AMD's Llano Fusion - A Series APUs @ [H]

I'm wondering if I should just suck it up and get something with dedicated graphics card. I'm not "planning" on gaming on my laptop, but since I'm getting rid of my desktop, maybe I should?
 
Red Falcon said:
No, the HD3000 Intel IGP does not even come close to comparing to any of the HD6000 series IGP or discrete mobile GPUs.

My friend has an Intel HD3000 IGP and a C2D, and yeah, it gets it's ass kicked by my netbook with a dual-core Atom and an ION IGP, which is still not as fast as an AMD APU.

I don't care how fast your CPU is or how many cores you have, if your IGP/GPU is lacking in processing power, you won't be able to play games nearly as well as another system with a slower CPU and a powerful GPU.

Intel designed it's IGPs for energy/cost efficiency, not performance. Though they have improved over the years, they still don't come close to NVIDIA or AMD IGPs.
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Agreed, Even after messing with the HD3000, I still think intel has a ways to go in graphics, nice CPU's though. And great foundry technology, I mean they have been at 32nm for quite some time now, AMD is only now just getting there with Global Foundries.
 
Red Falcon said:
No, the HD3000 Intel IGP does not even come close to comparing to any of the HD6000 series IGP or discrete mobile GPUs.

My friend has an Intel HD3000 IGP and a C2D, and yeah, it gets it's ass kicked by my netbook with a dual-core Atom and an ION IGP, which is still not as fast as an AMD APU.
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are we talking about the same intel igp?

i don't remember the core2duo coming with sandy bridge hd3000 graphics :confused:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-ION-2.24292.0.html
This link shows your ion getting beat.


how would you explain the hd3000 showing similar performance as a 6370m discrete in the benchmarks? With its slower core and shader speed, the 6480g should be neatly slotted between the 6370 and 6470m.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6370M.40970.0.html

my conclusion is that the sandy hd3000 can very well keep up with the cut down llano igp 6480g,
and that unless the A4 apu laptop is under $350, it's not a good deal.

I think of it like this- the A4 is supposed to have similar performance as a p340 athlon, which is $300 on sale.
adding a very low entry level "discrete class" igp is worth how much? maybe $35 I'd say.
So the target price under $350 is most appropriate. $335 is a buy.


edit- oh hey, look at that. They did drop the A4-3300m to $350 after all
http://www.staples.com/HP-g6-1b60us-15.6-Laptop/product_332976

.
 
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I wonder if we could see onboard an A4 APU like the old L3 cache for Bulldozer boards?
 
griff30 said:
I wonder if we could see onboard an A4 APU like the old L3 cache for Bulldozer boards?
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It is possible that Trinity may have L3 cache, but anything like eDRAM may not be profitable (though it would help performance immensely).
 
for anyone looking for a a8 labtop.

Only one i have found so far is from gateway.

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668847.php

629.99$ msrp.

I am still waiting for more a8 notebooks to come out. The gateway one looks pretty solid though.

But the hd3000 graphics don't even come close to the a8 or a6. Only way intel can compete with amd on the graphics front is adding a discrete card. Then your going to have short battery life and its going to be more expensive, not to mention they are going to be much more bulky.

at under 700$ its nearly impossible to beat the gaming performance this guys offer. Over 700$ its possible, but then again it is going to be heavier,and have less battery life.
 
ebduncan said:
for anyone looking for a a8 labtop.

Only one i have found so far is from gateway.

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668847.php

629.99$ msrp.

I am still waiting for more a8 notebooks to come out. The gateway one looks pretty solid though.

But the hd3000 graphics don't even come close to the a8 or a6. Only way intel can compete with amd on the graphics front is adding a discrete card. Then your going to have short battery life and its going to be more expensive, not to mention they are going to be much more bulky.

at under 700$ its nearly impossible to beat the gaming performance this guys offer. Over 700$ its possible, but then again it is going to be heavier,and have less battery life.
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And probably be only two cores. I get the distaste by some people for the attention to cores with BD instead of SP performance. But in this day and age with Computer users running 100 million programs at once, the user experience difference between 2 cores and 4 is pretty high, clock speed and IPC be damned.

They added an A6 model. http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668846.php

Sold instores and available for store pickup.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/661459/Gateway-NV55S02u-Laptop-Computer-With-156/
 
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ebduncan said:
But the hd3000 graphics don't even come close to the a8 or a6. Only way intel can compete with amd on the graphics front is adding a discrete card. Then your going to have short battery life and its going to be more expensive, not to mention they are going to be much more bulky.
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Battery life with discret graphics isn't much worse than APU at the moment.

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And so far it's 32nm APU vs 32nm CPU+40 nm GPU so they have 6-9 months of slight advantage before competitors go into 22nm CPU+28nm GPUs.

More expensive is just a matter of price and with die size diffrence beetween dual core sandy bridge vs 4 core apu guess who have more profit margins to cut in eventual price war.
 
defaultluser said:
Thanks man! So, graphics performance is decent with 1333, and there's room for improvement if you want to buy faster memory. Could make for an excellent value gaming platform if they keep the price right.
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The platform it succeeds (Turion/Mobile A-II with HD4200) wasn't a bad entry-level/portable gaming platform (especially at the same price point) - consider the *current* lineup of 14" and 15" HP Pavilion AMD-driven notebooks (these are likely the ones that the Fusion Mobile APUs will slide into, with no price increase). Increased performance - for productivity *and* gaming - for no increase in price in absolute dollars over last year's champ in the category? Until (and unless) Intel comes up with a mobile version of Pentium-G (the value/budget Sandy Bridge version of LGA775's pocket Visigoths - Celeron DC/Pentium DC), they have exactly diddly in the category. Atom is severely underpowered by comparison, and mobile i3 is too pricey. Expect trainwrecks a-plenty.
 
Michaelius said:
Battery life with discrete graphics isn't much worse than APU at the moment.

And so far it's 32nm APU vs 32nm CPU+40 nm GPU so they have 6-9 months of slight advantage before competitors go into 22nm CPU+28nm GPUs.

More expensive is just a matter of price and with die size diffrence beetween dual core sandy bridge vs 4 core apu guess who have more profit margins to cut in eventual price war.
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Are you comparing the A8-3500M to the i3-380M + GT425M? While the battery life difference isn't that large, the performance difference basically says that the GT425M isn't a hell of a lot better than the 6620G inside the A8-3500M, and I think calling the GT425M 'discrete' is a long shot.
 
Except that, oddly enough, the latest patch (4.2) makes WoW more playable on lower-end hardware (especially DX11 hardware, though the DX9c improvements in the same patch are far from shabby). WoW is going to find itself becoming more like other MMOs (regardless of payment format) - network-bound (the bog is going to be the speed of the client's connection); I've noticed this myself since re-downloading the WoW Starter Edition (utterly free, but with a level 20 character cap), which includes patch 4.2. If you have HD5450 or equivalent DX11 hardware, you should be able to firewall WoW's settings in DX9 mode. (And by "firewall" I mean every setting maxed, along with resolution. I did it with the rig below - which pre-4.2, would be flat-out impossible, let alone unlikely,) HD5450 is budget GPU hardware that the Fusion A4 APU flat-out embarrasses - yet it is above the Mobility HD4200 that had been common in pre-Fusion AMD-powered portables at this price-point. Depending on the speed of your wireless connection, I could see this group of portables as more than suitable for WoW dungeon raids on the run.
 
JMccovery said:
Are you comparing the A8-3500M to the i3-380M + GT425M? While the battery life difference isn't that large, the performance difference basically says that the GT425M isn't a hell of a lot better than the 6620G inside the A8-3500M, and I think calling the GT425M 'discrete' is a long shot.
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That's also with a battery almost 43% larger. 58Wh vs. 83. Or a 5 cell battery vs. a 9 cell. equalized in the standard use test it would last over 9 hours.

The one machine that bothers me in this test is in the H.264, the Dell with the i7 gets a really well done score in video playback even though its middle of the pack if not worse in all the other tests. Is this because of Quicksync, I thought that was only encoding. What could cause such a discrepancy.
 
PGHammer said:
Until (and unless) Intel comes up with a mobile version of Pentium-G (the value/budget Sandy Bridge version of LGA775's pocket Visigoths - Celeron DC/Pentium DC), they have exactly diddly in the category. Atom is severely underpowered by comparison, and mobile i3 is too pricey. Expect trainwrecks a-plenty.
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intel already does.

it's called the B940
 
Anyone confirm DDR3 1600 RAM that will work with the AMD Llano Fusion? I have an HP DV6z and wouldn't mind throwing in 8GB of DDR3 1600 preferably at CAS 9. But everything I read says XMP, PnP, etc which is all Intel. No clear reference if it will just work @ 1600MHz.

I can actually play Bad Company 2 @ 1280x720 using the IGP only (it also has the 6750m) on battery at ~ 30fps with med/low detail and for a good 3 hours with my 9-cell battery with 8GB DDR3 1333. If I can get the extra boost from the IGP using DDR3 1600 CAS9 it would be great.
 
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