Ultrabook is the concept that comes along with Ivy Bridge and it is set to be launched around April next year. Most probably AMD can't deliver the performance that you seek if your work is very CPU intensive but I don't see the harm trying out Llano anyways.

Lets just say that the price of the A8 is RM2100, add in a 120GB 3rd gen SSD which should amount to ~3k and you have a solid laptop for just about anything. IMHO a SSD has better noticeable performance gain in terms of system responsiveness than an upgrade to a better CPU.

Phenom II X6 won't drop in price anymore. Any company that can't sell their product for a certain amount of profit they will EOL that product. link

That is up to the ODM to decide. I suppose that it should be within a reasonable price that many could afford as Llano was never aimed at the high end. I'm quite happy with the form factor of the current laptops actually considering that something like a Macbook Air which is a reference to the ultrabook has to make quite a lot of compromise to fit that form factor. A few of the compromise that the MB Air made are like the soldered RAM modules to the logic board and the proprietary SSD stick. It makes upgrading difficult and expensive.

Let me put it in a simple way. SB processor is a steam train, coal is the data and the HDD is the person shoveling the coal in to the engine to run it. If the train can consume the coal faster than you can feed it with coal, therefore you have a slower performance. If you can feed the coal faster hence the train would run faster.

1.5k is something that everyone wants but obviously will not get it because the manufacturers themselves wants a profit and they will not allow the price to be lower than a certain point. They way I look at it Llano is competitive, 2k+- is a good price range and it is affordable to many.

Price and value for money does not matter to Apple users obviously, so that idea does not apply to everybody actually.

It has been launched a while back already. Expect availability soon by this month or the latest next month.

Although I don't have the numbers or actual tests here is what you can expect, Intel SB CPU > AMD Llano CPU & AMD Llano IGP > Intel SB IGP.

AMD CPU might not bring about huge improvement as it is just reusing the tweaked Stars cores, expect performance similar to Athlon II. The biggest improvement should be with Trinity next year that comes with Bulldozer cores. Pairing up with low end GPU nowadays is quite irrelevant since that IGP from Intel and AMD can almost be as good.

Another selling point for AMD Llano would be using the GPU to accelerate certain applications but OpenCL programs are still very few but it is good to see that AMD is currently collaborating with many software developers to make sure that they support OpenCL to tap GPGPU processing that Llano has.

If AMD follows its socket backwards compatibility method, a customer may buy Llano now and get Trinity next year just by doing a drop in upgrade. I don't think Llano desktop variant can compete very well against Core i3 2100 and above but it would still do very well in a compact HTPC that is more powerful than a E-350.

This motherboard looks awesome for a HTPC.


Llano's strong point would be in the mobile space where absolute CPU performance is not a strong point like the desktop. Considering that a mainstream laptop (not Alienware) has barely any user replaceable parts like CPU and/or GPU so the question of swapping out the GPU for a more powerful one is out of the question.

I've seen some(minus the fanboys) were quite enthusiastic about Llano in their notebooks as they were more concerned about battery life. Add to that the mainstream consumers treat a PC like a black box, an Intel or AMD powering it wouldn't bring about much concern to them. Try explaining the technical details about a PC to your parents and you'll see what I mean.

^It's not much of a matter that AMD dares to challenge Intel's superiority in CPU performance. It's more about AMD playing Intel's game all this while and they are on a losing streak due to the rapid progression of Intel's Tick Tock. The only way for AMD to be 'better' than Intel is to not play their game and try to distinct themselves from Intel by offering a better balance of CPU and GPU. I think AMD Llano would not survive at all if they were to have something similar to SB.


First desktop AMD Llano chip prices revealed: quad-cores selling for $150 and less

AMD A8-3850 (4C, 2.9GHz, HD6550D) = $150
AMD A6-3650 (4C, 2.6GHz, HD6530D) = $126

Intel Core i3 2120 (2C4T, 3.3GHz, HD2000) = $150
Intel Core i3 2100 (2C4T, 3.1GHz, HD2000) = $125

Llano is almost a good deal over the i3 if it has a very good overclocking range more than 4GHz on air which might give it a nearly as good performance as a i3.

I don't see the merit of unlocking the CPU now when it is just a bench warmer for the Bulldozer. If there is unlocking capabilities on the motherboard the manufacturer will usually show it on the description page as feature that is a selling point but there is none so most likely it will not unlock.

Since when has AMD priced their products more expensive than their competition? The downside to AMD giving cheaper priced CPU/APU would mean that their profit is much less than Intel. The A6 and A8 is cheap but still a bit expensive compared to the Core i3 2100 or Core i3 2120 which is their around their competitive price range. Should AMD price them similar or less than the Core i3's, a price war will start and Intel can drop the prices so much that AMD will not be making any profit at all.

Intel is a company that does charity now?

That kind of pricing is impossible, that I can be sure especially when the current Core i3 2100 alone is selling for around RM350 so getting an overclockable version of that for RM100 less is totally not going to happen. You're putting it at a price level they're selling Pentium SB already. No matter how much you want to make your product competitive, selling at a profit that is not enough to cover operational costs and extra revenue for the company is not what Intel wants. I lost the article I've read last time but from what I can remember Intel's R&D spending is 4x more than what AMD can spend.

If the hypothetical Core i3 2100K does exist, I think the most likely price range would be about RM400-450. If Intel were to release such a processor based on Sandy Bridge it would be now because the roadmap for next year states Ivy Bridge only.

That is the previous version. The Core i3 2100 to be at RM300 is possible if there is a price war but here we have a hypothetical Core i3 2100K which is most probably not going to be released and not going to be priced anywhere near RM250. If Intel were to actually release such a CPU, they would definitely lose some market for Core i5 and Core i7 because the logic is that if it is possible to get a CPU for that cheap, I might as well get it and overclock it and get almost similar or better performance than a Core i5 2300, 2400, 2500.

The Core i3 2100 is not a POS, it is cheap and many could afford therefore it will sell. The exact same reason why the Core i5 2500K sells way better than a Core i7 2600/2600K because it is cheaper and offer great price/performance over the i7s. Even if under a possibility that the Core i3 540 is better that the Core i3 2100, Intel would just phase out the Core i3 540 and consumers would have no choice but to go with the Core i3 2100, price will not be lowered. Of course I'm not saying that I do not want it cheap like you do, if Intel wants to do such a charity I'll be lining up as well but from my POV, Intel or any company will not sell their product for a profit that is lower than what they want.

Not going to happen overnight just from the release of Bulldozer. At this point in time Intel is huge in comparison to AMD so AMD has to gain market shares and revenue slowly. Money for R&D is the driving force of progress for these semiconductor companies.

This post has been edited by dma0991: Jun 27 2011, 01:08 AM

Yes we are enthusiasts therefore we do care about overclocking ability of the CPU but we must consider that the Core i3 2100 is aimed at a market where buyers don't even know what is going on in the casing(not technically inclined). The introduction of a overclockable Core i3 is not going to drive i5 and i7 sales to zero but it will definitely drop because there are many who will buy a cheap dual core just to abuse it rather than spending 1k just to get their overclocking fix.

The OC headroom for the Core i3 2100 actually can be very good but it is just a kind of feature that is disabled by default by Intel. For 1.2-1.5k that is the Pentium and not the Core i3 and AFAIK, Pentiums has always been in that price range since the previous version. Higher end models are always affected by cheaper lower end as with the case with the Core i7 2600/2600K vs Core i5 2500K. Ask Intel and they will want you to go with the i7s because it costs 1 1/2 the price and the reality is the i5 is selling better than their higher end.

This is and AMD thread and we're discussing about Intel WTF, I stop here. If a Core i3 2100K ever comes out and sold for RM250 I belanja you teh tarik.



AMD A8-3850 @ 3.38GHz + Radeon HD 6550D IGP running Crysis 2 @ 1280x800 and LinX simultaneously.

This post has been edited by dma0991: Jun 27 2011, 08:37 AM

It would be nice if they keep up with AM3+ but I think it will be quite unlikely with Komodo which is an APU. Most probably AMx based sockets are not made to support a GPU therefore AMD has to change to a newer FMx based socket even though the pin count is more or less the same. I'm sure after the transition to FMx socket for Komodo, there will be backwards compatibility for FMx sockets as well.

If AMD does switch to FMx socket to support Komodo then I would be mildly pissed but if they release the Bulldozer enhanced aka Komodo next year I don't think I would be that pissed actually. Considering that Intel progresses so fast through the manufacturing node, if AMD would just use Zambezi to compete next year I think they will lose out badly. Since Intel has their Tick Tock, their progression is very fast and AMD has to release a new CPU whether they like it or not to keep up with Intel.

When we reach the physical limitations of the current semiconductor process, I hope that there would be newer and longer lasting batteries by then. If only we have a power storage industry that is as progressive as the semiconductor industry.

Makes sense since most computer users these days are on the move so having something that is portable and long battery life is important. Lol if like that then laptops not compact and light anymore if want to fit the power brick into the laptop also.
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AMD to announce Llano APU

It's a compromise that has to be made for a compact design. Considering how huge laptops were back in the days, current generation laptops have come a long way. Based on a picture that I saw a while back showing a Pentium II laptop that would put current gaming laptops to shame in terms of size and weight. These days you can already get a laptop that lasts 8 hours or longer(eg Acer TimelineX) and with AMD promoting their so called "All Day Battery Life" minus the marketing hype, we should see laptops being on average 10 hours+ on a single charge eliminating the need for you to carry your power brick everywhere.

Intel and AMD are quite competitive actually with their x86 based CPUs. There are the ULV i5 and i7 which goes as low as 17W but the drawback is that it is very expensive and laptops that have them are usually 4k+ and rely on the IGP only. The Zacate, Ontario and Desna are also quite competitive actually when it comes to performance. If you scale a RISC based SoC to have similar performance as a x86, the power consumption would be more or less equal. ARM has always dominated the mobile market even before Intel and AMD decided to have a piece of the pie. It's only when there are news surfacing that Intel and AMD wants to penetrate the mobile market only we would realize what ARM is all about.

Nvidia is smart to do with their Tegra while AMD is supposedly doing some sort of collaboration with ARM to help AMD with their FSA. Intel will just be Intel and push the limits of their manufacturing process and Atom to compete.

Unlike Atom, The Bobcat family is quite flexible. It is just a plain 40nm process Zacate and yet it has been tweaked over and over again on the same chip till something even lower power like the Ontario and Desna comes out. Now imagine what 28nm and more Bobcat cores can do for it.

3-4 days is insane, you're going against physics itself or at least the current capacity of battery technology. Even with an ARM, something like the iPhone 4 wouldn't even last a whole day if it is constantly used 24 hours. If ARM can't even achieve 3-4 days of constant use(not standby time), you can't expect x86 to do the same.

This post has been edited by dma0991: Jun 30 2011, 09:31 AM