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

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,532
AMD's Llano Fusion - A Series APUs - While we have seen previous Fusion APUs, today AMD releases its code named "Llano" Fusion A Series APU processor on the world. The first one of these we get to see is in a notebook and a mere 228 square millimeter of silicon that AMD is counting on changing its balance sheet.
 
Definitely going to be looking at Fusion laptops when it comes time for my girlfriend to need a new computer.
 
I could see myself buying a laptop with Llano. Mobile gaming on the cheap! Yaaay! :D
 
It was nice knowing you Dell Inspiron 1525 with an Intel HD3000 GMA and 2.0 GHz single core Celeron CPU, but we must part ways. You simply did not have enough power to play the games I wanted to play.

Why hello there, AMD Llano, I hope to have you in my next laptop in the very, very near future. I think HP came out with one already. Hopefully there will be more manufacturers coming out with them soon, especially from Lenovo. I almost bought their E350-equipped Lenovo laptop but decided to hold out and wait for Llano.

And, thank goodness I waited.
 
If only Llano had come out a month sooner. Would have made for a very excellent HTPC chip.
 
Boy thats a breath of fresh air. After all the negative press and rumors surrounding BD and everything, its very nice and reassuring to see some evidence theyve got things well under control over at AMD. Its been a tough year for us AMD fanboys so its nice to have something to hold our heads up about again even if it is a mainstream laptop proc. :D
 
Cool to see non-timedemo benchmarks. The GPU performance looks good at medium resolution.
 
Maybe I missed it but what catalyst version were the benchmarks done with? Also do you know if the standard CAP profiles will work with this or will there be separate ones for fusion?
 
Kyle, can you tell us the memory speed in the laptop AMD supplied you with? It seems that Llano's graphics processor is bandwidth-hungry, and fast DDR3 1600/1866 is not a common sight in your average low-priced notebook with integrated graphics.

I'd just like to know if we can expect this level of performance from your average laptop OEM..
 
This is the first Llano review i've read all day, and I have to say that I did not expect this. Wow! While we still wait for AMD's Bulldozer stuff, it is nice to see that AMD is bringing performance and value to the laptop market in a huge way. Great review!

My only disappointment is to learn that the fastest CPU speed is going to be 1.5ghz without involving turbocore. My current HP budget laptop that I bought last year has a Turion 64 X2 [email protected] and it is starting to feel just a tad slow on stuff.
 
Kyle, can you tell us the memory speed in the laptop AMD supplied you with? It seems that Llano's graphics processor is bandwidth-hungry, and fast DDR3 1600/1866 is not a common sight in your average low-priced notebook with integrated graphics.

I'd just like to know if we can expect this level of performance from your average laptop OEM..

Dual channel DDR3 1333 - Think we saw around 10GB/s speeds.
 
Thanks for the review, pretty impressive performance for a laptop.
BTW during the in depth tech talks one of the AMD reps let it slip that Trinity (Bulldozer Fusion) will have a 6850 equivalent as the GPU component but VLIW4 based. Pretty exciting.
 
That's fantastic! Obviously time constraints play a big part in what/how many games you guys use, but I know a lot of people that use laptops to play Starcraft 2. So if you somehow find the time, hook a brotha up with some SC2 benches!
 
Why don't they have high end cards that use bunches of these little gizmos for high performance to power ratio?
 
Why don't they have high end cards that use bunches of these little gizmos for high performance to power ratio?

That would be horribly expensive to get them to that performance not to mention an engineering head ache to get a mass of these to work together.
 
i have been waiting to buy a new labtop for awhile now. I have a old gateway 1.4ghz celeron LOL yes i know....

I always wanted to play a game or two on my labtop, but that wasn't going to happen unless i spent 2k+

Thank you Amd, I am definitely going to get one of these. Finally can i game on a low cost labtop.
 
looks great now when can I get my hands on one paired with a 6970m!?

you probably won't. anandtech did an article/review talking about the limitations of what can be paired with the A series APU's. performance wise its pretty much limited to 6750 and lower i believe.(to lazy to look up the specifics right now). also once you slap a 6970m in there you pretty much defeated the entire purpose of the APU. so you might as well just go buy a laptop with a sandy bridge processor and the 6970m.

Why don't they have high end cards that use bunches of these little gizmos for high performance to power ratio?

essentially they are, but instead the gpu's use engines and instead of processor cores they use shader cores(stream processors, cuda cores what ever you want to call them). so depending on whats needed and being accessed determines what engines being used and how many shader cores are needed to perform that action. but the gpu's use to a more basic version of power gating to keep power usage lower. we will probably see the power gating improved as newer generations of cards come out.
 
you probably won't. anandtech did an article/review talking about the limitations of what can be paired with the A series APU's. performance wise its pretty much limited to 6750 and lower i believe.(to lazy to look up the specifics right now). also once you slap a 6970m in there you pretty much defeated the entire purpose of the APU. so you might as well just go buy a laptop with a sandy bridge processor and the 6970m.

figures. looks like it's SB+nvidia for me :(
 
This is exactly what the market needs; integrated graphics for the masses that don't suck.
 
Boy thats a breath of fresh air. After all the negative press and rumors surrounding BD and everything, its very nice and reassuring to see some evidence theyve got things well under control over at AMD. Its been a tough year for us AMD fanboys so its nice to have something to hold our heads up about again even if it is a mainstream laptop proc. :D

QFT

AMD is the king of value. I knew it wasn't going to let me down on that.
 
so since we have to waaait for laptops to arrive, which one are you waiting for? personally, id like an A8 (no discrete) in a Sony Vaio 15.6". if not that then Dell. so glad i waited for this chip!! and that it can do 4xAA in my old games makes me all giggly... :)
 
I'm very confused about this review. Is the APU in crossfire with a dedicated graphics card at any point? The review seems to talk about it it like it's in crossfire (referencing driver issuess) but I never see a mention of another GPU...
 
I'm very confused about this review. Is the APU in crossfire with a dedicated graphics card at any point? The review seems to talk about it it like it's in crossfire (referencing driver issuess) but I never see a mention of another GPU...

Yeah I actually can't find it clearly said in text too.

And since the performance is so good here compared to Anand i think it might have been CF laptop.
 
I'm thinking about replacing my trusty laptop, and this looks like a very good replacement. Kudos to AMD for delivering something a lot of people actually need.
 
Amazing new technology from AMD... high praise from every site - and the AMD stock is dipping?! INVESTORS, Y U NO FOLLOW LOGIC?
 
I think this is great!

If hundreds of thousands of people buy these every year, and realize that they can play great games on these and don't have to buy an Xbox or a PS3 to play games, then developers will start writing real PC games again, instead of console ports.

I never thought PC gaming was dying, but it sure as hell has seemed pretty stagnant over the last few years.
 
AMD has done something amazing for us all, they made gaming a standard feature on low cost laptops. This is amazing wow!
 
Great review, smart move by AMD. Intel cannot compete, their graphics solutions suck... I will be recommending Llano to family and friends
 
This is a great product for laptops but not desktops, and only until Intel fixes their graphics or implements their licenses for GPU technology from other companies which they already own. When Intel 22nm goes mainstream ULV on laptop CPUs I expect they will also be packing some 3rd party GPU in there too.
 
This is a great product for laptops but not desktops, and only until Intel fixes their graphics or implements their licenses for GPU technology from other companies which they already own. When Intel 22nm goes mainstream ULV on laptop CPUs I expect they will also be packing some 3rd party GPU in there too.

Not to be a devil's-advocate here, but there's an old expression, "If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle".

Who's 3rd party GPU are they going to pack in there? AMD? Nvidia? Nope, Intel is the "largest producer of GPU's in the world" because they put their HD3000/4500 on every motherboard in every Big-Box computer sold. Llano/Lynx has the ability to breakdown Intel's lead there. Walk into a Worst Buy, and check how many Sandy Bridge versus Core i3/Pentium Dual Core/Athlon II/Phenom II computers there are. Remember, MOST people aren't [H], most people don't read these message boards, and for MOST people, the graphics advantage of a Llano/Lynx is more important then the CPU advantage of Sandy Bridge, especially if the Llano/Lynx is cheaper.

Sandy Bridge is a fantastic processor, but the GPU is pretty meh. Ivy Bridge seems to promise only small improvements there. When Intel goes 22nm, we'll see the advantages of a die shrink (reduced power use/heat), but probably limited performance gain, and that performance gain will be focused on the CPU.

And for the majority of users, there is precious little real, noticeable, performance difference between a Phenom II or a Sandy Bridge. Sure, the Sandy Bridge is a lot faster, but they're both past the point of diminishing returns in real-world applications.
 
So every test was done using an additional Radeon...(?) How about some gaming benchmarks that show just what the Llano chip itself can do? That's probably more relevant for more people. Yeah, you'd have to turn down some settings and maybe the resolution, but it should still be able to provide a decent gaming experience.
 
Back
Top