More Llano leaks (A8 APU extensively benchmarked)

[996GT2]

Some people aren't really in this industry from what they are posting here.

It's quite simple really you can get your i7 plus a discrete GPU and say look this can idle just as long. Fire it up though and it's a different story. Also, you aren't getting that i7 and discrete in a small formate light laptop. At least not without it having no battery life and potentially burning family jewels. Just look at the 13 inch MacBook pro. NO DISCRETE graphics. As there just wasn't space to cram in the battery they wanted and have discrete graphics.

So all this crying about discrete and i7s is really missing the point. Yes somewhere you can get a computer that's faster etc. But you aren't fitting it inside a ultra portable without scarifying battery life. AMD's provided the industry with a chip where they can build a ultra portable with decent 3D graphics.

What is so hard to get about this product?

Plenty of 13.3" and 14" Sandy Bridge laptops come with discrete graphics and still manage excellent (6+ hours) battery life. Giving one example to the contrary (a 13" Macbook Pro) doesn't prove anything.

And even if you are comparing a Llano-based ultraportable to a Sandy Bridge based ultraportable without a discrete GPU, like a 12" Thinkpad X220, the latter gets much better battery life (8 hours on 6 cell, 12.5 hours on 9 cell) AND has much higher CPU performance. Basically the only thing Llano brings to the table is somewhat better IGP performance, but at the cost of CPU performance.

 

[cotak13]

Plenty of 13.3" and 14" Sandy Bridge laptops come with discrete graphics and still manage excellent (6+ hours) battery life. Giving one example to the contrary (a 13" Macbook Pro) doesn't prove anything.

And even if you are comparing a Llano-based ultraportable to a Sandy Bridge based ultraportable without a discrete GPU, like a 12" Thinkpad X220, the latter gets much better battery life (8 hours on 6 cell, 12.5 hours on 9 cell) AND has much higher CPU performance. Basically the only thing Llano brings to the table is somewhat better IGP performance, but at the cost of CPU performance.

Really? Read what Anand had to say:

"Rounding out the battery life discussion, we also tested battery life while looping 3DMark06 at native resolution (1366x768). This represents a reasonable 3D gaming scenario, and Llano still managed a reasonable 161 minutes. Considering graphics performance is a healthy step up from what Intel’s HD 3000 offers and that AMD manages double the battery life under gaming situations compared to the K53E, mobile gaming is clearly a win."

And while we are at it lets throw in what Tom's said:

"This is very impressive. Not only does the A8-3500M get about twice as much time out of its battery, it does so while delivering far better graphics performance. The implications of this are profound: a Llano laptop user might be able to play a mainstream 3D game for an entire two-hour flight with decent frame rates, while the Intel Core i5-based platform would only last for half of the flight with choppy performance. There does, in fact, seem to be validity in AMD’s excitement over its improved power story, and of course this is a real advantage when it comes to mobile devices."

Also consider anand's graphs where he normalized the battery life against wh capacity. The i5-2520M without discrete only managed to last longer than the Llano in their low load battery tests when equalized. That's without discrete. I'd like to see how your examples of discrete packing small format laptops really perform when given real work that utilizes the GPU.

 

[ikachu]

Not sure if srs.

I showed that a laptop using 6-month old technology (Sandy Bridge) is capable of getting the same battery life as Llano with the same-sized battery. Yet the Sandy Bridge based laptop has performance that much, much higher. So tell me, what's impressive about Llano's battery life performance relative to its performance?

I hate to pull out a car analogy but you're basically saying "A Ferrari gets the same gas mileage at idle as a Civic but the Ferrari can go 200 miles an hour. Why is everyone raving about the gas mileage of a Civic!"

You're introducing a variable (speed) into a test where speed isn't being measured. That test only tells you one thing: "how long can my laptop surf the web before I need to charge the battery?" AMD wins that test, which wouldn't have been the case pre-Llano.

A more useful comparison would be a Llano laptop and the i7 laptop being stressed (for example playing the same game) and see how long their batteries last, w/ the average/min/max framerates listed as well so the consumer could take the performance into account.

 

[Topweasel]

its sad that accountants make this happen, since productivity doesn't fit in their excel sheets well.

that extra incremental cost of say 2-3k a year when you are already paying them $150k with benefits , to get the most of out of them is stupid. why not buy a ferrari and put all season tires on it.

i've had friends who worked at places where they could not even get ram upgrades for their computers etc, its just sad management doesnt see it the way they should.

No its because of accountants that companies are not going bankrupt left and right. Its fine and dandy to lavish your employees with all the amenities you can when your an up and comer. Its nice to be able to produce so much extra income that you can throw equipment around. Till you notice that in a 100 person company you just spent 1 million on computer and equipment that because its humans with their own issues and tendencies equaled maybe 200 hours of added productivity. There is a point of diminishing returns on performance and honestly I seriously doubt that you provide any tangible benefit to the company with 7 computers that 1 person with 2 could do. When your industry goes through its wave an the company has to fire a quarter of its staff, I am sure that 25% would rather have gotten less "productivity tools" and still have a job..

 

[iCyborg]

Anyone expecting near SB performance even marginally close was delusional. Its a Athlon II x4 with a few tweaks, and on laptops running just short of 2 GHz. Of course it wasn't going to be close to the fastest CPU out.

Since you mention Athlon II - it loses to quad SB, but beats dual core SB in multithreaded benches. I don't think it was delusional to expect something similar. 3830MX might be close to i3 2310, but that's about it. GPU is in another class, of course, but that was expected.

 

[hans007]

No its because of accountants that companies are not going bankrupt left and right. Its fine and dandy to lavish your employees with all the amenities you can when your an up and comer. Its nice to be able to produce so much extra income that you can throw equipment around. Till you notice that in a 100 person company you just spent 1 million on computer and equipment that because its humans with their own issues and tendencies equaled maybe 200 hours of added productivity. There is a point of diminishing returns on performance and honestly I seriously doubt that you provide any tangible benefit to the company with 7 computers that 1 person with 2 could do. When your industry goes through its wave an the company has to fire a quarter of its staff, I am sure that 25% would rather have gotten less "productivity tools" and still have a job..

when its obvious that a person needs more than one computer they should get them more than 1. i actually have to use the 7 i have. the lawyers and accountants at work get 1 computer. they dont need 7.

by your logic, they shouldnt buy conference rooms because people dont use them all the time and they could "make do with less" even though it would be more productive to have a conference room, so someone's job could be saved by not having to pay rent on a conference room.

there is some threshold where having more than 1 computer is worth it. when a company doesn't awknowledge that threshold they are just being pennywise and pound foolish.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

15-20% slower in multithreaded apps than the 2520M? Herp Derp. Maybe compared to Arrandale instead of Sandy Bridge...

Oh, and since many apps aren't heavily multithreaded, let's not forget the importance of single-threaded performance. Strong showing for AMD, amirite?

Anand tells it like it is:

"Looking at other laptops and tests where we’re looking purely at CPU performance, suddenly Llano starts to struggle. The Arrandale i5-520M offers 92% higher single-threaded performance in Cinebench R10 and 48% better single-threaded performance in R11.5; multi-threaded performance also goes to Arrandale, with a 23% lead in R10 and 17% lead in R11.5. x264 also gives Arrandale a decent lead, with i5-520M 17% faster in the first pass and 29% faster in the more intense second pass. The overclocked i3-380M in ASUS’ U41JF tells a similar tale—and both of these laptops are running processors from early last year. When we shift to Sandy Bridge, even without looking at the quad-core parts AMD’s CPU performance is tenuous. The i5-2520M is anywhere from 50 to 150 percent faster depending on which test we look at; even if we toss out the older Cinebench R10 single-threaded result of 150%, R11.5 given the 2520M a 94% lead. In general, then, a moderate dual-core Sandy Bridge i5-series processor looks to be at least 30% faster, so quad-core Llano really only competes with Core i3 and its lower, non-Turbo clocks."

Except you're so hard-headed that you haven't looked at the fact that the 3530MX is the one that competes with the i5 2520 based on price. Based on clock speed increases, it should be 10 to 15% faster than the 3500M.

It's pretty convenient to say that Quad-Core Llano can't compete when you use the second lowest-end model that costs less than what it's being compared against.

So, then, it's around 20% slower in multi-threaded apps (the ones that are actually time sensitive).

Now, about that much slower Intel HD 3000...

 

[Topweasel]

when its obvious that a person needs more than one computer they should get them more than 1. i actually have to use the 7 i have. the lawyers and accountants at work get 1 computer. they dont need 7.

by your logic, they shouldnt buy conference rooms because people dont use them all the time and they could "make do with less" even though it would be more productive to have a conference room, so someone's job could be saved by not having to pay rent on a conference room.

there is some threshold where having more than 1 computer is worth it. when a company doesn't awknowledge that threshold they are just being pennywise and pound foolish.

I am not saying no one should ever have only one. But there is a difference between getting an older pc or secondary machine to offload an extensive task, test in a different environment, or recreate/demo a configuration. Its another thing to think you should have the latest and greatest because of your pay and that it doesn't matter because its just a couple of grand. The reverse end of this is the same you make general exceptions and just about anyone can become the exception. Eventually everyone runs to manager, manager runs to CEO, CEO signs off an exorbitant hardware to keep the peace, and boom our IT department is costing the company to much now that profits are not that great, and its our fault that we spent X amount of dollars when actual infrastructure costs (new servers and such) we a 10th of that.

People don't need an i7. The days of needing CPU horsepower ingeneral is long gone. People in general have been so pampered with the speed increases here and there that now whats nearly instantaneous next to 4-5 years ago performance is not enough. But in actuality the amount of daily production increase is near nill because people are so easily distracted or wander of in other areas either figuratively or literally that any decrease in task completion time is offset by normal daily distractions. I swear its almost to a point that the world has turned into Office space where people are really only getting in about 15 minutes of actual work a week then blaming IT/computer performance as to why that 15 minutes isn't more productive.

Look there is a lot of generalities made in the above. But its going to be hard to prove that on a daily basis even engineers need i7's. And not amount of well "what's an extra $200-$300" makes it even okay to ask for it.

 

[shady28]

People don't need an i7. The days of needing CPU horsepower ingeneral is long gone. People in general have been so pampered with the speed increases here and there that now whats nearly instantaneous next to 4-5 years ago performance is not enough. But in actuality the amount of daily production increase is near nill because people are so easily distracted or wander of in other areas either figuratively or literally that any decrease in task completion time is offset by normal daily distractions. I swear its almost to a point that the world has turned into Office space where people are really only getting in about 15 minutes of actual work a week then blaming IT/computer performance as to why that 15 minutes isn't more productive.

Look there is a lot of generalities made in the above. But its going to be hard to prove that on a daily basis even engineers need i7's. And not amount of well "what's an extra $200-$300" makes it even okay to ask for it.

You're exactly right. Up until about 10 years ago, PC lifecycle was around 3 years. About the time the P4 hit 3ghz, it jumped to 5 years. Many of the PCs still in use are HT P4s or P4 Dual core boxes. My 3 year old D630 laptop is just a 2Ghz c2d, but it does fine for business / office apps. In fact, it's way faster for that usage than the brand new i5 and i7 laptops we get simply by virtue of having been upgraded with an SSD.

Point being, beyond a certain point more CPU power is meaningless in most business environments. Media capability and storage access speed is where it's at today.





Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk

 

[Ozzu]

Just posted by Anand on Twitter:

 

[drizek]

So, the answer is yes. Llano is massively bandwidth limited.

 

[Genx87]

So, the answer is yes. Llano is massively bandwidth limited.

Which is something we all debated last Fall. And doesnt surprise me at all. More powerful versions of the chip will have an even harder time with memory bandwidth limitations.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Which is something we all debated last Fall. And doesnt surprise me at all. More powerful versions of the chip will have an even harder time with memory bandwidth limitations.

Although not by the sharing with the CPU effect.

Clock the card to 5570 levels (by the way AT 5570 is an OC version at 750 MHz instead of 650 stock and dunno for memory) and equip your system with memory of similar speed to the discrete card and you reach similar performance levels.

 

[zebrax2]

AMD need to get at the DDR4 bandwagon as soon as possible.

 

[podspi]

The connection between the GPU and MC is pretty fast, so all they really have to do is hang something else off of the memory controller and that should alleviate at least some of the bottleneck.

Has anyone seen any GPGPU benchmarks of Llano? I was under the impression it was supposed to be great for that...

 

[Genx87]

Although not by the sharing with the CPU effect.

Clock the card to 5570 levels (by the way AT 5570 is an OC version at 750 MHz instead of 650 stock and dunno for memory) and equip your system with memory of similar speed to the discrete card and you reach similar performance levels.

Where can I get memory for this platform that will top out at 28.8GB\s that will fit into the target price category?

And going forward it is going to get worse. To achieve a similar performance to the 5770, 76.8GB\sec?

 

[Vette73]

Where can I get memory for this platform that will top out at 28.8GB\s that will fit into the target price category?

And going forward it is going to get worse. To achieve a similar performance to the 5770, 76.8GB\sec?

This is first gen. I bet there will be some sideport/memory onchip like mobile setups are now on the next gen.

Either that or a addon card in the 16x PCIe slot that has frame buffer only?

 

[Genx87]

Sounds expensive for a low end chip. It will be required if they plan on having the GPU side scale at all.

 

[hans007]

Where can I get memory for this platform that will top out at 28.8GB\s that will fit into the target price category?

And going forward it is going to get worse. To achieve a similar performance to the 5770, 76.8GB\sec?

well i can't see them changing the number of shaders much for at least another year.

would be surprised if trinity had much different radeon cores. eventaully there will be a successor to zambezi on a new socket, so maybe they move to quad channel memory then and that is the high end APU in a couple years. quad channel ddr3-1866 probably would not be too terrible.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Roughly half of the bandwidth demand is framebuffer, and you can make all that go away if you stick the framebuffer somewhere close to the GPU. XBOX360 does this with a 10MB eDRAM chip, while remaining commercially viable.

In order to work well with off-the-shelf games, it will likely need more like 20-30MB of local ram for full HD. With T-RAM on 32nm, this might be possible on-die. If not, they could try package-level integration, or stacked chips or something.

DDR4 should be available late next year or so -- that should give some 50-60BG/s easily.

 

[Topweasel]

Roughly half of the bandwidth demand is framebuffer, and you can make all that go away if you stick the framebuffer somewhere close to the GPU. XBOX360 does this with a 10MB eDRAM chip, while remaining commercially viable.

In order to work well with off-the-shelf games, it will likely need more like 20-30MB of local ram for full HD. With T-RAM on 32nm, this might be possible on-die. If not, they could try package-level integration, or stacked chips or something.

DDR4 should be available late next year or so -- that should give some 50-60BG/s easily.

AMD is never going to switch to a memory standard before Intel. Introductory costs are high, AMD tends to wait till just before the new memory starts to become cheaper then the previous before switching. The only time they didn't was DDR and that was because it was still 1/4th the cost of RDRam.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

My 3 year old D630 laptop is just a 2Ghz c2d, but it does fine for business / office apps. In fact, it's way faster for that usage than the brand new i5 and i7 laptops we get simply by virtue of having been upgraded with an SSD.

Ha! Someone who gets it. It baffles me why so many posters in this thread keep harping on Llano's weaker CPU when the part is 'fast enough' for 98% of consumers, and the cost differential between a Llano laptop and an i3/5/7 rig could very well be sufficient to cover an SSD.

In terms of playing Left 4 Dead, my E-350 Lenovo X120e with a third gen 80GB Intel SSD trades blows with a friend's Alienware m11x in terms of FPS and stamina. He gets 40s for FPS, I get 30s. In terms of productivity, mine is the better experience because of its SSD. And that's the Zacate part... My X120e + the SSD cost $650, while my friend's m11x cost him $1,000. This is not a hard decision to make...

 

[GaiaHunter]

Where can I get memory for this platform that will top out at 28.8GB\s that will fit into the target price category?

And going forward it is going to get worse. To achieve a similar performance to the 5770, 76.8GB\sec?

The difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1866 is around the same difference between 6450 and 5570.

More important the price difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600 is negligible, and that also provides a nice boost.

The difference between 6450/5570 to 5770 performance level is $50-70.

 

[Vette73]

^^

Yea I'm still using a C2D CPU and I can;t see any reason to upgrade yet. Waiting for BD/IB eraly next year before I jump.

Also waiting for 6Gb SSDs to drop in price. Already got 8gig memory and a newwer video card.

Llano is perfect for what it is, a low-mid level based system. That and it has native usb 3.0 and more native 6Gb SATA ports than intel as well.

 

[sm625]

So, the answer is yes. Llano is massively bandwidth limited.

You're only getting 10% more fps for each step up in ram speed. Going from 1333 to 1866 only buys 20% performance. Isnt that what we'd expect to see? I'm not sure how that equates to being bandwidth limited. It looks balanced to me. Sure we'd like it to be faster but 1866 ram is still rather expensive. Typical OEM pricing on 2x2 1066 DDR3 is about $30. It is an extra $5 to bump up to 1333, and about an extra $12 to bump from 1066 to 1600. To go to 1866 the price increase jumps all the way to $25. It's not worth it to go to 1866. It definitely is worth it to go to 1600, and that is where oems should settle. It is up to the consumer to choose the 1600 systems and not the 1333 systems. But I bet we're going to see plenty of 1333 systems on sale in a few months for under $400. And they'll be a hell of a deal.