AMD Llano - THE great HTPC chip? - Page 7

Amazingly, excess heat isn't really as big an issue as you'd expect it to be. Software decoding doesn't appear to use significantly more power than DXVA.

I would expect mobile AMD processors to have lower TDP and power consumption than desktop counterparts. The thing here is if you wanted to game on your laptop, your only choice used to be bigger, more expensive models (usually 17") with discrete mobile GPU. With Llano, potentially, you can get mainstream laptops with relatively decent gaming performance in the $500~600 range.

If that's already the top Llano, then it doesn't look too good. The saving grace of Llano should have been its GPU. I was expecting something more along HD 5570-level. I'm not sure if the HD 6450 would make the cut for MadVR.

Shipping is ~800 MHz, I believe.

Memory Bandwidth

• HD 6450 DDR3 800 MHz: 800 MHz * 2 * 64-bit = 102.4 Gb/s or 12.8 GB/s
• HD 5570 GDDR3 900 MHz: 900 MHz * 2 * 128-bit = 230.4 Gb/s or 28.8 GB/s
• HD 5570 GDDR5 900 MHz: 900 MHz * 4 * 128-bit = 460.8 Gb/s or 57.6 GB/s

iGPU on Llano is basically Redwood (HD 5570) graphics running at lower core clock and with shared memory. The AnandTech preview wasn't very clear which HD 5570 version they used but if that's just the GDDR3 version, then it's clear the shared memory bandwidth has a big impact on performance.

Theoretical Maximum Memory Bandwidth (dual-channel):

• DDR3 1066: 17.0 GB/s
• DDR3 1333: 21.2 GB/s
• DDR3 1600: 25.6 GB/s
• DDR3 1866: 30.0 GB/s

Trouble with the above is it'll have to be shared between CPU and GPU. Ouch.


The biggest question here is price. If early leaks are correct and it will cost $170, then no thank you. An i3-2100 + HD 5570/GT 430 will give me better performance for the same price and idle/playback power consumption probably wouldn't be all that different. Now if it costs just the same as an i3-2100/i3-2120, Llano's a no-brainer.


Only if the video themselves can be hardware accelerated. If you're watching, say, WebM, hardware acceleration on current GPU's isn't going to do you any good.

I think Intel has already responded, or at least done a pre-emptive strike in the form of the Core i3-2105 ($134 1Ku). The i3-2120 might drop down to $117 1Ku and Intel might release a Core i3-2125 to replace the i3-2105 but beyond that, we won't be getting any GPU improvements until Ivy Bridge.

I'm pretty sure the graphics portion is one of the things Intel is trying to greatly improve in Ivy Bridge. It's just unfortunate in Intel's case that they don't have the same wealth of expertise AMD has through its acquisition of ATI.

Given how gaming has permeated society, I think Intel knows they need to make their integrated graphics capable of playing at least casual games, or popular ones such as WoW and SC2. I believe archibael has mentioned in one of his posts, that unlike the competition, Intel doesn't have to dance the fine line between making their integrated graphics good enough to beat their rivals' but at the same time, bad enough not to eat into sales of their entry-level discrete cards. In this case, I think Intel's just having a hard time improving graphics performance. Another thing to consider, now that both CPU and GPU are on the same silicon, keeping the heat and power consumption low becomes trickier. That's why we have all these Turbo and power gating stuff. Perhaps they can make the GPU faster but at the expense of more heat and much higher power consumption. *sigh* Looks like it's Intel's mainstream offerings with integrated graphics that need triple and quad-channel memory.


For me, the issue with the A4 is it's soon becoming not enough CPU. I've already found a couple of clips (1080p60) that my trusty Celeron E3300 2.5 GHz can't handle so I'm somewhat hesitant to go with something that's effectively an Athlon II X2 Regor. The lack of GPU power is easy to remedy. Your choices range from $20 entry-level to $800 monsters. The lack of CPU power, particularly single-threaded performance, though, there's not much you can do about which is a concern when the fastest chip available is roughly around Sandy Bridge dual-core performance in heavily multi-threaded tasks and considerably lower in others. As it stands, my Llano purchase is now heavily contingent on pricing. If they don't price Llano attractively enough, I'd rather go Pentium Sandy Bridge or Core i3 paired with NVIDIA graphics. That way, I also get CUDA/CUVID support.

I reckon for most folks, though, the A4 should work just fine.


Only if you use the GPU's video post-processing.