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AMD Llano performance figures leak onto the net

by Pete Mason on 19 January 2011, 15:46

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa34a

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With AMD's first Fusion parts now starting to pop-up in netbooks, ultraportables and low-power desktops, our minds are turning towards the company's second wave of APUs. The Llano processors will be aimed at the mainstream notebook, all-in-one and desktop markets and DonanimHaber claims to have gotten hold of some of the first performance numbers for the chips.

Apparently, the dual-core Llano parts will be slightly slower than the 3.0GHz Athlon II X2 250 and Intel's 2.93GHz Pentium E6500. However, the integrated 'Winterpeak' graphics core inside the 32nm Fusion chip massively outperforms the Radeon HD 4290 and G41 chipsets used by the older processors, redeeming the processor somewhat.

As for the quad-core Llano processors, it looks like they'll perform somewhere between a quad-core Athlon II X4 640 and a dual-core Intel Core i3 540. The GPU is said to perform about on par with a discrete Radeon HD 5500 or 5600-series graphics card. Unfortunately, there were no comparisons with the brand-new Sandy Bridge CPUs that Llano will be wrestling for market share.

Apparently the TDPs for the chips will fall somewhere between 65W and 95W, meaning that these are definitely the desktop versions of the Llano processors.

So what does all of this mean? If these numbers are accurate, the CPU portion of the chip will be as fast or a little slower than its contemporaries given a certain TDP - despite sharing the thermal envelope with the GPU. Although this is a little disappointing, it's exactly the sort of relative performance that we've been told to expect from the Ontario and Zacate processors and falls in-line with the general message that AMD is pushing for Fusion.

However, graphics performance appears to be a massive step up from other integrated GPUs, and the manufacturer will be banking on this fact to help it gain traction as the graphics core becomes more integral to general purpose computing.

As well as taking all of this with a grain of salt, remember that Llano isn't expected to launch until the Q3 2011, so AMD still has plenty of time to do some more tweaking before launch.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Performancewise this is hardly news: we already know that Llano is going to be based on the existing K10.5 core and do without L3 cache, so it's no surprise that it performs basically the same as existing K10.5 CPUs with no L3 cache ;) Similarly, the rumour is for a 320 or 400 shader iGPU on the board, so it would be unsurprising to see this benchmark at a similar level to a 5500 / 5600 discrete card (although presumably a little slower, given that it's sharing memory bandwidth with the CPU). Makes you wonder if they've actually seen performance figures at all, doesn't it ;)

On the other hand:

If these numbers are accurate, the CPU portion of the chip will be as fast or a little slower than its contemporaries, given a certain TDP.

While it may be technically accurate, this statement appears to completely miss the point that the 65W - 95W TDP includes a 320 / 400 shader GPU! So the TDP for the CPU portion of the chip must be significantly lower than existing Athlon IIs, yet they're getting the same level of performance (hurrah for process shrink huh!? Just think what they could've done if they'd managed to move Phenom II to 32nm…). To get Athlon II X2 + Radeon 5550 performance in a single 65W APU package would be pretty damn impressive….
AFAIK,AMD Llano also has improved Turbo Core so it will be interesting to know whether any leaked performance benchmarks have been performed with this functioning correctly.
scaryjim
While it may be technically accurate, this statement appears to completely miss the point that the 65W - 95W TDP includes a 320 / 400 shader GPU! So the TDP for the CPU portion of the chip must be significantly lower than existing Athlon IIs, yet they're getting the same level of performance (hurrah for process shrink huh!? Just think what they could've done if they'd managed to move Phenom II to 32nm…). To get Athlon II X2 + Radeon 5550 performance in a single 65W APU package would be pretty damn impressive….

Very true, but remember that the Core i3 includes a GPU as well. Sure, it's not going to be as powerful, but it's still technically in that 73W TDP.
BullDogg
Very true, but remember that the Core i3 includes a GPU as well. Sure, it's not going to be as powerful, but it's still technically in that 73W TDP.

Ah, you were comparing the LLano TDPs to the i3 TDPs? Sorry, my misunderstanding, I thought you were comparing them to the existing Athlon IIs, which are 65W for the X2 and 95W for the X4. That makes more sense then :D

The big disappointment for me is that we'll never get 32nm Phenom IIs, as I'm pretty sure they could've made a 65W Hex-core comfortably if they'd gone done the die-shrink route on it…
BullDogg
Very true, but remember that the Core i3 includes a GPU as well. Sure, it's not going to be as powerful, but it's still technically in that 73W TDP.

The Core i3 2100 has a 6EU IGP which is slower than an HD5450 graphics card:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/11

Even if the Llano IGP is slightly slower than an HD5570 it is still going to over twice as quick as an HD5450:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_5450/29.html