice! Hopefully GF is getting their crap inline and we'll see these drop in price soon... Ideally they would be no more expensive than a i3-2100 (in my reality, that is )

 

[Soulkeeper]

at $145 that puts them $10 above msrp right ?
Tempting to hit the buy button, but I think maybe i'll just wait and see if I can buy it locally instead.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Nice! Hopefully GF is getting their crap inline and we'll see these drop in price soon... Ideally they would be no more expensive than a i3-2100 (in my reality, that is )

Picked up my i3 2100 at frys for $125 being a boxed processor so the 3870k is $20 more .

If the graphics can be oced as well it would be a incredibly good value chip we all know the 6550d can blow the doors off hd3000 as well as hd2000 so its $20 higher mrsp can be justified.

 

[blckgrffn]

Picked up my i3 2100 at frys for $125 being a boxed processor so the 3870k is $20 more .

If the graphics can be oced as well it would be a incredibly good value chip we all know the 6550d can blow the doors off hd3000 as well as hd2000 so its $20 higher mrsp can be justified.

*shrugs*

The gaming performance of an i3-2100 is remarkable with in an add in card. A huge plus is cheap whatever-works DDR3 has little to do with how it performs where the A8 is going to be very sensitive to that.

You have a broad choice of motherboards with LGA 1155, whereas with the A8 you get the rare AMD Bastard-Child FM1 that is just done.

Let's face it - AMD chips that perform the same or close to the same as their Intel counterpart need to be cheaper to sell well. Because they are AMD chips, period.

And I can pick up an i3-2100 at Micro Center for $107 out the door. And a Phenom 2 840 for ~$65. I don't think that means much, though, except that I buy all my CPUs from MC for the time being. It is also possible that I may have a very warped sense of where CPUs should be priced, I suppose, but I stand by my statement.

All that said, I have been one of those thinking that this CPU could be a winner for AMD. Just not at $145. That should be the CPU and motherboard, IMHO. They have moved the graphics silicon from the board to the CPU but for some reason think I should pay for it twice (ie, the boards aren't much cheaper.)

Lastly, I believe the die-size went down from Propus to Llano, so if those quads were $100 I expect the same from the current generation of processors, especially since they are not that much faster at all general CPU tasks.

 

[notty22]

It's unbelievable that AMD has not sent these out to be reviewed ?
If anyone finds a buyer who has done some testing , please post.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Probably because they are only partially unlocked and they don't want anyone to know
the anandtech article still contains "another 5 multipliers above" even tho AMD told them to remove "partially" and replace it with "fully"

 

[Soulkeeper]

*shrugs*

The gaming performance of an i3-2100 is remarkable with in an add in card. A huge plus is cheap whatever-works DDR3 has little to do with how it performs where the A8 is going to be very sensitive to that.

You have a broad choice of motherboards with LGA 1155, whereas with the A8 you get the rare AMD Bastard-Child FM1 that is just done.

Let's face it - AMD chips that perform the same or close to the same as their Intel counterpart need to be cheaper to sell well. Because they are AMD chips, period.

And I can pick up an i3-2100 at Micro Center for $107 out the door. And a Phenom 2 840 for ~$65. I don't think that means much, though, except that I buy all my CPUs from MC for the time being. It is also possible that I may have a very warped sense of where CPUs should be priced, I suppose, but I stand by my statement.

All that said, I have been one of those thinking that this CPU could be a winner for AMD. Just not at $145. That should be the CPU and motherboard, IMHO. They have moved the graphics silicon from the board to the CPU but for some reason think I should pay for it twice (ie, the boards aren't much cheaper.)

Lastly, I believe the die-size went down from Propus to Llano, so if those quads were $100 I expect the same from the current generation of processors, especially since they are not that much faster at all general CPU tasks.

Good Post,
we need to remain critical of AMD/Intel
they'll milk us for whatever they can.

 

[tweakboy]

I cant go on newegg gives me error page.. weird.... What is that Bulldozer ?

that is one bad ass mofu,, OC it to 5Ghz and call it a night...

 

[Vesku]

No clock improvements over mature GF 45nm it seems. This site claims "AMD indicate that the GPUs will all hit around 960MHz (with 1866MHz memory) and multiplier overclocks will hit the 3500-3800MHz range. Our APU sample did both with minor voltage tweaks."

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...graphics-performance-review-amd-a8-3870k.html

Hopefully 32nm will mature as well or better than 45nm.

Edit: Wish they tested other resolutions, expecting Llano to run games at 1080P is a quite a leap of faith. Even next gen APUs will dwell in the 1680x1050 realm or even lower for most modern demanding games.

 

[Soulkeeper]

No clock improvements over mature GF 45nm it seems. This site claims "AMD indicate that the GPUs will all hit around 960MHz (with 1866MHz memory) and multiplier overclocks will hit the 3500-3800MHz range. Our APU sample did both with minor voltage tweaks."

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...graphics-performance-review-amd-a8-3870k.html

Hopefully 32nm will mature as well or better than 45nm.

Edit: Wish they tested other resolutions, expecting Llano to run games at 1080P is a quite a leap of faith. Even next gen APUs will dwell in the 1680x1050 realm or even lower for most modern demanding games.

so they were able to confirm that 38x mult worked ?

btw I game at 2048x1536 on my 3850
not much of a gamer here however
my radeon 6670 just sits on a shelf collecting dust

 

[OS]

No clock improvements over mature GF 45nm it seems. This site claims "AMD indicate that the GPUs will all hit around 960MHz (with 1866MHz memory) and multiplier overclocks will hit the 3500-3800MHz range. Our APU sample did both with minor voltage tweaks."

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...graphics-performance-review-amd-a8-3870k.html

Hopefully 32nm will mature as well or better than 45nm.

Edit: Wish they tested other resolutions, expecting Llano to run games at 1080P is a quite a leap of faith. Even next gen APUs will dwell in the 1680x1050 realm or even lower for most modern demanding games.

wow if they can clock the onboard GPU to 900+ MHz that is stupid fast.

I have two Dell Vostro 3500 notebooks, one with sandy bridge i3 HD3000, one with AMD A8.
The AMD GPU is an easy 50% percent faster and that is with the 444 MHz GPU and the difference becomes more apparent the more GPU intensive the game.
The A8 will play Crysis 2 at base settings, native res 1366x768.
The HD3000 can only do the same at 800x600.

I believe the number of render units are the same between the mobile and desktop A8, but with a clockrate that high, i think there is a chance crysis 2 would be playable at 1920x1080.

Another benefit is if the IGP is not fast enough, you can throw in a budget discrete Radeon and crossfire. The IGP is not wasted.

This platform might be of really high value for low to mid budget gamers.

 

[Vesku]

so they were able to confirm that 38x mult worked ?

btw I game at 2048x1536 on my 3850
not much of a gamer here however
my radeon 6670 just sits on a shelf collecting dust

Hence my caveat of "modern demanding games", Llano graphics are fine for games at high res if the games are targeted to run on modest systems. Would be nifty if reviews threw in some flash game performance info. ;p

@OS- these are desktop chips. :S 900MHz is a great boost from stock but the 760/790 IGPs could hit those speeds also, granted with a lot less shaders but still shows how GF 32nm has yet to really prove itself.

 

[OS]

yeah i know, i'm just saying even the mobile IGP at 444 MHz has good performance, the desktop IGP at 900 MHz would be awesome for an IGP.

 

[Vesku]

Agreed there, I definitely like that mobile iGPUs are improving at a much faster pace now.

 

[sm625]

What a craptastic review from hardwareheaven. No description of clock speeds on their graphs. And no comparison to i3. And most importantly, no comparison to a pentium G620 + HD6670. What the heck are they smoking? I want to know if this apu, when overclocked on a stock cooler, can beat a G620 paired with a 6670, because that is how much this thing costs. Who cares how fast a 3870k is when paired with a 6670? That is a $220 combo. Just who in their right mind is gonna buy that? And supposing someone did buy that, then how does it compare with an i3 and a 6670?

 

[Vesku]

At first I wasn't even sure they overclocked it, until I got to the relevant section of text.

Also, I've viewed hybrid x-fire as gimmicky since it was introduced with the HD3000 and similar NB IGPs. As for G620 + 6670 vs A8-3870K it's the same tradeoff as Llano vs i5 in the mobile space. The A8 is going to have a lot more compute OCed to 3.5-3.8 but even at 900MHz the iGPU is still bandwidth starved compared to the 6670 as well as being down some shaders. I would expect that there are bound to be some games where the extra CPU power offsets the slower graphics and it would be interesting to see a site actually venture to find out.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Hence my caveat of "modern demanding games", Llano graphics are fine for games at high res if the games are targeted to run on modest systems. Would be nifty if reviews threw in some flash game performance info. ;p

@OS- these are desktop chips. :S 900MHz is a great boost from stock but the 760/790 IGPs could hit those speeds also, granted with a lot less shaders but still shows how GF 32nm has yet to really prove itself.

I had a feeling I should have only left the first line in my post ...
I didn't want to turn this thread into an adobe flash debate or resolution debate.

still trying to see evidence of 35+ mult being verified, which is all that really matters.

 

[Vesku]

Well, the hardware heaven review is very focused on 1080P hybrid graphics and lacks detail regarding anything else, but their OC was 3800MHz. Unfortunately they don't show a CPUz of the overclock so can't say what FSB they had it set to, if they left FSB alone that would mean a 38x multi available. They do have a discussion thread if you want to ask them.

 

[micrometers]

Yeah, looking at it the price/performance just isn't there. Though the elegance of a one chip solution (+ water-cooling) is intriguing.

I do think that eventually they'll get costs down and it'll be the next celeron 300a, since with over clock the gfx capability improves also.

 

[Vesku]

I agree with your line of thinking, karmypolitics. With these A series Llano I see the potential and am crossing my fingers for Trinity. Of course the extra value may not appear and instead we may just see the low end discrete disappear, making these APUs the defacto value proposition.