Anyone have a llano rig yet

[hans007]

well i just got my motherboard. an ecs a75f-m2. i bet i'm the only person on anands who has it haha.

that said, the cpu wont be here for 2 more days, and i will be out of town right after it comes. GAH

 

[Gikaseixas]

Well said. I'm even interested in Llano to play around with, but will probably wait for a Micro Center deal or mini ITX motherboards.

Extending past desktops, I'm pretty excited about mobile Llano.



Well, all depends on how you define "hardcore gamers."

I knew this Bulgarian guy who gamed all the time and was REALLY good at the game he played... which was DotA (Warcraft III/Frozen Throne). Is he not a hardcore gamer? Does he need anything better than Llano?

What about all those CS 1.6 players out there that play all the time and even compete against other players, but who won't play anything else?

What about all those who still play original Starcraft/Broodwar? Yes, they're still out there, and some of them play a LOT.

You said it already: All depends on how you define hardcore gamers

To some, people can be called hardcore gamers if they play for several hours, almost everyday.

...and to others a hardcore gamer could be someone like us, peeps with high end pc's, built to perform good at any game thrown at it.

Last, there's a 3rd definition but that's not pc related. Cheers

 

[Gikaseixas]

well i just got my motherboard. an ecs a75f-m2. i bet i'm the only person on anands who has it haha.

that said, the cpu wont be here for 2 more days, and i will be out of town right after it comes. GAH

can't wait for your input. Congrats on your new toy

 

[tweakboy]

WTF is Llano ... its a CPU ? or a GPU ? Why would one get Llano , what you do with it ?

 

[hamunaptra]

WTF is Llano ... its a CPU ? or a GPU ? Why would one get Llano , what you do with it ?

You eat it...

 

[reallyscrued]

WTF is Llano ... its a CPU ? or a GPU ? Why would one get Llano , what you do with it ?

WTF is Sandy Bridge? is it a beach or is it a structure? Why wouldn't one just clean the bridge so it is no longer sandy?

Mysteries of life man.

 

[frostedflakes]

When are the mini ITX boards going to be available?

Tempted to put Llano in one of these along with some high speed DDR3, overclock as much as possible, then mount it on the back of a monitor to make a fairly capable zero-footprint gaming PC.

Really don't need it, but SFF systems are fun to mess around with.

 

[Zap]

...and to others a hardcore gamer could be someone like us, peeps with high end pc's, built to perform good at any game thrown at it.

I thought those were benchmark queens?

You eat it...

Mmmm, chips...

Tempted to put Llano in one of these along with some high speed DDR3, overclock as much as possible, then mount it on the back of a monitor to make a fairly capable zero-footprint gaming PC.

That would be... awesome! :thumbsup:

 

[grimpr]

When are the mini ITX boards going to be available?

Tempted to put Llano in one of these along with some high speed DDR3, overclock as much as possible, then mount it on the back of a monitor to make a fairly capable zero-footprint gaming PC.

Really don't need it, but SFF systems are fun to mess around with.

Rumour street says that AMD will release a Black Box edition of Llano when the 32nm rampup makes it hot in Q3 and later.

 

[yottabit]

When are the mini ITX boards going to be available?

Tempted to put Llano in one of these along with some high speed DDR3, overclock as much as possible, then mount it on the back of a monitor to make a fairly capable zero-footprint gaming PC.

Really don't need it, but SFF systems are fun to mess around with.

Pretty sure that wouldn't work at all sadly, that uses an external power supply which you can usually find up to around 120W or so which would bust on an A8. Plus I'm pretty sure an A8 would overheat in there. An overclocked A8 at full load can draw ~260W.

I'm planning to come up with a custom enclosure that will house a miniITX Llano, SFF PSU (250-350W 80+) and just enough room to clear something like a Prolimatech Samuel 17:

That should be something nice

 

[frostedflakes]

Be sure to post pics.

And yeah, I figured there probably wouldn't be a ton of OCing headroom in a case like that. 260W seems really high, though, you have a link for that measurement?

Anyway, you can get PicoPSU that provide up to 160W (and PicoPSU rating is somewhat irrelevant since it just passes +12V, how much you can deliver on that rail is more dependent on the AC adapter), and it's really not hard at all to find power bricks >120W. Dell DA-2, for example, is rated for 220W output @ 12V. Heat would probably be an issue in that case long before power was I think.

 

[Gikaseixas]

I thought those were benchmark queens?

haha and that too

 

[yottabit]

Be sure to post pics.

And yeah, I figured there probably wouldn't be a ton of OCing headroom in a case like that. 260W seems really high, though, you have a link for that measurement?

Anyway, you can get PicoPSU that provide up to 160W (and PicoPSU rating is somewhat irrelevant since it just passes +12V, how much you can deliver on that rail is more dependent on the AC adapter), and it's really not hard at all to find power bricks >120W. Dell DA-2, for example, is rated for 220W output @ 12V. Heat would probably be an issue in that case long before power was I think.

Here's a link as requested:
http://www.overclockers.com/overclocking-amds-llano-apu/?utm_source=pr

Hmm I never thought about finding a 3rd party power brick. That's a good idea! I imagine a first gen xbox 360 power adapter would be pretty good and a dime a dozen.

 

[Patrese]

WTF is Llano ... its a CPU ? or a GPU ? Why would one get Llano , what you do with it ?

You asked what is a Llama, right?

 

[Cannibalskunk]

WTF is Sandy Bridge? is it a beach or is it a structure? Why wouldn't one just clean the bridge so it is no longer sandy?

Mysteries of life man.

Sandy is the name of the river the bridge crosses. Call off Robert Stack, mystery solved!

 

[Phynaz]

You eat it...

C'mon, don't mess with tweak. Everybody knows you smoke it.

 

[winston9t4]

Eh, I would just pick up a used 4870 or 400-series Nvidia for 50 bucks and play mw2 maxed... That's my point. Llano only makes complete sense for a laptop. With a z68, htpc guys can turn on and off the graphics card, using it only when needed.

I'm putting together an inexpensive secondary rig to play some games, and did exactly this (4870). Decided to go match it with an i3-2100. I think I'll have paid about the same as an A8 + mobo, and should get much better performance.

I agree, Llano only makes sense if balancing performance with compactness is a big criteria.

 

[neit]

In the next month or two I'm looking to put together a small HTPC/fileserver driving a 1080p projector. I understand Llano would be fine for that usage, but I'd like to know if I'd see a significant improvement in my "gaming".

I get playable framerates on WoW and EvE online with my Asus UL80VT laptop (1.3GHz Intel SU7300 Core 2 Duo and NVidia G210M), but I'd love to have a 40%+ improvement in a $500 mini-itx box.

 

[yottabit]

In the next month or two I'm looking to put together a small HTPC/fileserver driving a 1080p projector. I understand Llano would be fine for that usage, but I'd like to know if I'd see a significant improvement in my "gaming".

I get playable framerates on WoW and EvE online with my Asus UL80VT laptop (1.3GHz Intel SU7300 Core 2 Duo and NVidia G210M), but I'd love to have a 40%+ improvement in a $500 mini-itx box.

If you went with the top model A8 both the CPU and GPU would be way faster than in that laptop. Playing at 1080p you would have to lower graphics settings considerably (probably play on a hybrid of "Good" and "Fair" settings on WoW- that's what I just set up for someone at 1680x1050 for a 5570 graphics card, which is only ~30% faster than Llano IGP and they get constant 60fps) Honestly I think both the CPU and GPU would be at least twice as fast, so you'd see more like a 100%+ improvement, not to mention getting a quad instead of a dual core (if you go that route). A 2.9 Ghz Athlon II quad core will decimate a 1.3 Ghz Core 2 CULV. If you look at Anand's review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-desktop-performance-preview/3

I'd imagine your 210m is similar to 5450 performance for reference. Important to note that faster memory will greatly boost the IGP on LLano

As others have pointed out however you can get more performance for the same price if you add a discrete graphics card (particularly a used one)

 

[yottabit]

Quick update, seems framerates drop off hard at higher res in WoW
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975-14.html

So I may suggest a discrete graphics card unless you want to run discrete settings. Something like a 5750/5770 or GTS450 would do wonderfully for you. I would recommend a DX11 card because WoW has a perf. boost under DX11 and looks better to boot

 

[ElFenix]

Quick update, seems framerates drop off hard at higher res in WoW
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975-14.html

not really

 

[yottabit]

not really

Well with 42 FPS at 1680x1050 assuming it took even the same 11 FPS drop it would only be at 31 FPS at 1080P. And in my experience on low end cards the jump from 1680->1920 is much worse than the jump from 1280->1680

Depends on how casual of a player he is, but 30 FPS would bug the crap out of me. Dropping settings from Good to Fair looks pretty awful, Good is what I would want at a bare minimum personally.

There's a very conspicuous lack of Llano benchmarks at 1080p :/

There's also the whole issue of how current Intel CPUs perform a lot better at WoW than AMD, but that's another story

 

[neit]

So the thing is, I already play on the big screen with my hdmi out at 1080p, and for the most part everything is very playable, but I want it a lot smoother (quality isn't as much of a factor as performance). This project is at least a month away, so I haven't looked at all my options, but #1 and #2 will be small form factor and being quiet/low power since it'll be on 24x7. Light MMO gaming is the icing on the cake, but I don't know how mini-itx will do in terms of fitting in HDD, tv tuner, and a hybrid crossfire gpu.

 

[yottabit]

So the thing is, I already play on the big screen with my hdmi out at 1080p, and for the most part everything is very playable, but I want it a lot smoother (quality isn't as much of a factor as performance). This project is at least a month away, so I haven't looked at all my options, but #1 and #2 will be small form factor and low power consumption since it'll be on 24x7. Light MMO gaming is the icing on the cake, but I don't know how mini-itx will do in terms of fitting in HDD, tv tuner, and a hybrid crossfire gpu.

In that case if you can already get by with that laptop then you'll be very pleasantly surprised by Llano. If you use the IGP you can throw a tv tuner in the single PCIe slot and be done with it.

This is assuming the Llano ITX boards will be out by then, and I certainly hope so!

Everyone has different ideas of what's *acceptable* performance. I just built a friend a computer with a 2500k @ 4+ Ghz and Radeon 5850 because he *needs* to play WoW on Ultra and *can't* have it drop below 60 fps even in dungeons. LOL

 

[hans007]

so i'm staring at my llano retail box cpu now just came at my office.

the fan for the a8-3850 is basically the same one like an athlon ii x2 comes with. it is pretty dinky.