Lenzfire: AMD Fusion Llano A8-3850 and APU A-Seires Platform Review

AMD Fusion Llano A8-3850 and APU A-Seires Platform Review

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 03:39 AM PDT

Before reviewing APU Llano A8-3850, let us first understand about the features of AMD Fusion APUs.

AMD Fusion logo

AMD Fusion A-Series APU AMD Llano A8-3850 – A Glimpse

Earlier this year, AMD launched its first foray into technology “merger” with the launch of the APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) series “E” and “C“. AMD has restructured its business plan and the second phase has already arrived. Today, the next step in the succession of AMD is launching the APU series “A” with interesting graphics capabilities, the new platform is known as “Plain.” On the table we have the processor “Llano A8-3850″ codenamed “LYNX” and today we will have a closer look at which is the efficient and powerful APU placed in the desktop market.

AMD’s business plan is positioned for strong growth of the company. The release of the APU “E” series was designed not only to the growing HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer), but also the market for mid-range notebooks. The “E” series proved to be very efficient and works well at this level but do not imply an important contribution for those seeking a little more, so there is the birth of the series “A” and becomes a bridge Bulldozer platform for the future.

The Platform Series

In September 2009, AMD launched VISION, designed to allow a more visual approach and a superior experience for PC users to help consumers more easily find a PC that matches your needs. The demands of the average PC users “have moved beyond business applications and is now focused on richer content such as entertainment with high-definition gaming and more realism, a trend that continues.”

In response to this market demand, AMD developed the Platform “Series A” desktop processors ( AMD Llano A8-3850 ) designed to meet the needs of today’s PC users. With up to four cores of 32 nm and 400 Radeon ™ cores, the AMD of the APU Series offers the performance of the old CPU AMD Phenom ™ II combined with an AMD chip Radeon ™ graphics. In fact, AMD’s A Series provides more powerful graphics cards that many low-end dedicated graphics, allowing for an exceptional visual experience.

The Platform for Series A, in addition to the already powerful dedicated graphics chip, AMD Dual Graphics supports combinations of this chip with the AMD graphics card series Radeon ™ HD 6400, HD 6500 and HD 6600. Thus AMD Fusion APU GPU can be combined with dedicated GPU for accelerated GPU Performance.

The APU-Series (AMD Llano A8-3850) helps to accelerate digital content creation and performance enthusiasts to 3D games. With all models support DirectX 11 and the motor Unified Video Decoder (UVD), the AMD Platform A Series enables us to enjoy the latest games and multimedia content without requiring additional GPU.

Entering the Review of AMD Fusion APU Llano A8-3850

As mentioned earlier a more subtle feature of the AMD Fusion APU Llano A8-3850 is the ability to add an additional GPU Radeon 6XXX series, which may run on the chip Crossfire GPU / CPU. While these CPUs share the same architecture as the portable APU launched in mid-June. Make no mistake, however, that target the broadest spectrum of buyers Hardcore PC.

The APU AMD Llano A8-3850 is available with two different clock speeds and two different graphics cores. The higher CPU clock speed comes with a higher TDP and operates at higher frequencies all the time. The AMD Llano A8-3850 we are seeing today has the highest clock speed, reaching the 2.9 GHz and also has the largest IGP specification that is 6550D.

There are two IGPs available in Lynx. The more potent of the two is the HD 6550D with 600 MHz and 400 Shader Cores, which comes with AMD Llano A8-3850. His younger brother is the HD 6530D and its specifications are 320 MHz and 443 Shader Cores.

FCH A75 – Fusion Controller Hub

The FCH A75 has a number of interesting features at a very reasonable price. It supports native SATA 6GB/s two USB 3.0 (four ports), you can certainly handle all the accessories you want to connect.

APU AMD Llano A8-3850 vs. AMD discrete GPU and Sandy Bridge

Unfortunately, they failed to make a direct comparison with AMD Llano A8-3850 and Sandy Bridge. With the AMD Llano A8-3850, AMD is aimed at both the low-end discrete graphics cards and i3 2100 and 2105. According to their presentation at least, it has a very impressive performance against the competition dedicated.

Lynx clearly outshines these platforms Sandy Bridge. Although it cannot compete in direct CPU computing, but AMD Llano A8-3850 has many possibilities to use GPU-accelerated applications. AMD is pushing OpenCL with this release, indicating that there are more than 50 programs that can take advantage of GPU acceleration.

AMD definitely think you have a winner on its hands. In this chart, the Fusion APU AMD Llano A8-3850 has been compared against an i5 2500K even that falls short to run these video games. Before you mention it, yes, the i5 2500K CPU is by far superior. That is not the goal for this APU Llano A8-3850 and AMD has reaffirmed this.

Judging by the results of AMD Llano A8-3850, it has an advantage with the GPU / CPU. Of course, being the company who presented these results should be regarded with suspicion, even if AMD does not have the habit of lying about test results.

AMD Llano A8-3850 with Turbo Core

One of the features that you know of AMD is that it has hexacore Turbo Core. AMD Llano A8-3850 now has integrated TurboCore and that means the processor can increase the clock frequency of the CPU cores independently above the base clock frequency for a short period of time.

The APU AMD Llano A8-3850 is constantly measuring factors such as workload, limited power, tension and heat of the CPU and GPU. Based on these algorithms, the clock frequency of CPU cores will change.

Turbo Core, however, is not present in all APU; ironically, the AMD Llano A8-3850 of today has its clock frequency completely open without any Turbo functionality.

A4, A6 and A8

Although AMD today launched the A8 series APU mainly, soon they will launch other processors in segment A4, A6 and A8. AMD marketing Vision is applied in this new release and is trying to simplify its name and brand. Similar to Core i3, i5 and i7, AMD defines his “performance” in the levels of a scheme and easy to understand: A4, A6 and A8. Now, well into the A4, A6 and A8 processor architecture is quite the same plain.

We will arrange a little more this:

A8 = 4 CPU-cores, 400 cores GPU (Radeon HD 6550D) released today
A6 = 4 CPU-cores, 320 cores GPU (Radeon HD 6530D)
A4 = 2 CPU cores, GPU-240 cores (Radeon HD 6410D)

AMD Series A4

A4 Series A4-3400 has a 65 W processor with 2 cores running at 2.7GHz. A4 processor will also be a 65-W-3300 with two cores at 2.5GHz. These models come with 160 cores A4 shader. The L2 cache is 1 MB and graphics GPU clock is 600 MHz for the A4-3400 and 443MHz for the A4-3300.

AMD A6 series

There are three processors that are on the A6 series, the first is the A6-3650. This is a 100 W processor and 4 cores running at 2.6GHz. The A6-3600 operates at 65 W with 4 cores running at 2.4/2.1GHz APU (Turbo Core). The third is the APU A6-3500, which will be released at a later stage, with 65 W and 3-core 2.4/2.1 GHz (Turbo Core). These processors have 4 MB of L2 cache, except the A6-3500 has 3 MB (a core of less). All three models have 320 shader cores to 443MHz.

AMD A8 series – Llano A8-3850

The main series of processors Lynx is presented with the A8 series. Two models of APUs available in the A8 series, the AMD Llano A8-3850 operating at 100 W and a 2.9GHz clock a quad core processor. The other model is the A8-3000 rated at 65W, 2.7/2.4GHz (Turbo Core). Both APU have 4 MB of L2 cache and a package of at least 400 shaders Radeon GPU running at 600 MHz, comparable to a Radeon HD 6550D.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion of AMD Llano A8-3850

AMD certainly has a winner on its hands with its APU A-series Llano A8-3850. The CPU itself acts as a clock similar to CPU Phenom X4 II while the IGP is a graph overestimated, the contrary is very powerful compared to integrated are generally weak.

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The AMD APU Llano A8-3850 is expected to have a retail price of around US $135. So for less than US $250 (the price of a lot of motherboards for this platform) can be an APU and a mother on which to build a robust system. For a Home Theatre PC and to enjoy not only high-definition programming, but also some decent games, this combination of Motherboard and AMD Llano A8-3850 will be perfect.