AMD Brings New Desktop Chips Down To 65W

crookedvulture writes "AMD's new Llano-powered A-series APUs have had a difficult birth on the desktop. The first chips were saddled with a 100W power rating, making them look rather unattractive next to Intel's 65W parts. Now, AMD has rolled out a 65W version of Llano that's nearly as fast as its 100W predecessor despite drawing considerably less power under load. This A8-3800 APU doesn't skimp on integrated graphics, which is key to Llano's appeal. If you're not going to be using the built-in Radeon, the value proposition of AMD's latest desktop APUs looks a little suspect."

Comments

Amd also has better MB's for the price

[Joe_Dragon]

as you get more for your $ then with a intel board.

Re:Amd also has better MB's for the price

[blair1q]

Let me know when they start beating out the i5-2500K or i7-2600K

They may never do that, if they keep getting all excited about a part that has less than half the performance.

Looking at the price-performance chart from the summary, it's clear the i5-2500K is leaps and bounds better than any other chip currently available.

Of course, people here are more performance- than price-conscious, so those i7-##0X jobs off to the right are drooltastic. Especially when you check on Pricewatch and find them for $200 less than TechReport is listing.

My home box is getting unstable in scary ways (memory shrinking relative to newer app reqs and multiple fails to find compatible upgrades that don't barf on half of boot attempts; and one of my RAID-0 discs has developed a boot failure reported in the BIOS at startup, but still manages to operate well enough to get me into the OS, but it's only a matter of time before whatever that is metastasizes until the system is a brick).

So it's time to rebuild. My next system will have the OS on an SSD and my data partitions on a properly error-tolerant RAID instead of the RAID-0 I'm using now just for the speedup. And, of course, it will be run by something sweet from the Intel catalog. i7-bignumbersX, most likely. No sense chintzing on the CPU when it's the most important component and the rest of the parts will cost $1k or more.

And since there are rumors that Intel is flattening out its roadmap (no sense overspending when the competition is as lame as they are), anything built today will remain egoboosting for longer than the usual.

Re:Amd also has better MB's for the price

[hairyfeet]

I'd add the new Brazos netbooks like this EEE I picked up SERIOUSLY rock hard. Frankly after messing first with atom netbooks (too damned slow) followed by an MSI wind with an Athlon dual (nice but a little power hungry) i wasn't sure what to think when I got the Brazos but it really is a sweet chip. I get about 6 hours on a battery in windows 7 HP or around 8 hours in Expressgate, even after running 5 hours solid it was cool to the touch, the Radeon 6310 GPU makes for some smooth HD video, oh and it'll hold 8Gb of RAM which I can't wait to get here!

all in all I really can't think of a bad word to say about Brazos. I've done multitrack editing in audacity, a little light video editing, and so far no matter how much I threw at it it still felt nice and responsive, more like an Intel CULV than an atom netbook. and who can't love a netbook with bluetooth, 320Gb HDD, USB 3, HDMI, and a nice bright 12.1 inch screen that gets 6 hours on a 6 cell and with the 8Gb RAM upgrade cost less than $340 shipped? I'd say AMD has a real winner on its hands with those APUs, they truly are nice chips.

Re:Amd also has better MB's for the price

[dbIII]

Performance server user here - that 48 core supermicro AMD system from well over a year ago buries any of those Intel systems you are talking about. Intel now have things with less cores but higher speed at around three times the price.
Everything under serious development is being written as multithreaded if it isn't already. A fast core is pointless if it's switching context all the time to run something that would be on another core if you had more cores.

"If"

[Baloroth]

The whole point of these chips is the built in Radeon, whether it's for GPU or GPGPU performance. I'm not even sure why you would compare it solely as a processor, and I'm quite sure that isn't a fair or reasonable comparison. Nor one anyone wants to make (who might actually buy a Llano). For high performance, you'll get a dedicated card anyways. Anyone looking at this will use the integrated Radeon, that's the point.

Re:"If"

[Pulzar]

In those tests, i3 is being tested with external graphics, compared to AMD with the same external graphics. Basically, it's a CPU vs CPU test. Which is pretty ridiculous because they are both targeted to users who will not buy external cards...

The actual i3 vs A8 tests with their associated graphics are tested later in the article here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/8. The results aren't even close - AMD is more than playable, i3 is not.

You WILL use the built-in radeon

[unity100]

http://pente.hubpages.com/hub/AMD-Fusion-APU-Processor-Specifications

for its possible to play starcraft 2 with that shit, even on a low end portable if it has the llano.

in a desktop, you can even crossfire it with its equivalent 6xxx card, therefore reaching major performance for ridiculous price.

if you went with a traditional route, you would need to get the cpu, and then get a separate 6xxx equivalent card, and then one more to do the crossfire.

llano pieces give you 1 good cpu and 1 good graphics card in one shot, and in future they will be upgradeable. you will be able to upgrade both the cpu and 'graphics card' of your rig by upgrading just 1 piece of hardware.

Re:You WILL use the built-in radeon

[unity100]

if, the board you have is crossfire capable, and the generations match each other (it has to be in XXYY range and first XXes must match from what i know, but exceptions are possible), ati catalyst control center will see that you have crossfire possibility, and it may auto enable it. you may enable crossfire, or disable it. with windows 7 and vision control center more customizations may be possible, however if you consider that hardware acceleration is even used for web page rendering in firefox, you would probably leave it on all the time.

Using the built-in Radeon

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if I'm supposed to spill the beans on this, but I'm an AC, dammit. I'm in their focus-group thing, and apparently they're working real hard on a Crossfire-like solution right now so your "free" on-chip GPU isn't being wasted if you throw down for a discrete card. They haven't been making much words about this, though. Odd.

Looks a little suspect?!

[Cajun Hell]

Is this a joke? The integrated graphics are the whole fucking point! If you don't want 'em, you can get a Phenom II (or maybe even an Athlon II) that uses less power and runs faster.

If you don't use it as a car, the Honda Civic isn't really all that great a value, comparing slightly unfavorably to Stone Ruination IPA in most video compression benchmarks.