First "real" Llano benches

This, people, is what a real leak looks like. Notice the pr0n shots of the chip and board? That's the minimum necessary to take it seriously. ;)
 
I don't know if the original guy was a fan-boy so much as he was super exicited about what he got his hands on. Like the hole Nvidia focus group stuff in the past. Give them free shit and they fall in love.

I hate Apple for the most part. But if they game me a free 32gb Iphone 4, or Ipad 2. I might change my tune.
 
So he got a 2.9ghz rated chip to hit 3.77ghz for ~24% oc? That would be kinda cool. And I agree, any leak looking for any kind of decent reception must have documentation (read: pics) of the hardware used.
 
I buy that this is the real deal. I was expecting more of a performance gap between the 400 SP part and Intel HD 3000, as benchmarks have shown it to perform on-par with an HD 5450.

Either the guesstimated 594 MHz clock speeds plastered across the web are about twice as fast as they should be, or AMD is having trouble keeping those 400 shaders fed with dual-channel DDR3. This is quite possible, because AMD already supplies a massive 12 GB/s bandwidth to the lowly 5450 with 80 shaders, and they're giving 400 shaders and 4 CPU cores roughly double that bandwidth. I'm willing to bet the 320 shader model will perform near the same, and the 160 shader model will be the sweetspot in terms of real performance/shader.

Just look at the classic HD 4670. They fed that sucker with 32GB/s for 320 shaders, and still the part was often a bit bandwidth-limited versus the 3850. I can't imagine feeding 400 shaders with about half that real bandwidth (roughly 16GB/s) (and remember the CPU cores need a piece of it as well).

Or, maybe I'm just blowing smoke and they'll optimize the drivers before release. No way to know for sure :D

As for the core clock being only 2.9 GHz, this may be one of the 65w TDP quad-core 400 shader models we've seen in the charts. That would explain the lower-than-expected clocks (and massive overclocking headroom).
 
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UPDATE #2 results:
"Hawx 2 DX9 1920x1080

Intel HD3000 1100 Mhz= 26 fps
AMD HD6550D 600? Mhz 46 fps +77%

Streetfighter 1920x1080

Intel HD3000 1100 Mhz= 22.75 fps
AMD HD6550D 600? Mhz 50.32 fps +121%

Resident Evil 5 Directx9

Intel HD3000 1100 Mhz= 15,5 fps
AMD HD6550D 600? Mhz 29,0 fps +87%

Resident Evil 5 Directx10

Intel HD3000 1100 Mhz= 14,5 fps
AMD HD6550D 600? Mhz 27,4 fps +89%
Identical game settings. Intel driver 8.15.10.2361 used."
Click to expand...

HTPC/TV gaming, and gaming laptops will rock with Llano.
 
A Llano MiniITX board would make for a nice arcade cabinet PC, definitely with a 720p monitor
 
Wait IGP can game? When did this happen.

I still have nightmares about the i810, i845, and i945. As well as for the Unichrome and 6150 lol
 
Go Llano go! Seriously, this is how proper leaks are done!

I can't wait to pick up one of these. Am I replacing my 2600K? Nope. I just feel the need to own one of everything. :)
 
defaultluser said:
I buy that this is the real deal. I was expecting more of a performance gap between the 400 SP part and Intel HD 3000, as benchmarks have shown it to perform on-par with an HD 5450.

Either the guesstimated 594 MHz clock speeds plastered across the web are about twice as fast as they should be, or AMD is having trouble keeping those 400 shaders fed with dual-channel DDR3. This is quite possible, because AMD already supplies a massive 12 GB/s bandwidth to the lowly 5450 with 80 shaders, and they're giving 400 shaders and 4 CPU cores roughly double that bandwidth. I'm willing to bet the 320 shader model will perform near the same, and the 160 shader model will be the sweetspot in terms of real performance/shader.

Just look at the classic HD 4670. They fed that sucker with 32GB/s for 320 shaders, and still the part was often a bit bandwidth-limited versus the 3850. I can't imagine feeding 400 shaders with about half that real bandwidth (roughly 16GB/s) (and remember the CPU cores need a piece of it as well).

Or, maybe I'm just blowing smoke and they'll optimize the drivers before release. No way to know for sure :D

As for the core clock being only 2.9 GHz, this may be one of the 65w TDP quad-core 400 shader models we've seen in the charts. That would explain the lower-than-expected clocks (and massive overclocking headroom).
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I wonder if Llano can run DDR3-1600 or higher? If you could o/c the memory to 2GHz (I know a VERY long shot), you'd get 32GB/s, which may come close a 4670...
 
JMccovery said:
I wonder if Llano can run DDR3-1600 or higher? If you could o/c the memory to 2GHz (I know a VERY long shot), you'd get 32GB/s, which may come close a 4670...
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As you can see from the link I gave, the existing AM3 platforms are limited to 16GB/s, even when running DDR3 2133. We know that faster memory can improve memory bandwidth because Sandy Bridge LOVES 2133, topping 30GB/s.

It must be because of limited clock speeds of the memory controller. If they can fix those clock speeds, then maybe they can provide more bandwidth, but we'll have to see with Llano. AMD really has not provided an impressive memory controller in years.

And as for the performance increase we should be expecting, compare to the HD 5570. The clock speed is only off by ~50 MHz, has the same number of shaders, and the performance improvement over the HD 5450 and Intel HD Graphics 3000 is about 2.5-3x. But this requires 28GB/s bandwidth to pull-off.
 
Wow, impressive. That think can clock well, and has good performance for what it is. There may be an Llano in my future.
 
I just had a thought: they may get around this problem by including sideport memory (like the first 780G motherboards before DDR3 was introduced). Unfortunately, to make something affordable with high-enough bandwidth they'd have to go with GDDR5 2Gbit chips. But I'm not sure they would do that, as it could add $20 or more to the cost of the board.
 
pxc said:
A "leaked" price list showed the top A8 model cost $170.
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argghhhh... see, the problem with that is that you can buy a 100$ quad athlon or dual sandy bridge CPU and pair it with a 70$ GPU and probably come out better on both sides. I like the chip, but it needs to be priced lower. I think it will be absolutely smashing for laptops though :)
 
defaultluser said:
I just had a thought: they may get around this problem by including sideport memory (like the first 780G motherboards before DDR3 was introduced). Unfortunately, to make something affordable with high-enough bandwidth they'd have to go with GDDR5 2Gbit chips. But I'm not sure they would do that, as it could add $20 or more to the cost of the board.
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in a laptop it isn't a bad idea to add $20+ to the bottom line for the performance boost it would provide. I'd pay it.
 
Nice, a built-in GPU that performs better than a lot of low-end cards. That's something that people will use.
 
nonameo said:
you can buy a 100$ quad athlon or dual sandy bridge CPU and pair it with a 70$ GPU and probably come out better on both sides.
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Or buy the $100 Llano, a $70 GPU and CrossFire them for even more performance (in canned benchmarks at least).
 
chithanh said:
Or buy the $100 Llano, a $70 GPU and CrossFire them for even more performance (in canned benchmarks at least).
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The problem with this is that the CPU performance of a 100$ llano will be less than that of a 170$ llano, so then I should just look at even cheaper non-llano CPUs that are competitive with said 100$ llano on the CPU front. So say a 100$ llano competes with a 70$ non-llano CPU, then I can dump 100$ into a gpu... so we're talking well into 5770 level prices and closing in on gtx 460 level prices. Now, that 100$ llano is not going to have the fastest GPU in it, and it's certainly not going to crossfire with anything juniper or higher. So how much GPU performance can be expected from that kind of a setup?

I will concede one thing. If the motherboards are decently less expensive, which they should be since there's no IGP on the board anymore, then we can talk. However, there are already a bunch of cheap AM3 boards out and 1155 motherboards can be had for as little as 60-70$. I don't see tons of room for savings there.
 
nonameo said:
argghhhh... see, the problem with that is that you can buy a 100$ quad athlon or dual sandy bridge CPU and pair it with a 70$ GPU and probably come out better on both sides. I like the chip, but it needs to be priced lower. I think it will be absolutely smashing for laptops though :)
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That's the only reason I'm critical about the performance, despite it being roughly 2x Sandy Bridge. These prices look like there will be a $40-50 premium for the same core speed with integrated graphics, and for that price you can easily get a Radeon HD 5570: a card I've shown is nearly %50 faster than the 6550 benchmarks we have. If you add $20 more for sideport memory on the motherboard, then you're getting dangerously close to 6670 territory, and that's several times more powerful than the 6550.

It will be a better fit for the notebook market because everything there is overpriced, but I'm disappointed with Llano at $170 on the desktop. And that's too bad because I have a couple of friends looking to build very basic gaming computers this year, and Llano would have been a great suggestion if performance had matched the specs, and the price had been right..
 
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defaultluser said:
That's the only reason I'm critical about the performance, despite it being roughly 2x Sandy Bridge. These prices look like there will be a $40-50 premium for the same core speed with integrated graphics, and for that price you can easily get a Radeon HD 5570: a card I've shown is nearly %50 faster than the 6550 benchmarks we have. If you add $20 more for sideport memory on the motherboard, then you're getting dangerously close to 6670 territory, and that's several times more powerful than the 6550.

It will be a better fit for the notebook market because everything there is overpriced, but I'm disappointed with Llano at $170 on the desktop.
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Sometimes I wonder if it would have been worth the extra investment to dump triple channel memory into the equation... hmmm....

but you'd think AMD would have been on that already. I wonder why they didn't do it?
 
nonameo said:
Sometimes I wonder if it would have been worth the extra investment to dump triple channel memory into the equation... hmmm....

but you'd think AMD would have been on that already. I wonder why they didn't do it?
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You don't make a low cost economy platform that requires 3 sticks of memory.
 
defaultluser said:
That's the only reason I'm critical about the performance, despite it being roughly 2x Sandy Bridge. These prices look like there will be a $40-50 premium for the same core speed with integrated graphics, and for that price you can easily get a Radeon HD 5570: a card I've shown is nearly %50 faster than the 6550 benchmarks we have. If you add $20 more for sideport memory on the motherboard, then you're getting dangerously close to 6670 territory, and that's several times more powerful than the 6550.

It will be a better fit for the notebook market because everything there is overpriced, but I'm disappointed with Llano at $170 on the desktop. And that's too bad because I have a couple of friends looking to build very basic gaming computers this year, and Llano would have been a great suggestion if performance had matched the specs, and the price had been right..
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You are forgetting about power consumption. That is very important to a lot of people. The power consumption will hopefully be a lot lower than the discrete solutions.
 
Yes, that's true... the power consumption for this sort of thing will be awesome. Another reason why I think it's going to be fantabulous for laptops.
 
Good luck getting a lower end dual core or quad core plus discrete graphics to suck less than 65W.
 
Well it is impressive but without a picture of the hardware itself I am quite apprehensive.
 
makwy2 said:
Well it is impressive but without a picture of the hardware itself I am quite apprehensive.
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Did you even click the link? First thing you see is a picture of the chip itself completely un-blurred with full markings. Just a couple lines down from this is a picture of the socket FM1 board used.
 
nonameo said:
Yes, that's true... the power consumption for this sort of thing will be awesome. Another reason why I think it's going to be fantabulous for laptops.
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As well as media PCs. Low power consumption means less heat. Less heat = less noise.
 
theres a chinese review of this same processor that they were able to get up to 5.5Ghz on LN2.

but out of this review the most surprising is they got 2.3Ghz stable on the ram, thats friggin insane and higher then any DDR3 based card out there, i think the 9800GTX+/GTS 250 got to 2100mhz.

either way it will definitely be a nice mobile platform or media center platform with gaming support for those basic games. i mean shit i'd rather buy this thing and just spend 40 bucks on a xbox 360 controller. its just a 360 for less money and the ability to upgrade over time :p
 
nonameo said:
The problem with this is that the CPU performance of a 100$ llano will be less than that of a 170$ llano, so then I should just look at even cheaper non-llano CPUs that are competitive with said 100$ llano on the CPU front.
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Which of the following do you think will give you a higher 3DMark score? (Stupid canned benchmark, I know. But it drives purchasing decisions.)

$170 Llano with IGP vs. $170 SandyBridge with IGP
$170 Llano with 6450 (Hybrid CF) vs. SandyBridge with 6450
$170 Llano with 6570 (Hybrid CF) vs. SandyBridge with 6570
$170 Llano with 6670 (Hybrid CF) vs. SandyBridge with 6670

I predict that in all cases, Llano will win despite its inferior CPU. Only if you add a high-end graphics card, then SandyBridge will pull ahead. But that is Bulldozer's domain.
 
chithanh said:
Which of the following do you think will give you a higher 3DMark score? (Stupid canned benchmark, I know. But it drives purchasing decisions.)
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If someone is a gamer, they may need X performance to play modern games at Y resolution. Whether they buy a Llano or SB doesn't matter much with many mid-range and lower PCIe video cards since many games will be GPU limited. Hybrid CFX has always been fail when the IGP is fairly slow. If someone wants to play games, a single $100 card will likely be faster than a pair of HD 6550 cards, one of which is bandwidth starved (IGP).

OTOH, if the need for high performance gaming is limited, a 400SP Llano may be more than enough for those users... and in fewer cases so would HD Graphics 2000/3000 or 160SP/240SP Llano GPUs. Except on older Atom platforms, the era of poor really GMA graphics (ugh) is nearly over.

As shocking as it sounds, many users don't care about high performance graphics anyways. Unknowledgeable users will tend to buy what is recommended to them for their usage, not necessarily how some feature would nearly be suitable for a gamer. ;)

IMO the benefit of Llano is to raise the floor for minimum graphics performance when buying low cost systems. Even the 160SP 400MHz IGP in low end mobile Llano processors should be at least on par or possibly faster than HD Graphics 2000. Everything else above that is even better. This is great for buyers of lower end systems, but not really anything exciting for enthusiasts. A gimped bandwidth HD 6550 isn't anything to get excited about for gaming.

I don't really care about Llano IGP performance. It will be faster than the competition with at least the 400SP equipped models. That's good for many buyers. I was excited about the GPGPU capabilities and AMD seems to be on a big push of that right now. I hope it can deliver.
 
bart1975 said:
Is this new?
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Yus.

Cool, they tested the 35W quad core model. A8-3500M 1.5GHz/2.4GHz turbo, 400SP @ 444MHz GPU.

CPU performance compares very unfavorably to the dual core 35W i5-2520M (2.5GHz/3.2GHz turbo, HD Graphics 3000). I won't bother posting the CPU scores since the mobile quad core Llano got slaughtered by the dual core mobile SB.

---------------- HD 6620G / HD Graphics 3000
3DMark06: 5696 / 4608
3DMark11: 950 / 1853
Far Cry 2 1366x768 med: 43.2 / 32.12
Just Cause 2 1366x768 low: 25.43 / 8 <-- LOL

The test Llano platform got much better battery life in 2 of 3 tests and notably better battery life on the 3rd. That's quite a turnaround.
 
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pxc said:
Yus.

Cool, they tested the 35W quad core model. 1.5GHz/2.4GHz turbo, 400SP @ 444MHz GPU.

CPU performance compares very unfavorably to the dual core 35W i5-2520M.
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Yes, but this was expected, no?
 
I thought it would be a bit closer than that when comparing 4c Llano to 2c SB. The Turbo Boost speed on the i5 is pretty high. ;) I mean, even my i7-720QM only goes up to 2.7GHz maximum (1 core). 3.2GHz with one core on that SB i5 is pretty high.
 
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