Apparently, Fusion technology demos behind closed doors are becoming an AMD tradition. At this year's CeBIT, the chip maker demoed its upcoming (and highly-anticipated) Llano APU. Naturally, the Tom's Hardware team was on-hand to take a closer look.
At its booth at CeBIT 2011, AMD showed off the mobile version of its upcoming Llano APU. But whereas last year’s demo system still looked very improvised (it definitely screamed "engineering sample"), this Llano-based system actually looked like a notebook you might find in a store. It wasn't an attractive notebook, mind you, but it certainly seemed ready to ship, aside from some final design touches.

The company had an explanation for demonstrating its mobile part, rather than the desktop version we'd all probably rather see in action. Similar to the Brazos platform, it intends to launch the new APUs in the mobile space first. As a quick reminder, Llano will be AMD's mainstream APU, combining two to four Phenom-style x86-64 cores and a GPU on one die.
The demo system was running an as yet-unnamed quad-core Llano part with a 1.8 GHz clock, 4 GB of DDR3-1333 memory, Crucial’s C300 SSD, and Windows 7. For comparison, AMD picked an off-the-shelf notebook with identical specs, but built around Intel’s Core i7-2630QM at 2.0 GHz (plus Turbo Boost, obviously). Both systems relied on their respective integrated graphics solutions. AMD's argument there was that Intel is selling its HD Graphics 3000 solution as a mid-range part that can also handle gaming. We would love to show you photos, but we were only allowed to take pictures of the machines’ screens.
Sandy Bridge running Final Fantasy XIV
Llano running Final Fantasy XIV
There were three parts to the demo. First, AMD wanted to make an image quality comparison, leaving speed out of the equation for a moment. So, AMD’s John Taylor, director of global client product and software marketing, who was running the demo, started up 3DCenter’s Filtering Tester, a tool that shows how anisotropic filtering is handled. While AMD's implementation looked very close to ideal, Intel was obviously taking a performance shortcut by using angle-based optimizations.
Next up was a simple FurMark test to show the two integrated GPUs' rendering performance. Here are the results in table form:
| FurMark Settings | Intel Core i7-2630QM | AMD Llano Quad-Core |
|---|---|---|
| 1024x768, No AA Average/Minimum/Maximum | 10/9/14 FPS | 16/15/30 FPS |
| 1024x768, 4x AA Average/Minimum/Maximum | 2/2/2 FPS | 8/7/14 FPS |
| 1024x768, No AA, Displacement Mapping Enabled Average/Minimum/Maximum | 2/2/3 FPS | 6/5/10 FPS |
The first thing you’ll note is that Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 struggles from the get-go, even at the least-taxing settings. Meanwhile, AMD certainly isn’t generating smooth frame rates. However, its on-die Radeon implementation takes less of a hit than Intel. What you can’t see is that, in the last run, with displacement mapping turned on, the “furry donut” in the middle of the scene failed to render completely on the HD Graphics 3000 engine, meaning that the Intel solution failed this iteration. At this point, John pointed out that not only was Intel taking shortcuts with image quality, but they weren't even helping the performance. Put another way, graphics hardware is only one part of the equation; you also need a fully-functional driver to actually play games.
gj AMD... i was losing hope but its back now!
For a quad-core 2 GHz will probably be OK, but not that many applications really benefit, and for multitasking AMD will need to pull through with the software.
For the GPU, I would say 200SP's should be the minimum, and from the HD 3000 to Llano comparison I would peg the GPU at that. At 200 SP's it would be very decent for mainstream gaming at lower resolutions, playing most games quite smoothly at low-mid settings. However Llano could take a larger and higher chunk out if it gets a few versions with 300 or 400SP's.
All-in-all, this current 4 core, 1.8GHz, ~200SP version is very respectable and has a lot of potential, but AMD needs marketing, deals with OEMs, and more marketing.
What would I prefer? A 2 core, 2.6Ghz over this CPU, and maybe just a bit more SP's.
Oh! And overclocking support.
I almost always choose to run games in windowed mode (FFXIV for example) and am often surfing the fan sites, youtube, etc while I am also running the game in the background and quickly switching back and forth. I've also began using Office to write papers at the same time and as well sometimes have a 1080p or 720p movie playing pinned to top while I'm doing so...
So yes, those sort of uses are growing increasingly appealing to me. I find that we don't even realize it sometimes but as the technology allows we are beginning to multitask with it in a natural and almost unconscious manner.
I don't do those things because I know I can and I should. I do those things because I now can and they seem natural progressions for my usage.
Chris
GPU does the rendering (RS graphics and Youtube video processing) while the CPU cores also do rendering for RS, as well as animation processing.
Can be quite taxing on a system, especially my laptop with a Radeon 4530 and a C2D 2.2GHz.
My priorities for laptops are such:
1. As light and durable as possible for the given size
2. Good Screen (non-glossy, high resolution, outdoor viewable, high gamut)
3. Long battery life - 8 hrs seems a reasonable compromise
If I'm doing something resource-intensive, I'll sit behind a desktop.
Given that most multi-tasking still results in an idle state most of the time, I can't see how AMD is competitive on point #3 while having double the idle power consumption of Intel.
2x more idle?...AMD is really doing something wrong.
For those rare cases in which a dual core makes sense (or if you can't afford the quad core version but still want Llano APU for lappy) they will have dual core models. But clock speeds are unknown. I don't think 2.6Ghz is an unreasonable target, though!
put a file to copy in the background. generally a 1 g file. I then play a movie.
another one is playing a movie while encoding is going on in the background.
I also think that idle will go down. The CPU in the demo notbook has production been started maybe 4 months ago -> wafer processing, packaging, test (1Q), delivery to sample customer (1Wk), inclusion in prototype NB (1Wk), system preparation for CeBit (1Wk).
Always open -
Internet Explorer - two tabs - helpdesk that refreshes every 30 seconds and our corporate intranet that refreshes when updated
Google Chrome - one to four tabs - my yahoo with RSS feeds from all kinds of security and tech sites, CDW for price checking, Dell premier page for pricing and tech support
RadioReference live Emergency services radio (scanner) stream for the county (usually in a web player window)
Outlook 2010 for corporate e-mail
Symantec Endpoint Protection
Printkey screen capture
UltraVNC Server
iTunes for iphone sync, podcast and application updates
Apps launched throughout the day to add to the load
Word, Excel, and Access 2010 - Word usually 1-2 documents at a time, Excel usually always 2 sheets at a time, and Access one database with 10 tables, usually 1-2 open at a time
Adobe Reader for PDF
Paint, Notepad
VNC Viewer
CDBurnerXP for CDs and DVDs
Windows Virtual PC -- 10GB Image of WIndows XP Pro
I am sure there are other apps i am missing
Wolfdale E8400 3Ghz Dual Core
8GB DDR2
500GB WD Caviar
ATI Fire Pro PCI-e 16x running 22" 1920x1080 & 19" 1600x1200 LCD
ATI Fire MV PCI-e 1X running 19" 1600x1200 LCD
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Why didn't you read the article?