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So, uh, Llano is pretty good...

Arachnotronic

Arachnotronic

Lifer
I just bought a $350 ASUS laptop that came with an A6-3420. After sticking in an SSD and another 4GB of memory (to enable dual channel), this thing screams for. Especially when it comes to games. The integrated graphics is actually kind of insanely awesome.

Could someone tell me why AMD's stuff isn't selling a whole lot better than it is?
 
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Because its insanely awesome at 1366x768, not 1920x1080+

The APU is fine at lower resolutions but once you crank it up you are going to need more horsepower than it can muster.

Btw- the APUs are selling fine, its their "mid-to-high end" desktop chips that are getting the snot beat out of them.
 
Well, yeah, but if I'm running 1920x1080 or better, then I'm going to get a big fat discrete card.

I'm glad these APUs are selling fine. For people like me who don't want to spend too much on a laptop but would actually like to be able to game on the go, these are a godsend. As much of an Intel fan as I am, I can't deny that for $400, AMD is just the better option.
 
Intel17 said:
AMD is just the better option.
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That's really iffy, and dependent on the actual computer itself and it's price. As much of an improvement as Trinity is, graphically, Ivy Bridge is hot on it's heals, which means the only real advantage for the APU lies in it's GPGPU capabilities. I was hoping for AMD to push their APU graphics clocks much further in order to mitigate Intel's increase in IGP performance while natively supporting much faster DDR3 speeds to provide Trinity the bandwidth it needs to thrive properly.
 
NUSNA_Moebius said:
That's really iffy, and dependent on the actual computer itself and it's price. As much of an improvement as Trinity is, graphically, Ivy Bridge is hot on it's heals, which means the only real advantage for the APU lies in it's GPGPU capabilities. I was hoping for AMD to push their APU graphics clocks much further in order to mitigate Intel's increase in IGP performance while natively supporting much faster DDR3 speeds to provide Trinity the bandwidth it needs to thrive properly.
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It'll be interesting to see how well Haswell performs on the iGPU side. At IDF this year, they'll be talking about Haswell's IGP, so I'm pretty excited.
 
NUSNA_Moebius said:
That's really iffy, and dependent on the actual computer itself and it's price. As much of an improvement as Trinity is, graphically, Ivy Bridge is hot on it's heals, which means the only real advantage for the APU lies in it's GPGPU capabilities. I was hoping for AMD to push their APU graphics clocks much further in order to mitigate Intel's increase in IGP performance while natively supporting much faster DDR3 speeds to provide Trinity the bandwidth it needs to thrive properly.
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The big difference is this, as much as Intel's integrated graphics have improved in speed, look at screenshots of HD 4000 graphics compared to AMD's integrated graphics and you'll see why i'd personally rather have AMD's driver support.

Intel has definitely caught up in speed, but the image quality is definitely lacking compared to AMD's drivers in games.
 
Intel17 said:
I just bought a $350 ASUS laptop that came with an A6-3420. After sticking in an SSD and another 4GB of memory (to enable dual channel), this thing screams for. Especially when it comes to games. The integrated graphics is actually kind of insanely awesome.

Could someone tell me why AMD's stuff isn't selling a whole lot better than it is?
Click to expand...

You should have spent that extra cash on a i7 quad with a 540m or better, however I've only had the chance to play extensively with the HP A10 m6 which I'm pretty sure has dual channel memory stock. It *SUCKS* on newer titles in comparison to my buddies i7/540m combo which was only $669, and this is the newer more advance Llano mind you.

Llano is really quite bad for games like BF3 or D3 where CPU comes into play.
 
I picked up an HP laptop with an A8-3520 and 6gb memory for $400 about a month ago. I got it so that I could play the occasional game when I was away from home, but then work got crazy. I have yet to play any games on it.
 
BD231 said:
You should have spent that extra cash on an i7 quad with a 540m or better, however I've only had the chance to play extensively with the HP A10 m6 which I'm pretty sure has dual channel memory stock. It *SUCKS* on newer titles in comparison to my buddies i7/540m combo which was only $669, and this is the newer more advance Llano mind you.

Llano is really quite bad for games like BF3 or D3 where CPU comes into play.
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Haha, I didn't buy this for games. I have been using an IBM T-42 for a laptop for 6 or so years now and it's just finally gotten to the point where I cannot stand how slow surfing the web is. The fact that this thing even plays games is a cool bonus, but I wouldn't pay extra for more gaming capability.
 
Intel17 said:
Haha, I didn't buy this for games. I have been using an IBM T-42 for a laptop for 6 or so years now and it's just finally gotten to the point where I cannot stand how slow surfing the web is. The fact that this thing even plays games is a cool bonus, but I wouldn't pay extra for more gaming capability.
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Glad you enjoy it. I'm still using a single core Atom netbook and even youtube videos mange to choke that thing, but like mloot if I buy something I might actually enjoy I'd rarely get the chance to use it so I'm a bit torn. On the one hand I don't want a crap laptop but I also don't want to spend $400 on something I can't play the games I like on. Seems like $200-300 will get you plenty of CPU in a laptop but the jump to modern gaming ready notebooks still costs you 3 times as much or more.

Was kinna hoping Llano would change that, no dice 🙁.
 
Have you tried undervolting/ overclocking with k10stat? On my lenovo laptop with an A6-3620m, it idles 800mhz 0.725vcore, full load 2.1ghz 1.0325vcore, 2.8ghz turbo 1.2875vcore. Extends battery life a lot and gets more performance.
 
you put a SSD and dual channel
Of course its going to pwn.

OEMs simply won't release a killer AMD system.
Reviewers get the basic version so people see and hear meh. Anyone who does mod it realizes how damn good it is
 
BD231 said:
You should have spent that extra cash on a i7 quad with a 540m or better, however I've only had the chance to play extensively with the HP A10 m6 which I'm pretty sure has dual channel memory stock. It *SUCKS* on newer titles in comparison to my buddies i7/540m combo which was only $669, and this is the newer more advance Llano mind you.

Llano is really quite bad for games like BF3 or D3 where CPU comes into play.
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I think price is the key. If you can get a llano for 400.00 or less, like the OP apparently did, it is an OK deal for light gaming. I you have to pay 500+ (like you usually have to do for the A10) then I too would look to find a deal on an intel quad with a discrete card for a couple hundred more.

I would agree that any of the iGPUs, including HD4000 and Trinity are very marginal for gaming on current titles. They would be nice for playing older games on the go though. For instance I have recently gotten back into Titan Quest, and I am sure Llano, HD4000, or Trinity would handle that at native laptop resolution.
 
NUSNA_Moebius said:
That's really iffy, and dependent on the actual computer itself and it's price. As much of an improvement as Trinity is, graphically, Ivy Bridge is hot on it's heals, which means the only real advantage for the APU lies in it's GPGPU capabilities. I was hoping for AMD to push their APU graphics clocks much further in order to mitigate Intel's increase in IGP performance while natively supporting much faster DDR3 speeds to provide Trinity the bandwidth it needs to thrive properly.
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Ivy Bridge's graphics are still worse than Llano, and Trinity is an improvement over Llano. Ivy Bridge doesn't even care to double on Sandy Bridge's graphics performance; the HD Graphics 3000 had 12 shader units while Ivy Bridge's HD Graphics 4000 has 16. And then there's things like image quality and driver support which AMD has much more experience in. So no, Intel is really not "hot on the heels" of AMD when it comes to on-die graphics.

Anyways, yes, Llano was a big leap forward in integrated graphics. Just compare it to the last generation of AMD's integrated graphics -- the Radeon HD 4200 had 40 shader processors, equal to the discrete Radeon HD 3450. The 3450 wasn't remotely considered an HD gaming chip even when it was first released. Then came Llano, the best versions of which featured the Radeon HD 6620g(laptop)/6550d(desktop) with 400 shader processors. That's essentially a 10x increase in theoretical power, on par with the Radeon HD 5670 which was considered useful for gaming at low HD resolutions.

Why hasn't it sold more? First of all, it was an uphill battle from the start for AMD (isn't it always?). Intel dominated the mobile processor market. Secondly there were (and still are) supply issues with Global Foundries' 32 nm manufacturing price. This prevented AMD from selling Llano at the truly knockout price it needed. And even though Llano breaks Intel's face in when it comes to integrated graphics, Intel still wins handily at general computing on the CPU portion.
 
I have an A6-3400 and am pleasantly surprised at the performance. Certainly not a power house, but if I can live without AA, I can generally game (on the games I play once in a while) at ~medium settings.
 
SithSolo1 said:
Because its insanely awesome at 1366x768, not 1920x1080+
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^ this... otherwise i also agree llano is one hell of a setup at its price.

Intel17 said:
Well, yeah, but if I'm running 1920x1080 or better, then I'm going to get a big fat discrete card.
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and obviously not running a llano but an SB. 😛 😀

its called greed bro... u just answered it yourself.
Why llano's dont get love? because greed and the raw fact, if u have the money, you'll go blue and wont look back.
 
i built an a6 htpc for my mom. i thought it was completely awesome. by far and away the best amd machine ive ever built, and i think it was every bit as good as my i3 system. actually, the amd bios was uefi or whatever so i did like it better.
 
aigomorla said:
Why llano's dont get love? because greed and the raw fact, if u have the money, you'll go blue and wont look back.
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its part of it. most people are computer stupid and even more people just dont follow the tech industry.

i think its also the fact that intel is still technically better in many areas. it doesnt even matter that you would have to have a debate to decide which is a better choice overall, its just the fact that on bar graphs when you only have two options it always looks skewed heavily toward one side even if the difference is negligible in real life.
 
I just switched my daily driver desktop from an i3-2120 to an A8-3870K. I don't do anything demanding with this system. Mostly productivity and multimedia multitasking, occasional video and audio encoding, and rarely, gaming - nothing more resource intensive than L4D2 at 1080p.

The A8-3870K and i3-2120 are equivalent in cost, with both going on sale for about $100. I need front panel USB 3.0, so motherboards are another rough cost equivalence. The i3-2120 doesn't OC so I was using a basic 8GB DDR3-1333MHz kit that I paid $30 for. The A8-3870K does OC, so I bought a kit of those great Samsung sticks that have terrible stock settings but OC really well. I have the APU mildly OC'd to 3.3GHz CPU frequency (from 3GHz) and the GPU OC'd to 700MHz (from 600MHz) on stock volts. I'm sure it's capable of more but I am more concerned with staying at stock volts and not producing more heat (necessitating more fan noise). I OC'd the Samsung RAM to 1866MHz (10-10-10-24) at 1.45V.

To give you a completely data-free subjective analysis, I am much happier with the A8 than I was with the i3. The A8 is faster for everything I do that's multithreaded, it's not much slower on the few single-threaded applications I rarely use, and it can game - at least lightly. Perhaps most importantly, putting the A8 system together was fun. I've been on Sandy Bridge since its launch and had forgotten how much fun fiddling with the BIOS and OCing really can be.
 
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Intel17 said:
I just bought a $350 ASUS laptop that came with an A6-3420. After sticking in an SSD and another 4GB of memory (to enable dual channel), this thing screams for. Especially when it comes to games. The integrated graphics is actually kind of insanely awesome.

Could someone tell me why AMD's stuff isn't selling a whole lot better than it is?
Click to expand...

Because for the same amount of money you can get an i5 ivy bridge that runs general apps 25-50% faster and games about the same. The HDD wont be as fast as your SSD but most people sadly dont care about that.
 
sm625 said:
Because for the same amount of money you can get an i5 ivy bridge that runs general apps 25-50% faster.
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An i5 Ivy Bridge will load an email inbox 50% faster than a Llano? Will tweets show up 30% quicker? What about when I need to give a Powerpoint presentation - will the animations between slides go 40% more rapidly?
 
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