My LLano A4-3300 Review [Old thread - necro]

[Magic Carpet]

There's TONS of fun for me building low-end stuff. You can build more than you need as a hobby or pleasure, give some as gifts for FREE, or donate some to church showing God has forgiven you. I have a very diverse group of cheap CPUs, and some will be faster or slower based on nearly same price I paid for each.

I also give system/upgrades away for free to friends and relatives. But I also realize, I don't want them to be nagging about it in a year or two down the road. I want them to forget about their computing needs for at least 3 years.

Still, it takes time. Building a couple of slow boxes from time to time maybe fun, but doing it on a regular basis, would definitely make me bored fast. I shared the same enthusiasm about Pentium 3, maybe 12 years ago, when I could snatch 512KB L2 Tualatins for maybe $10 a pop. And it was plenty fast for the time. Very low power compared to P4/A64s.

What a waste of time it was

 

[escrow4]

But if I get 10x the enjoyment of building systems with FM1, why would I build a singular i7-6700K rig and just OC it and let it sit there?

You could have 10x the enjoyment with 10 AM1 systems and an 6700K would murder them all without cracking 10% overall usage. I've used low end rubbish and there isn't anything to say about it. They are barely passable and that is it. And I'm fairly certain the last cheapo H81 mobo I used is coming close to giving up. Celerons and Pentiums are pointless, the i3s are stuck in some sort of demented pricing are, you should leap to i5 as an absolute minimum for a home system that will sit there and last not obsolete junk. Actually, who is actually selling all these pointless AMD chips? Why? Where do you get them in such large quantity from? Maybe AMD doesn't even want them?

 

[waltchan]

You could have 10x the enjoyment with 10 AM1 systems and an 6700K would murder them all without cracking 10% overall usage. I've used low end rubbish and there isn't anything to say about it. They are barely passable and that is it. And I'm fairly certain the last cheapo H81 mobo I used is coming close to giving up. Celerons and Pentiums are pointless, the i3s are stuck in some sort of demented pricing are, you should leap to i5 as an absolute minimum for a home system that will sit there and last not obsolete junk. Actually, who is actually selling all these pointless AMD chips? Why? Where do you get them in such large quantity from? Maybe AMD doesn't even want them?

Whoa...you need to calm down your tone here. If you no longer appreciate any low-end stuff, and I assume you sold your G1850, then get out of here. There are many Core i7 enthusiasts welcome you as your friend.

That out of the way, while I agree with your perspectives, most average Americans don't know the difference between Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, and i7. They usually ask for a salesperson to see what's recommended. I hear all the time Core i3 being the most-popular. Then they added a Core i3 into their shopping carts. Interestingly how you are now bashing Core i3 as slow now. D:

Celeron and Pentium have come a long way, and today, they are almost nearly identical to Core i3 except for a few missing features and 500-700 MHz slower in clock-speed. A Haswell Celeron can serve everyday basic Americans for 10 years with no problems now. Since Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer, and Llano days (2011 was the crucial year), CPUs have become less-obsolete now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Celeron and Pentium have come a long way, and today, they are almost nearly identical to Core i3 except for a few missing features and 500-700 MHz slower in clock-speed. A Haswell Celeron can serve everyday basic Americans for 10 years with no problems now. Since Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer, and Llano days (2011 was the crucial year), CPUs have become less-obsolete now.

You know it. Celeron users, represent! (Big-core Celeron users, not Atom users, sorry.)

Edit: And why does someone's chip of choice have to "murder" all others? Seems like some sort of issue there, escrow4. I didn't diss your 6700K, I'm sure it's a great chip. Just a little bit on the expensive side for me.

I think that the A4-3420 APUs, when OCed to 3.15Ghz, are more than capable for a basic 1080P (because they won't do 4K video playback) desktop / web browser box. Just like a Haswell Celeron, IMHO, but they are cheaper.

$28 x 10 = $280, plus $14 x 8 = $112, plus $10 x 2 = $20, plus $6 x 5 = $30; grand total is $280 + $112 + $20 + $30 = $442 I spent on FM1 so far. (Not including the rig I let my friend put together.)

So, yes, for that price, I could have bought an i7-6700K. But like I said, I get more personal enjoyment building 10x rigs for the same price. Yeah, call me "crazy" if you want, I don't mind. It's just my style. Waltchan's too, I guess.

Edit: Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the PCs after I build them. That's the tricky part.

Edit: I mean, it's not like we're building P4 boxes and trying to foist them off on the public. FM1 isn't that different than a Haswell Celeron, performance-wise, at least by Kraken web benchmark scores, and arguably has a better IGP, even if it doesn't have support in AMD's mainstream drivers. (They do have working Win10 drivers.)

 

[escrow4]

Whoa...you need to calm down your tone here. If you no longer appreciate any low-end stuff, and I assume you sold your G1850, then get out of here. There are many Core i7 enthusiasts welcome you as your friend.

That out of the way, while I agree with your perspectives, most average Americans don't know the difference between Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, and i7. They usually ask for a salesperson to see what's recommended. I hear all the time Core i3 being the most-popular. Then they added a Core i3 into their shopping carts. Interestingly how you are now bashing Core i3 as slow now. D:

Celeron and Pentium have come a long way, and today, they are almost nearly identical to Core i3 except for a few missing features and 500-700 MHz slower in clock-speed. A Haswell Celeron can serve everyday basic Americans for 10 years with no problems now. Since Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer, and Llano days (2011 was the crucial year), CPUs have become less-obsolete now.

Core i3 makes zero sense when $80 more will get you a real quad core i5. And a 500MHz clock deficit is huge once you add in the lacking cache that Celerons have. And I don't use a 6700K currently, I'm using a 5930K:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Core i3 makes zero sense when $80 more will get you a real quad core i5.

While that may be true, I think that you might be surprised at just how many people go for the i3 CPUs in a desktop PC. I mean, Celeron and Pentium are "budget", and an i3 is the lowest and thus cheapest "real i-series Core CPU". Plus it has four threads, so unless the customer really understands HyperThreading, they are going to assume that it's the same as a quad-core, when they open Task Manager and see four graphs.

After playing with my i3-6100 doing DC with BOINC, I agree with you, a real quad-core like the i5 is worlds better for demanding computing needs, and HT is really just a crutch.

But I doubt most consumer PC purchasers really understand that.

And a 500MHz clock deficit is huge once you add in the lacking cache that Celerons have.

Thing is, for some specific apps, like Firefox which is largely single-threaded, the i3 may yet be a better choice. Because the i3, being a dual-core, is generally clocked higher than most of the entry-level i5 CPUs.

Edit: To add, as an example, my AM1 Sempron 3850 rig is a 1.3Ghz real quad-core, but my FM1 A4-3420 is a faster dual-core, and the FM1 is WORLDs better at Firefox 64-bit web browsing.

And I don't use a 6700K currently, I'm using a 5930K:

Sorry, I forgot. You mentioned the 6700K in your post, so I kind of went with it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Escrow4, you brought up AM1 benchmarks as an example of how slow the low-end is.

Just for you, I hooked up one of my Sempron 3850 1.3Ghz AM1 APU rigs, with 4GB RAM (platform is only single-channel anyways), and an Apotop 128GB SSD (SMI controller, MLC).

Anyways, I overclocked it from 100 bus clock to 106, although I didn't check the BIOS to see whether I installed in IDE or AHCI mode. About to do a disk benchmark to check. (Edit: Installed in AHCI mode, disk benchmark was normal, if a bit underwhelming. 138MB/sec random 4K QD32 read, 121MB/sec write. Seq. read 535MB/sec, write something less.)

Anyways, browsing these forums (without NoScript) is SLOW. (Also listening to internet radio in the background.)

So, I think that you were right in suggesting that the AM1 platform is slow, this quad-core is especially slow due to low clock speed (~1.4Ghz OCed), coupled with the fact that it's a "small core" APU.

I can tell you from testing recently, that the FM1 rigs that I and waltchan have been going on about, are night-and-day different than AM1.

The FM1 rig (OK, OCed to 3.15Ghz), is snappy, smooth-scrolling, and can watch 720P60 video on YouTube without skipping any/many frames.

The AM1 is laggy, skippy-scrolling, and I haven't tried a 60FPS video with it yet.
(Edit: Tried that ISS 1080P60 video linked in the Q9300 thread. It was definitely playable and watchable, but it didn't seem like it was running at a real 60FPS. Maybe 30?)

I opened like five tabs, using middle-click on forum links in Firefox 64-bit, and it literally took like 1.5-2 minutes for all of them to load. (And even composing this post, I held down the back arrow key to erase something, and it stopped responding, and greyed out for a little while.)

 

[waltchan]

So, yes, for that price, I could have bought an i7-6700K. But like I said, I get more personal enjoyment building 10x rigs for the same price. Yeah, call me "crazy" if you want, I don't mind. It's just my style. Waltchan's too, I guess.

Edit: Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the PCs after I build them. That's the tricky part.

Edit: I mean, it's not like we're building P4 boxes and trying to foist them off on the public. FM1 isn't that different than a Haswell Celeron, performance-wise, at least by Kraken web benchmark scores, and arguably has a better IGP, even if it doesn't have support in AMD's mainstream drivers. (They do have working Win10 drivers.)

Yep...we're still together after all.

Each FM1 PC you build as complete with SSD can sell for up to $225 each shipped on eBay. Demand for PCs with SSDs (which many OEMs don't offer) are strong right now because many average consumers don't know how to replace a hard drive and reinstall the operating system. There's more profit in building and selling 10x FM1 rigs than 1x i7-6700k.

FM1 vs. Haswell comparison makes more sense since they're both native, dual-cores. FM2 can be excluded since it's single-core with two-threads. Only difference is single-thread speed. A4-3420 OCed to 3.15GHz is estimated around 1150 vs. G1820 around 1600.

 

[waltchan]

I REGRET to say that Ascendtech is now officially out-of-stock on the ECS A55F-M4 V2.0 FM1 motherboards. VirtualLarry bought the last five, and maybe one other buyer bought the last one online from their website. eBay's listing also ended. :'(

http://www.ascendtech.us/ecs-a55f-m4-fm1-v2-0-a55-ddr3-sata2-mb_i_mbecsfm1a55fm42.aspx

Only V1.0 left in-stock, but it lacks Windows 10 secure-boot feature. Not a big deal at all if you install Windows 7 with UEFI installation. Price drops $1 to $26.95 now.

http://www.ascendtech.us/ecs-a55f-m4-fm1-v1-0-a55-ddr3-sata2-mb_i_mbfm1ecsa55fm41.aspx

For all of us that bought the V2.0, hang on to them, they're precious and valuable (do fix the capacitors if they fail), and soon the $5 quad-core FM1s are coming and the board's value has appreciated significantly.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I REGRET to say that Ascendtech is now officially out-of-stock on the ECS A55F-M4 V2.0 FM1 motherboards. VirtualLarry bought the last five, and maybe one other buyer bought the last one online from their website. eBay's listing also ended. :'(

Hmm. I certainly hope that they ship mine. There's no tracking number listed yet for that order.

 

[waltchan]

I did a SlickDeals refresh post today earlier in afternoon, and this board suddenly becomes out of stock now. It was a good deal while it lasts.

 

[waltchan]

Hmm. I certainly hope that they ship mine. There's no tracking number listed yet for that order.

In case their website was listed in error, and it was out of stock earlier than you purchased, Ascendtech may ship you V1.0 instead as a valid alternative. Would you take them?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are you asking on behalf of Ascendtech? Or are you just personally curious?

I would definitely prefer rev 2.0 of those boards, but if worst came to worst, I'd take some rev 1.0s, IF they also offered me a discount on them.

I already spent money on five more A4-3420 APUs, so I need some boards to put them in I guess. Either that, or I could just put them up for sale again on ebay.

Btw, last time I hooked my A4-3420 rig up, I used a Kill-A-Watt. With the monitor idle, but the board / CPU not idle, it's taking 39-40W. That's with a 600W Xion PSU. With a smaller, more efficient PSU, power draw would probably be less. That's with one SSD connected, nothing else, really, other than the USB wireless dongle for the keyboard + mouse.

Edit: Good news, my rev 2.0 boards apparently shipped. Yay!

Now debating if I want to triple-down on this deal, and order 3-5 of the rev 1.0 boards, and some of the A4-3300 APUs.

Edit: Do you know if the rev 1.0 boards, have UEFI support? Will they install Win10, even if you can't use Secure Boot? If that's all they're missing, then I'll get some 1.0 boards, but if they don't work with Win10 at all, then I would like to avoid.

 

[waltchan]

Edit: Do you know if the rev 1.0 boards, have UEFI support? Will they install Win10, even if you can't use Secure Boot? If that's all they're missing, then I'll get some 1.0 boards, but if they don't work with Win10 at all, then I would like to avoid.

Yes, the V1.0 boards have UEFI support, and you can install Windows 10 without secure-boot. You will have Windows purple logo screen instead of ECS logo screen upon booting. Check online owner's manual from ECS website for more details. I compared the difference, and V2.0 only adds secure-boot function, that's all, and then it's Windows 8 certified. Otherwise, they're technically identical. V1.0 might be manufactured in year 2012 instead of 2013.

It's possible for you to update the whole BIOS in V1.0 to V2.0, and then you have secure-boot function, but I'm not sure.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I wondered about flashing a v2.0 BIOS onto a v1.0 mobo. The mobos look physically identical.

There's another model, that has two PCI-E x1 slots instead of one, and six SATAII ports. It has Realtek LAN and Audio, which may be more compatible than the Via and Atheros used on the ones we got.

Thought about getting a few of that one. Then I remembered, I needed to buy some more heatsinks to go with this last batch of boards and CPUs. So I'm going to have to wait until next month to invest any more into these.

Then again, not certain I want to. Getting to like the speed of my i3-6100. The Intel HDMI audio handshake issues are a PITA though. Don't seem to have issues with AMD HDMI outputs.

 

[waltchan]

There's another model, that has two PCI-E x1 slots instead of one, and six SATAII ports. It has Realtek LAN and Audio, which may be more compatible than the Via and Atheros used on the ones we got.

Do you mean A55F-M2 model? Yes, I saw this one, this one is a little older than M4, made in 2011-2012, a little taller with a screw hole at lower right side, and additional PCI slot. It does have UEFI. Maybe you can flash the BIOS in it to V2.0 from M4, but I'm not sure again.

Complete FM1 inventory from AscendTech:

http://www.ascendtech.us/amd-socket-fm1-motherboards_c_fm1.aspx

A75 boards are available, but they charge $14 shipping fee. :\ A55F-M2 doesn't have free shipping, unless you take no I/O shield included.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Complete FM1 inventory from AscendTech:

http://www.ascendtech.us/amd-socket-fm1-motherboards_c_fm1.aspx

A75 boards are available, but they charge $14 shipping fee. :\ A55F-M2 doesn't have free shipping, unless you take no I/O shield included.

Hey, thanks. I snagged three A75 boards, for $27.99 ea. $17 shipping for the total order, not too bad. I thought by the way you phrased it, it was $14 per board. The cheapest A75 with backplate on their ebay store was like $60.

http://www.ascendtech.us/ecs-a75f-m2-fm1-amd-a75-hdmi-ddr3-matx_i_mbfm1ecsa75fm2n.aspx

I noticed this one has "N" at the end of the product id. Do you think that this is a "NO I/O" model? Is that why it was so cheap, for an A75 board?

 

[waltchan]

Hey, thanks. I snagged three A75 boards, for $27.99 ea. $17 shipping for the total order, not too bad. I thought by the way you phrased it, it was $14 per board. The cheapest A75 with backplate on their ebay store was like $60.

I guess the more boards you buy, the more money you save on shipping for each box. Maybe if you order 5 boards, shipping goes down to $4 each. Nasty trick by this retailer. Hmmm...

FYI, none of the ECS's A75 boards offer secure-boot feature. A55F-M4 V2.0 is the only one (and final) ECS FM1 board with secure-boot. But still, let me know if you can flash V2.0 BIOS into the old ones.

Glad to hear you're investing your FM1s pretty well. Future will get more exciting when all the quad-core FM1s drop to $10 each.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6393RY9185

China seller on Newegg has (refurb? used?) Athlon X4 651 3.0Ghz LLano quads for $49.99.

Unfortunately, those are the ones without an IGP. So you would have to get a dGPU to go with it.

Edit: ebay seller overseas has A8-3850 for $52 ea shipped worldwide, in a lot of 10. Picture and title say new,ebay condition says used. Maybe new without warranty? Or scam sale?

 

[Abwx]

You could have 10x the enjoyment with 10 AM1 systems and an 6700K would murder them all without cracking 10% overall usage.

A 5350 AM1 is about 25% of a 6700K in CB 11.5, so no, 10% usage wouldnt be enough even to get to Larry s S3850 levels, as for redundancy there s no possible comparison...

 

[NTMBK]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6393RY9185

China seller on Newegg has (refurb? used?) Athlon X4 651 3.0Ghz LLano quads for $49.99.

Unfortunately, those are the ones without an IGP. So you would have to get a dGPU to go with it.

Edit: ebay seller overseas has A8-3850 for $52 ea shipped worldwide, in a lot of 10. Picture and title say new,ebay condition says used. Maybe new without warranty? Or scam sale?

651 would not be bad for a super budget gamer. Pair it with a spare/second hand old card like a HD 7770.

 

[cbn]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6393RY9185

China seller on Newegg has (refurb? used?) Athlon X4 651 3.0Ghz LLano quads for $49.99.

Unfortunately, those are the ones without an IGP. So you would have to get a dGPU to go with it.

Edit: ebay seller overseas has A8-3850 for $52 ea shipped worldwide, in a lot of 10. Picture and title say new,ebay condition says used. Maybe new without warranty? Or scam sale?

I saw some Athlon x 4 651 (3.0 Ghz) overseas ebay buy it now listings for $40 shipped. (Also saw overseas A8-3850 for $55 shipped)

So this A8-3850 (2.9 Ghz) is $12 to $15 more sacrificing 100 Mhz CPU speed but gaining the 400sp @ 600 Mhz DX11 VLIW5 iGPU.

Passmark of the A8-3850 is slightly more than the Q9400:

A8-3850: 3518 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A8-3850+APU

Q9400: 3427 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q9400+@+2.66GHz

 

[cbn]

A6-3650 for $35 shipped (ebay buy it now listing) from US seller.

This one has four cores @ 2.6 Ghz and a 320sp iGPU @ 443 Mhz:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K10/AMD-A-Series A6-3650 AD3650WNZ43GX (AD3650WNGXBOX).html

Passmark:

A6-3650: 3194 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A6-3650+APU

Q9300: 3196 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q9300+@+2.50GHz

Q6600: 2987 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q6600+@+2.40GHz

 

[cbn]

Some more FM1 A6 quad core, these are 65W which means a lower clocked CPU than the 100W A6-3650....but the iGPU is still 320sp @ 443 Ghz:

A6-3600 ($30 shipped): 2740 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A6-3600+APU
A6-3620 ($32 shipped): 2850 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A6-3620+APU

For comparison:

Q8200: 2836 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q8200+@+2.33GHz
Athlon 5350: 2569 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+5350+APU+with+Radeon+R3

P.S. There is also a FM1 A6 65W triple core (same 320sp @ 443 Ghz iGPU as the ones above):

A6-3500 ($25 shipped): 2023 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A6-3500+APU

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks, cbn.

I really didn't want to use "used" CPUs / APUs in my rigs for customers, so I was thinking of the ten-pack OEM case of A8-3850 APUs for $520 shipped.

How does the Paypal protection stuff work with overseas transactions?