Initial Llano laptops

[Arkaign]

I've been reading this thread for a while and you're quite obviously biased.

None of the reviews use the top-end Llano APU. They use the A8-3500M, the lowest end of the A8 series. The A8-3530MX is clocked 400MHz higher and should be around 15% faster than the 3500M.

This doesn't compete with the i7, no matter what AMD would lead you to believe with their marketing BS. Based on what we know, laptops with the top-end A6-3410MX and low-end A8-3500M should land at $600. Laptops with the A6 + dedicated GPU will come in at $700, as will laptops with the A8-3530MX and no dGPU.

The CPU portion is not mediocre as all the reviews would make you believe. Based on laptop pricing, the A8-3500M and A6-3410MX compete with the Core i3 2310M, not the Core i5 2520M as the reviews lead you to believe. Therefore, the CPU disparity is not that big. The A8-3500M should "only" be 10-15% slower than the 2310M in multi-threaded apps, while the A8-3530MX should "only" be 15-20% slower.

This brings me to the GPU, which is something you seem to undermine. Intel HD 3000 is not slow for a laptop. It's around the same speed as a GeForce GT 320M, and the Radeon HD 6620G is around 2x the speed of that. What this means is that you'll be able to game at 1280x720 at Medium settings with AA in most games, which certainly isn't bad.

With an i5 or i7 with discrete GPU you can't get something better for your money, because that's out of the price range. It's not exactly fair to be comparing a $600 or $700 laptop to a $900-1000 one, not to mention you have to get one that has a bigger chassis to accommodate the dedicated GPU.

Oh really?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834246003

i5 w/1GB HD5730 $750

I maintain that all IGP is still bad at this point (FOR GAMERS).

For gamers though, the Llano notebook listed above with the HD6750 is a really good deal though. Even though the CPU is much slower than i5/i7 for encoding/etc, for gaming it should be good enough and a fair match with the 6750 to make for a decent gaming setup for the $.

Otherwise though, like my $630 setup with HD5650, I'd rather have a better cpu and gpu than the one in the lower end llanos, like that Toshiba ughhh.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Ughhh. That Toshiba is a great example of how bad it really is.

$779, A6-3400M, ffuuuuuuuuuu. This is not the A8 APU with the discrete GPU to help out and give a decent benchmark, it's the midrange/cheaper model with the worse integrated GPU. And at that price, what the hell.

Isn't the $779 laptop using a 6520M+6520G of the APU? That is a combined 720 cores.

atellite P770D-BT4N22 Specifications

This product will be custom-built for you. Customizable options (with your current selections) are highlighted below.
Performance

Processor

AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M Accelerated Processor with AMD Radeon™ HD 6520M Graphics

The one with IGP only (6520G) is $629.00.

Satellite L770D-ST4N01 Laptop Specifications
Performance

Processor*
AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M Accelerated Processor
Operating System*
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)*
Graphics Engine*
AMD Radeon™ HD 6520G

Notice that in the Anand review, http://www.anandtech.com/show/4444/amd-llano-notebook-review-a-series-fusion-apu-a8-3500m , the A8-3500M has both the 6620G and the 6630M but AT doesn't test both of them in CF, only one or another.

 

[richierich1212]

Oh really?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834246003

i5 w/1GB HD5730 $750

I maintain that all IGP is still bad at this point (FOR GAMERS).

You're basing a lot of stuff about Llano on initial pricing. Prices will come down of course. Even that laptop you've linked was initially sold @$849.99 in March: http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16834246003

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Oh really?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834246003

i5 w/1GB HD5730 $750

I maintain that all IGP is still bad at this point (FOR GAMERS).

For gamers though, the Llano notebook listed above with the HD6750 is a really good deal though. Even though the CPU is much slower than i5/i7 for encoding/etc, for gaming it should be good enough and a fair match with the 6750 to make for a decent gaming setup for the $.

Otherwise though, like my $630 setup with HD5650, I'd rather have a better cpu and gpu than the one in the lower end llanos, like that Toshiba ughhh.

Not really a good idea to use an EOL platform and heavily discounted laptops that are being discontinued soon to give your argument support. Show me laptops with Sandy Bridge. Also, Arrandale is less power efficient than both Llano and Sandy Bridge, and battery life is less. You'd be looking at around 1 hour less battery life than the comparable Llano/SB laptop.

Also, since you always love to mention your laptop: from what I remember it was refurbished, and bought from eBay. That doesn't count. I bought my current laptop from Newegg for $650 and it has a GeForce GTX 260M. That doesn't mean I don't see the point of the new laptops in this price range.

These laptops are not for "hardcore" gamers, and were never meant to be. They're for normal gamers and general users, those who play all types of games and at normal settings and want to do so without compromising on battery life, chassis size, or price. Sandy Bridge is faster for power users, but that's not what this is targeting, since if you want to do something like encoding video and rendering you should be looking at a SB Core i7 laptop, and those start at around $900 for the 2630QM.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Oh really?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834246003

Specs show 3.5 hours battery life. Gaming would cut that down drastically, real life usage would mean you'd get a couple of hours out if with casual use. No thanks.

 

[Arkadrel]

Basically any notebook with a discrete GPU these days has switchable graphics. I have it on my DV7 17.3. The 5650 shuts off letting me use Intel HD if I want. Honestly the battery life is still pretty good even without switching to Intel. My cousin played SC2 on it for about 2 hours and I still had enough battery left to do some browsing afterwards. Shut it down with about 30% remaining.

and this one only set me back $630. 17.3" LED HD, 750GB HDD, Beats audio w/tri-reflex sub, blu-ray, aluminum casing, etc.

It's what bugs me about Llano, poor cpu performance, average gpu performance. It will get better, but the first ones really only deliver 'okay' performance in old games at low resolutions like 1280x800 or 1366x768. I can play dirt 3 at 1600x900 with no issues and it's smooth.

Intresting you mention Dirt 3

AMD A8-3500 APU playing Dirt 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevPVQdjMiE

A laptop running dirt 3, looks like its dx11 and running smooth.

 

[cebalrai]

Basically any notebook with a discrete GPU these days has switchable graphics. I have it on my DV7 17.3. The 5650 shuts off letting me use Intel HD if I want. Honestly the battery life is still pretty good even without switching to Intel. My cousin played SC2 on it for about 2 hours and I still had enough battery left to do some browsing afterwards. Shut it down with about 30% remaining.

and this one only set me back $630. 17.3" LED HD, 750GB HDD, Beats audio w/tri-reflex sub, blu-ray, aluminum casing, etc.

It's what bugs me about Llano, poor cpu performance, average gpu performance. It will get better, but the first ones really only deliver 'okay' performance in old games at low resolutions like 1280x800 or 1366x768. I can play dirt 3 at 1600x900 with no issues and it's smooth.

Why should I care about CPU performance on a laptop like this? Like 95% of users out there I don't use any CPU-intensive apps.

 

[Arkaign]

Intresting you mention Dirt 3

AMD A8-3500 APU playing Dirt 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevPVQdjMiE

A laptop running dirt 3, looks like its dx11 and running smooth.

Could be decent, wish we knew the full specs of that and the resolution

 

[cebalrai]

Also, since you always love to mention your laptop: from what I remember it was refurbished, and bought from eBay. That doesn't count.

Seriously? He's been using a refurb/ebay-auctioned laptop as his pricing benchmark?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Seriously? He's been using a refurb/ebay-auctioned laptop as his pricing benchmark?

*clears throat* Yes, that's correct.

Pathetic, and completely out of consideration for anyone wanting to play something more complicated than minesweeper.

For ~$600, I can get an i5 HP with BluRay, 6GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, 17.3" LED HD, and a discrete HD5650M 1GB that will blow this turkey out of the water. For a tiny bit more, I can get one with a discrete HD5850M. That's not bad really, and is probably the cheapest way to get a notebook with passable gaming performance. For a desktop, basically *any* $50 discrete card hands this its own ass.

I bet the next one will be considerably better though. Remember Phenom I? It was terrible, whereas PhII was pretty darned good considering.

I just bought one

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-DV7T-SE-I5-2...73100284?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item53e7e91efc

I've bought several DV7s for friends, they always come in minty perfect (mind the store obviously, check ratings/feedback), super great deal for the $$$!!

The 5850s are out there too, IIRC from the same vendor.



I'll take pics and run some free benchies if you like It will arrive Thursday afternoon.

:hmm:

 

[sm625]

When the only argument you can make is that something that costs $800 outperforms something that costs $600, you sound pretty stupid. Like I need someone to tell me that 8 is greater than 6. Why do people feel justified in making such useless comments? And yes there are sb + discrete combos available for less than $800. But there will also be llanos available for less than $600. Dollar for dollar, general usage will be adequate, but gaming and battery life will be much better. Only a troll could possibly argue with that.

 

[cotak13]

There are a vocal minority who believes that because llano's not something that knocks their gaming socks off it's no good.

They are also very loud about the supposed cost of this new platform. While skipping in their minds and their rhetoric that Llano kicks butt in terms of gaming time on battery. A feat that none of these laptops with discrete graphics or SB with it's integrated graphics can match. All of the reputable reviews shows that Llano can game 2 times as long on the same battery as a SB with it's HD graphics.

It also has the only DX11 enabled GPU at 32nm. It is a wonder why it can provide decent gaming performance without killing a battery? And before someone talk about optimus, remember we are talking active loaded power usage. Not nvidia or amd discrete graphics sleeping away while the laptop's idle. And further more and more today you'll see the discrete graphics powering up what with the GPU acceleration in IE9 and in up coming versions of office. At that point it might be very interesting indeed how battery life compares between SB and Llano even for non gaming tasks.

 

[ElFenix]

*clears throat* Yes, that's correct.





:hmm:

doh!


looks like something similar and new is about $900 on hp right now, though i'm not sure if it includes the tri-woofer thing. there's probably coupons on techbargains to bring that down. that toshiba up there is more expensive, but that may just be tosh in general over hp.


(tangential: HP coupons de-bundle the extended warranty from the computer so you don't get the bundle discount)

 

[Arkaign]

Well, I could be wrong, I'll certainly take a look at final shipped product with pricing/etc. It's certainly a product with a lot of potential, the next generation could really be pretty solid if they get a BD mix together. I'd imagine drivers will improve as well, I've seen reports of problems with DX9 games with the hybrid crossfire. As it sits, the CPU portion seems to be fairly weak, and that doesn't bode well for holding up to new game releases like Witcher 2, BF3, Skyrim, etc. To be fair though, only laptops with dramatically more expensive GPUs are probably up to that task.

 

[richierich1212]

A6-3400M 1.4GHz / 2.4GHZ Turbo ranked #160 at CPUBenchmark.net

Not bad for an AMD-based laptop with decent graphics.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

A6-3400M 1.4GHz / 2.4GHZ Turbo ranked #160 at CPUBenchmark.net

Not bad for an AMD-based laptop with decent graphics.

We'll have to wait until benchmarks for the A8-3530MX come out to pass judgement on speed. It should be 35% faster than the 3400M if we take the 3530MX as the baseline.

My previous calculations were wrong. The 3530MX should be 26% faster than the 3500M the reviewers had. Pretty insane to see the difference a measly 100MHz higher can make at clock speeds this low.

 

[iCyborg]

A6-3400M 1.4GHz / 2.4GHZ Turbo ranked #160 at CPUBenchmark.net

Not bad for an AMD-based laptop with decent graphics.

What does this benchmark test? Because something doesn't sit right with it:
- why is 2600K 10% faster than 2600 even though the only difference should be that K is unlocked, so zero difference in the test? Or was 2600K OC-ed, that should have been specified? Or perhaps has a better turbo, though given that bench scales beyond 8 threads, not sure how much turbo could matter.
- 2600K ~35% faster than 2500K. And 2720QM beating 2500K too. Bench must like HT more than encoding benches...
- Is it heavily using AVX or something, even the OEM 2630QM is about the same as i7 950, and 2720QM beats i7 975, the fastest quad Nehalem.

 

[Arkaign]

Yeah that passmark bench area is wildly problematic. There are tons of problems with the results, even within the same families of processors. For example the i5-2400S is faster than the i5-2500s, allrighty then. The submission control is probably pretty loose.

It's alright, we'll have final production laptops and such in the hands of Anandtech and other reputable sites soon.

 

[cebalrai]

Yeah Toshiba has 17" Llanos. But I hate the look of Satellites... ugh