Comments Locked

43 Comments

Back to Article

  • marc1000 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    this is exactly what NEEDED to be done! now we will sum money & performance from APU + GPU, I guess this could be a very interesting thing for the consumer, if it shows proper scaling!
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Hopefully it works better than on the notebook I tested!
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4444/12
  • marc1000 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    well, I was just reading these articles, but after your results, I believe "hope" is the best word to use on the launch of anything amd-branded this year. it was AMD/Ati fierce competition that led the market to the performance race we all love (with the unsuspected launch of Athlon64 and R300 on the perfect time-frame, some years ago).

    anyway, I hope AMD can deliver as much as possible (with Llano and Bulldozer), because this market needs competition.
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    I wonder whats up with those USB3 times there Jarred. Nearly a minute to copy only 1.52GB worth of data ? Granted, it is a mix of large, and small files, but I think the ExpressCard USB3 adapter, and external USB3 enclosure I have here does better than that. That, and the setup I have I view as slow. At the very least, I am unhappy with it.

    Seems to me though, that with USB3, and GbE performing the way they do. That something else is afoot, and perhaps this is the best we're going to see for a while. Whats up with that ?
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    Well actually I shouldn't say I am completely unhappy with USB3. It is faster for single large files. Say in the size of around 700MB to around 1.2 GB in size. 10-15 second copies isn't too terrible. Also, I needed an external enclosure to put my desktop SATA drives into while not using my desktop. Pretty much a no brainer considering the enclosure cost was not more than the cost of a decent USB2 enclosure. Then, $24 for an ExpressCard adapter was no huge deal.

    Still, while I did not expect 10x speed like advertisers are spouting everywhere. I did expect more.

    So, what exactly is the bottleneck ?
  • peterfares - Friday, June 17, 2011 - link

    The hard drives are the bottleneck, not USB3.
  • knedle - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Actually I had an AM3 motherboard that used hybrid crossfire, but it didn't work as you expect it to work (and lets be honest, I was also disappointed).
    In my case I was hoping that I can crossfire my onboard GPU, with GPU I have in PCIE card, but in reality it just allowed me to switch dynamically from onboard GPU, to expansion card when needed.
  • Galcobar - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Noticed in the comparison chart on the first page the Display Output line refers to "VGA + 1 dedicated/4 shared (HDMI/DVI/DP) from APU" under Sandy Bridge. I could have sworn APU was the preferred term for AMD's Fusion setup.
  • IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    My apologies, I turned that part of the table the wrong way round compared to my original notes for some reason. Many thanks for spotting it.

    Ian
  • lamonf - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    from your own test :
    core i5 2500K = 100%
    A8-3850 = 72%

    and because core i3 is a dual core :
    core i3 = 50%

    You (anand) lack something and you are a one legged biped, mostly the Intel's one ;)
  • IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Core i3 Second Generation chips are dual cores with hyperthreading (2C/4T). 2500K is 4C/4T. It's not a straight 50% as you make it out to be, otherwise the i7-920 (4C/8T) would act the same or worse than the 2500K (due to instructions per clock and clock speed).
  • duploxxx - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    it doesn't matter if you want to compare it to i3 or i5. If AMD puts a price on this Liano and it targets i3 then one should compare with i3, graphics performance there is nothing to compare against from Intel only discrete anyway.
  • L. - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Although this battle looks a bit heated, I'll be joinin on the fun :p

    Quite seriously, Llano is not meant to be compared with anything else than SOC systems, and I believe as soon as we have pricing information, it'll be a clear winner.

    i3 is still an "overpowered" CPU compared to most everyone's needs, with a clearly underpowered GPU compared to any basic gaming needs.

    The good comparison for the Llano will be : xyz watts, zyx dollars for the base SOC system.

    I believe anything like discrete graphics does not fall in the same category and would thus be nonsense, unless it falls in the extremely unlikely case of same tdp, same price and better performance, where it'll still have the big disadvantage of not being SOC.

    Clearly any comparison with an i5 is purely informative, as the i5-2500k is an overkill CPU for (almost) everything and thus of limited interest to most customers (as in, drop that i5 and it's expensive mobo, drop the 6870, get a cheap phenom crap and an hd6950 and there you go, better results).

    Quite curious as to how much the base combo with Llano will cost and consume, mini-ITX 4 gigs of RAM looks like plenty for that type of SoC.
  • jrs77 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Llano seems to lack CPU-performance like we expected and excels in video-performance compared to SandyBridge.
    The question is, just how much video-performance Joe Black needs on a daily basis.

    If Llano isn't way cheaper then intels i3-2xxx and doesn't use less power, then there's imho no reason to go for AMD. And intel can easily upgrade their small desktop-chips from HD2000 to HD3000 to improve the iGPU drastically.

    I'm not impressed actually.
  • medi01 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    Did you take motherboard cost into account?
    I simply cannot imagine users that would benefit from a bit higher raw CPU performance CPU of i3 level more than from a vastly superior video/3D performance.
  • psychobriggsy - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Can you confirm why you are using Catalyst 10.12 in this day and age, when Llano requires 11.4 or higher? Or is that a cut-and-paste mistake?

    Also can you try using DDR-1833 with Llano next time - I don't know why you've downclocked the fast memory that is used in this preview - a limitation with the ES Llano you're using?
  • IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Catalyst 10.12 was used for the discrete GPU results in the test, the drivers on the support CD were used for the iGPU tests. Using Catalyst 10.12 allows us to retain parity with the other products we've tested this year - particularly when improved Crossfire profiles are released, it would be unfair to compare similar products with wildly different Catalyst versions if the latest has a significant performance increase. Every time we change Catalyst versions, I will have to go back and test a few previous boards in order to have some comparison points for the future. That being said, we may move to 11.6 when it is released.

    Also the same thing with memory - in order to retain parity across systems, particularly H67 (or the fact that Cougar Point only officially supports DDR3-1333) for results. Otherwise they'll all be skewed depending on the vendors choice of memory support.

    Ian
  • psychobriggsy - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    I feel it is unfair to cripple a competitor because the other competitor can't do something. If Llano on the desktop officially supports DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1866 then it should be tested with them (and indeed would be an interesting small article - the effect of memory speeds on Llano performance) because it may support them for a reason (in this case the fGPU would benefit from higher memory bandwidth).

    In the other Llano article Anand was very happy to run off and retest with the latest Intel graphics drivers. It seems like there are two standards being applied.
  • muziqaz - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    What's with the memory clock? Using hundreds of dollars worth of ram sticks just to downclock them to some 20 dollar stick levels?
  • IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    As I've said in a previous comment, it is done in order to retain parity for the benchmarks across systems, particularly H67 (or the fact that Cougar Point only officially supports DDR3-1333). Otherwise they'll all be skewed depending on the vendors choice of memory support. Motherboards are tricky to test - you either go all out on all the settings, or try and level it out to real world use and keep the vast majority of settings consistent between products to find where the real differences are.

    Ian
  • marc1000 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Ian, I believe that in the "release to market" boards, the memory speed should be configured according to the official maximum speed of each platform. if that means 1333 for intel and 1800 (or whatever the final spec may be) for AMD, then this is the way it should be tested. maybe AMD was aiming for higher speed to compensate for the low number of channels. ;)
  • KaarlisK - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Seconded.
    If a platform supports DDR3-1866, it is an actual advantage of the platform and it should be used.
    There is the question of cost, though.
  • IanCutress - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Noted for the future. It's always interesting to hear what other people think on the issue.

    Ian
  • semo - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Do AMD motherboards fully support UEFI like this ASRock?
  • mino - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link

    UEFI support is PURELY motherboard vendor's choice.

    It has nothing to do with the CPU, be it AMD, Intel or VIA for that matter.
  • mino - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link

    Err, better wording would be "has UEFI", as the board either uses UEFI or BIOS loader.

    It does not "support" either. It contains/uses them.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    How many PCIe lanes does the southbridge have in total? If it's low enough (eg the same 4 as the mobile part + 4 on the CPU), then the 3 legacy PCI slots might simply reflect not being able to add anything else?

    The ethernet and additional sata controllers would take two; and if the firewire controller is PCIe instead of PCI that would take a 3rd, leaving only the 5 used in the 1x and 3rd 16x(phy) slot.

    Alternately, are they using AMD audio or a 3rd party controller? The latter would take a connection as well.
  • mino - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link

    Exactly.
  • glugglug - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Is there an AMD equivalent of QuickSync? To me, that is the biggest plus of SandyBridge right now.
  • Shinobi_III - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    I hope there's some sort of safety here, resetting that would suck while running..
  • Hubb1e - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    I don't understand the positioning of this board and others like it in the marketplace. Llano is a perfectly fine processor. I really like the concept and think it's a great CPU for my wife/mom/dad/brother/etc. I think it will be great in the marketplace. But at the shipping CPU speeds of less than 3ghz, it's not a gaming chip. Why all the motherboards with "Extreme" branding and 3 PCIe-x16 slots? Would anyone really get this CPU and crossfire it? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. The motherboards for this chip should be mainstream boards. It's an Athlon X4, not a Phenom at 3.5ghz. Maybe the motherboard makers know something I don't about the frequency capability of these chips, but unless these chips start shipping at 3.5-4ghz, there's no reason at ALL to launch an "Extreme" edition motherboard for these chips.
  • Taft12 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    There's a very good reason to launch an "Extreme" Llano motherboard: High profit margin.
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    You can overclock the system to 3.8Ghz~, so it's a pretty capable gaming system.

    You can also ran boinc exclusively on the IGP (openCL) and at the same time rock 6850 in CF with full speed (not as fast as on a SB/Zambesi).
  • buildingblock - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    I agree with Hubb1e. The AMD strategy on LLano is to pair a comparatively weak CPU with a much better on-die GPU. To me this adds up to a budget option for those who don't want and are never likely to need a discrete graphics card. So Llano needs a budget-priced motherboard costing around the same as Intel's H61 boards.

    To show what the economics are, the Asrock Extreme6 P67 board costs $189 from NewEgg. Reasonably a Llano version should be around the same. One of the cheapest Intel H61 boards from NewEgg is the Asrock H61M-VS at $60. You can pair this with the Intel Core i3 2100 at $125 and have a board/CPU combo for $185, probably less than the price of the Asrock Extreme6 board on its own. If $185 is too much, the Asrock H61 can be paired with the Sandy Bridge G620 at $78 from Newegg. This gives a board/CPU combo costing $138.

    In my opinion the superior GPU performance of Llano is not going to add to much in the budget market. The challenge for AMD is that they need a desktop board/CPU combo costing around $140 to compete with Intel. The fact is that Intel's HD2000 unit is good enough for normal GPU acceleration needed by Flash or browsers. The budget end of the market won't tolerate a significant price premium to pay for notionally better on-chip GPU performance which does not make any visible difference to ordinary users.
  • mino - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link

    because having x16 plus x4 plus three x1 slots looks much less "expensive" and also give the customer much less flexibility (RAID/NIC cards anyone?).
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link

    Why an i5 2500K (over $200)

    Main competition on the same price segment of A8 3850 is the i5 2400 with the much worse HD2000. No point in including HD3000 for desktop since it's a useless IGP given that it's included in the most expensive cpu (this is a major intel failure, that IGP shoul've gone in nonK i3-i5).
  • buildingblock - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    Intel has released the Core i3 2105. It's the 3.1Ghz 2100 paired with the HD3000. Already on sale and in stock at NewEgg for $140. This is a $15 premium over the ordinary 2100. The 2105 as a CPU is clearly able to match the Llano, it's just a question of how important the superior performance of the AMD graphics unit is going to be to buyers in this market segment. In my opinion, not at all - partly because they can pair the 2100/2105 with a budget priced Intel H61 motherboard and still get a motherboard/CPU combo for $200 or less. AMD will have a chance if they can get down to this price level. The problem otherwise is the elephant in the room, Ivy Bridge coming in Q2 2012. Both Bulldozer and Llano have already been delayed, and assuming they are both on the market in September this only gives AMD about two quarters before Ivy Bridge hits.
  • IanCutress - Thursday, June 16, 2011 - link

    Unfortunately, I don't have access to every CPU in every segment, being the motherboard editor. The only ones on hand were an i5-2500K, the results from my long gone i7-920, or a Fusion E-350. I have just received an X6 1100T, though didn't have time to test it. With the IGP in the i5-2500K, it seemed the best comparison tool out of those.

    Ian
  • zhonguuo - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link



    very good web,believe you will love it.

    FREE SHIPPING,accept pyapal

    discount including evisu jeans,watches shirts,bags,hat and the decorations

    trust me!

    Quickly snapping up right
  • mino - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link

    This is how the CPU reviews should have been written.
  • henhaohenhao - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link


    Come go and see, will not regret it Oh look

    http://www.ifancyshop.com
  • henhaohenhao - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link


    Come go and see, will not regret it Oh look

    http://www.ifancyshop.com
  • IrinaBelova - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link


    Доброго утра!
    Готовы предложить лучшие прогоны, чтобы "убить" интернет-ресурс конкурентов. Всего от 2 000 рублей.
    - Стопроцентный эффект. Сайты ваших конкурентов "умрут".
    - Наибольшее количество негативных фитбеков.
    - Собрана особая база - самые "смертельные" площадки из 10 000 000 веб-сайтов (спамных, порно, вирусных и тому подобных). Это работает бесперебойно.
    - Прогон производится одновременно с четырех серверов.
    - Отправка активационных ссылок на официальный e-mail.
    - Можем растянуть по времени как угодно.
    - Прогон с запрещёнными ключами.
    - При двух заказах - хорошие скидки заказчикам.

    Стоимость 4000 рублей
    Полная отчётность.
    Оплата: Киви, Yandex.Money, Bitcoin, Visa, MasterCard...
    Телега: @exrumer
    Whatssap: +7 906 531-21-55
    Viber: +7 977 525-54-62
    Skype: XRumer.pro
    маил: support@xrumer.eu

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now