A4 Llano vs A4 Trinity

penekr

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Jan 15, 2013
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Hi guys, I searched the forum for this question before posting but didn't see anything on this. Feel free to ridicule me if I failed. :) Onto the question.

I'm looking into building an HTPC and I know the A4 Llano will do what I want it to do for sure. However, I was wondering if I should spend a little extra for the A4 Trinity.

The build will be used to play a variety of streaming services as well as 1080p rips directly from hard drive. There may be some gaming on it. Emulation of older systems mostly but that's just an added bonus. If I could get away with playing something more intense that would just be icing on the cake but the main purpose is for video.

Which of these little APUs would better serve me? Or should I even possibly look into a different CPU/APU? I'm trying to keep this as low cost as possible but if I could increase the things I could do with this little guy then spending a little extra is not a problem.
 

ZeroWhite

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Jan 9, 2013
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Trinity is your best bet without a doubt, It's a big improvement over the Llano series due to around a 30% increase on the GPU performance from more shaders and higher clock speed on top of the Trinity being based on piledriver architecture which itself is 15% faster then bulldozer. Last but not least Trinity is socket FM2 and Llano is socket FM1, AMD has already verified the next gen of APUs are going to stay with FM2 so your already buying a next gen capable motherboard. Do yourself a favor and go with an A6 or higher if you really want to get your monies worth.
 

payturr

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Dec 3, 2012
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Amen to Trinity, it's better bang for the buck, especially if you don't plan on buying a GPU. If you plan on buying a discrete GPU though, a Pentium G860/G2120 would be a better purchase though IMO.
 
You want to go with Trinity. Not only is the performance better, but Llano's socket FM1 is dead. AMD has abandoned socket FM1 in favor of FM2. If you plan to upgrade in the future going with socket FM1 (Llano) means you can only upgrade to a more powerful Llano APU which are no longer manufactured. Going with Trinity means your motherboard will be socket FM2. That gives you more options especially since AMD next APU is Richland and based on things that I've read it is confirmed to be socket FM2.