AMD Mobile Llano CPU - ultra portable with all day battery life?

[Fjodor2001]

Hi,

I'm looking for an ultra portable notebook with ~11.6" screen and 1-1.5 kg (2.2-3.3 lbs) weight. Preferrably it should last for ~8+ hours of low intensity work (surfing the web, reading email, viewing documents, listening to music) with WLAN turned on. Also, I'd like it to be capable of playing high bitrate 1080p videos (e.g. Blu-ray rips) perfectly, and it should be able to do that using the CPU (i.e. without IGP hardware accellerated decoding) in case the video uses a codec that the IGP cannot decode.

Do you think is possible to achive all of the above for a notebook using any of the AMD Mobile Llano CPUs?

 

[sm625]

You're going to be paying a $200 premium just for certain corner cases on video decoding. Think about how much that is really worth to you if that's the only case where you'd need significant cpu power. The cheapest dual core llano notebook chip will run most of your rarer codecs at a reasonable speed, but I'm sure there are cases where it would get bogged down. If I were you I'd just convert those videos. An 11.6" notebook isnt going to have 1080p anyway so you're talking about really narrow corner cases where an exotic codec meets an external monitor. I dont think it is worth stepping up from potentially as low as $450 to $700 or more to be 100% confident that every single thing you try to play is going to actually play flawlessly on an external display.

 

[Fjodor2001]

You're going to be paying a $200 premium just for certain corner cases on video decoding. Think about how much that is really worth to you if that's the only case where you'd need significant cpu power. [...] If I were you I'd just convert those videos. An 11.6" notebook isnt going to have 1080p anyway so you're talking about really narrow corner cases where an exotic codec meets an external monitor. I dont think it is worth stepping up from potentially as low as $450 to $700 or more to be 100% confident that every single thing you try to play is going to actually play flawlessly on an external display.

Thanks for the info. I want to be able to connect it to a TV to play movies as well, that's why I'd like it to support 1080p. I don't like the idea of having to check in advance what codec a movie uses and convert it from time to time. Also, converting a movie from one format to another results in loss of quality.

The cheapest dual core llano notebook chip will run most of your rarer codecs at a reasonable speed, but I'm sure there are cases where it would get bogged down.

Would the quad core Llanos be able to decode all codecs using the CPU? While still fulfilling the battery life & weight requirements mentioned earlier?

 

[wahdangun]

Thanks for the info. I want to be able to connect it to a TV to play movies as well, that's why I'd like it to support 1080p. I don't like the idea of having to check in advance what codec a movie uses and convert it from time to time. Also, converting a movie from one format to another results in loss of quality.



Would the quad core Llanos be able to decode all codecs using the CPU? While still fulfilling the battery life & weight requirements mentioned earlier?

yes, the quad core llano should do that, and based on anand bench it have 164 minute while doing intense gaming, before run out of juice. And can last 6-7 hour doing light task

 

[CTho9305]

If you can sacrifice the any-codec requirement, a Zacate-based system might work even better for you (weight/battery life). I think the HP dm1z hits your other requirements, and I think Best Buy currently sells them for $379. I'm writing this post using one.

 

[Joseph F]

yes, the quad core llano should do that, and based on anand bench it have 164 minute while doing intense gaming, before run out of juice. And can last 6-7 hour doing light task

Did you even read the OP? There is no way that a 35-45W quad-core Llano would be able to fit in an 11.6" ~2.5lb laptop. You're lucky to get away with half of that in that form-factor.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Did you even read the OP? There is no way that a 35-45W quad-core Llano would be able to fit in an 11.6" ~2.5lb laptop. You're lucky to get away with half of that in that form-factor.

Doesn't it all come down to how well the Llano APU is able to lower power usage when idle (or under low load)? The TDP only specifies the max power used. See for example this post:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31308217&postcount=2

where it's concluded that the idle power consumption for Sandy Bridge does not correlate with TDP. So for the Sandy Bridge CPUs mentioned in that post the idle power consumption is the same even though the TDP differs.

 

[wahdangun]

Did you even read the OP? There is no way that a 35-45W quad-core Llano would be able to fit in an 11.6" ~2.5lb laptop. You're lucky to get away with half of that in that form-factor.

nah, i think its not impossible to do that, I even see HP dual core athalon neo notebook with HD 3450 GPU in it, and that thing even have higher TDP than Llano and come in 12" form factor.

 

[Mopetar]

The new Macbook Airs are probably coming out soon and I would imagine that they'll probably fit most or all of those requirements. No idea when they're coming out or what kind of processor they'll have, but if you're not doing any heavy lifting, a lower end SB processor will probably be able to handle it.

 

[Zap]

I'm looking for an ultra portable notebook with ~11.6" screen and 1-1.5 kg (2.2-3.3 lbs) weight. Preferrably it should last for ~8+ hours of low intensity work (surfing the web, reading email, viewing documents, listening to music) with WLAN turned on.

You'd like it all for $100 and available yesterday, right?

Probably won't happen at this time, unless maybe AMD comes out with a lower wattage A4 CPU than 35W, perhaps once they get native dual cores instead of harvested quads.

As it is right now (or whenever they actually come out) to get 8 hour idling time (or 6-7 hour web browsing) you need around a 60Wh battery, which isn't going to happen anywhere near 1kg weight. 1.5kg might be possible with a smaller battery.

 

[386DX]

If you're not set on AMD CPU, you can get a Lenovo Thinkpad X220 that will fit your needs. The X220 is a 12.5" Sandy Bridge laptop that weighs 2.9 lbs without battery, a standard 6 cell battery should put it right around your weight limit of 3.3 lbs. While its not the cheapest laptop its easily the best in its class. What you pay for is real 7-9 hrs battery life (every review using the standard 6 cell battery has gotten over 7+ hrs with wifi/screen on), MIL-SPEC build quality, best keyboard in the business, and a true IPS screen (pick HD Premium Screen upgrade). If the battery life isn't enough for you, there's also the option to get a 1.5 lb battery slice (detachable) that give you near 20 hrs of battery life. Price wise the SlickDeal forums have had many deals for this laptop for around the $700-$900 mark for Sandy Bridge i5 and i7 models.

 

[Fjodor2001]

The Lenovo Thinkpad X220 sounds like a nice notebook.

I'm not set on an AMD CPU, but I'd like the notebook to play 24p videos properly which Sandy Bridge CPUs doesn't do due to the 23.976 Hz bug in the Intel 6-series chipsets (H67/P67). I don't know if Intel has fixed that problem in the Z68 chipset though?

 

[veri745]

Probably won't happen at this time, unless maybe AMD comes out with a lower wattage A4 CPU than 35W, perhaps once they get native dual cores instead of harvested quads.

The extra disabled cores shouldn't actually hurt battery life too much, assuming that power gating is doing its job on the disabled cores. It should bring leakage current down near 0.

Also, it's hard to compare a 35W athlon II to a 35W llano, since llano introduces power gating, boost, and a GPU into the mix, none of which were included on the athlon II's.

The Llano might have the same TDP, but average and idle power draw will be greatly improved.

 

[podspi]

It actually would be interesting if somebody wrote an article looking at this. With the proliferation of GPU-accelerated video playback, I have no clue what the CPU requirements are to play back various types of video smoothly.