llano vs Athlon II

lifeblood

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
999
88
91
I went over to the Anandtech Bench and compared my current CPU (see sig) to a Llano A8 and they came out neck to neck. What? Am I reading that correctly? I used the Athlon II 635 for the comparison. Mine is a 435 but with a core unlocked giving me a 635 equivalent.

I use my PC for gaming and office productivity, while my wife run biological models and GIS (Graphical Information Systems) like ArcGIS on it as part of her PhD and it handles it all without a sweat. If the Llano is as good as a 635, that really is more than most (non-enthusiast) users require for a home PC.

I really expected Llano to be a slow CPU, but if its the same speed as mine then its not slow. Its "fast enough".
 

BD231

Lifer
Feb 26, 2001
10,568
138
106
Will people please start realizing Llano is neither a step backwards or forwards on the CPU front. Its just AMD hacking away at a current arch. with some minor change's and slapping a gpu on it.
 

podspi

Golden Member
Jan 11, 2011
1,982
102
106
Will people please start realizing Llano is neither a step backwards or forwards on the CPU front. Its just AMD hacking away at a current arch. with some minor change's and slapping a gpu on it.

BREAKING:New K10 cores perform like old K10 cores!

Edit: Though those SPUs may come in handy one day when OpenCL catches on...
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
136
The big thing is the enthusisasts in us Look at an Athlon II X4 that is no competition for an I3, and sees something that costs $40 more and still no competition for an I3.

A lot of hold up is launch prices and lack of variety. An A8 at $150 doesn't look hot. But a $90 A6 might be the greatest thing since slice bread, if and when it happens.

The end result though is that it is a great proof of concept and should be somewhat profitable considering the quoted demand on at least the Laptop end which is the CPU's strong point. You can not get a 4 core CPU and graphics in a laptop of the shelf for a better value then it.

Trinity is when I expect it to get the the desktop love it deserves since it should be using if I read the road-map the same enhanced BD cores that Komodo will have.
 

podspi

Golden Member
Jan 11, 2011
1,982
102
106
The big thing is the enthusisasts in us Look at an Athlon II X4 that is no competition for an I3, and sees something that costs $40 more and still no competition for an I3.

A lot of hold up is launch prices and lack of variety. An A8 at $150 doesn't look hot. But a $90 A6 might be the greatest thing since slice bread, if and when it happens.

The end result though is that it is a great proof of concept and should be somewhat profitable considering the quoted demand on at least the Laptop end which is the CPU's strong point. You can not get a 4 core CPU and graphics in a laptop of the shelf for a better value then it.

Trinity is when I expect it to get the the desktop love it deserves since it should be using if I read the road-map the same enhanced BD cores that Komodo will have.


Yea, I can't expect this will be a popular enthusiast CPU for desktops. Once Trinity hits and they (hopefully) fix the issues with hybrid xfire, I see Trinity as THE budget/mid-range gaming CPU.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
The big thing is the enthusisasts in us Look at an Athlon II X4 that is no competition for an I3, and sees something that costs $40 more and still no competition for an I3.

A lot of hold up is launch prices and lack of variety. An A8 at $150 doesn't look hot. But a $90 A6 might be the greatest thing since slice bread, if and when it happens.

The end result though is that it is a great proof of concept and should be somewhat profitable considering the quoted demand on at least the Laptop end which is the CPU's strong point. You can not get a 4 core CPU and graphics in a laptop of the shelf for a better value then it.

Trinity is when I expect it to get the the desktop love it deserves since it should be using if I read the road-map the same enhanced BD cores that Komodo will have.

well it depends on what you think of as "competition" some of the x4s are fairly competitive with an i3-2100 , like say an x4 645.

and the llano does cost the same, and obviously beats it at things like graphics. granted you can always buy a graphics card, but as just cpus + igps you cant just say , oh an i3-2100 is faster because the cpu part is faster. if anything as AMD will tell you its not all about the CPU part anymore anyway (i mean i can't really think of anything i personally need a faster cpu than an athlon x4 for to begin with , though obviously some people can make use of more).. llano and the like is just another option. its like being able to buy a sedan, or an suv, or a sports car.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
20,736
1,379
126
Yeah probably a driver issue. Multiple reviews of Llano mention oddities in performance, like Hybrid xFire being slower in some things than the APU alone, BD3D turned off, etc. It should all improve dramatically over time, unless AMD just decides to orphan llano and focus on next-gen stuff (unlikely imho).
 

lau808

Senior member
Jun 25, 2011
217
0
71
just looking at the specs i think it was obvious that they were athlon II's with igp, imo
 

pantsaregood

Senior member
Feb 13, 2011
993
37
91
Llano will probably end up a little faster in the end. The L2 cache size is doubled and apparently some fine-tuning has been done to the K10 architecture with Llano. It can probably overclock better, too.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
4
0
Llano is awesome for laptops and htpc's. and home servers. for desktops, why? if you have the room to hold bigger/faster parts, then save the money and do so.
 

Tsavo

Platinum Member
Sep 29, 2009
2,645
37
91
$1 says it's the benchmark, not the CPU.

+1.

Er, +$1. :D

From their website:

This sceanrio[sic] executes the creation of a video using special effects and images from multiple sources. The content is created for both online streaming transfer and high-resolution download viewing. Video Creation uses the following applications:
  • Adobe® After Effects® 7
  • Adobe® Illustrator® CS2
  • Adobe® Photoshop® CS2
  • Microsoft® Windows Media™ Encoder 9 series
  • Sony® Vegas 7
Ancient software. I'm not sure why anyone uses Sysmark these days (ever). Look at the other video benches and it benches nearly the same as the 635.
 

lifeblood

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
999
88
91
Llano is awesome for laptops and htpc's. and home servers. for desktops, why? if you have the room to hold bigger/faster parts, then save the money and do so.

I agree mostly, I guess I'm making the "driving a Lamborghini in rush hour" argument. What good is a car that can do 200mph when your stuck in traffic? My mother plays bridge, surfs the web, and does email on her PC. Since Llano does everything she does and more, why not use it (assuming its cheaper, etc). I wouldn't get Llano for myself, I would go for the bigger/faster CPU, but I would benefit from bigger/faster.