AMD A8-3850 Review: Llano Rocks Entry-Level Desktops

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The AMD A8-APU is definitely awesome for the budget users who want to do more than farmville or browser games, but don't want to break their wallets on another GPU, and save money doing it. This also opens the way towards better and more efficient APU's.
 
The AMD A8-APU is definitely awesome for the budget users who want to do more than farmville or browser games, but don't want to break their wallets on another GPU, and save money doing it. This also opens the way towards better and more efficient APU's.
 
The only thing I dont get is why the motherboard makers are using full size ATX boards for this chip. This thing begs for MicroATX and smaller form factors. Business and htpc users would love to get that kind of desk real estate savings along with the displayed power and price/performance savings.
...Save the full ATX features for the bulldozer 8 core power users!
 
I live in Indonesia and this is the perfect APU for them. Cheap and let's them play their fav Facebook games with impunity. Smart move AMD.
 
So, I spent an hour reading over all of this and I've come to the conclusion that while I can foresee these A8 "APU"s revolutionizing the portable computing market in exciting ways, they're not going to change the game for the desktop set.

Thanks for all the information guys. I feel far better informed than when I stepped into this place.
 
Great Article and Contest! Thanks for the chance at something that I've always wanted that I could never afford. :) mymidnightmusic@yahoo.com
 
outstanding analysis of AMD's new "A" series APU. Clearly, this new chip will find its way into many entry level pc's and the FM1 platform, paired with an A8 3850 can handle office apps without breaking a sweat while - perhaps for the first time - its integrated gpu is much more than an "afterthought".
 
I actually just ordered this Llano chip with a gigabyte board to give it a shot. I'm excited to see how it runs, and if it can take over for my Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz + 6650 as my media center computer.
 
I get 10$ of allowance per day fom ma thats 2$ a day maximimum when i minus the gas and the expenses for school so... ya... that 150-200 dollar difference between this and the core i + descrete IS something..and also saving for those i need to buy at least a branded PSU which will take me longer to build my PC to play Starcraft II..if I go for the discrete build then SCIII might be out before I can even build this one
 
So I think the downside to this APU setup will be upgrade costs and options. Because you are buying both a GPU and CPU will these upgrade chips be more costly and limiting? Before you could gradually improve a system by adding a faster CPU and graphics separately. Its almost as if the desktop is also moving away from upgrades.
 
i think this technology will be grade for laptops as most laptops have onboard graphics cards that are good for nothing!!!
 
MB: GA-A75M-UD2H
APU: AMD A8-3850
Tried installing Linux, cannot get Fedora 15, Fedora 16 beta, Ubuntu 11.04, nor SUSE 11.4 to install. Main problem Display not working. Other problem include disk write errors using MB raid1 and /dev/mapper drivers. Seems that kernel 2.38+ is "hosed" - not even the 3.x kernel is working. Even tried to install using ATI proprietary drivers - cannot configure monitors and display unstable.
Using VGA and DVI ports (tried each individually and both together) using standard VGA and DVI cables - no adapters/converters attached to cables.

No problems with Windows Vista 64-bit, 16GB Ram running dual monitors.


 
After buying 3 llano motherboards and 2 APUs, i'm still not able to see 133bclk and/or 2133mem

Can you please tell me what bios you used for the A75M-UD2H ?
I want my hard drives to stop disappearing. I'm memtest86+ stable at 26x133, just I can't use sata drives.
F5 bios is not the "supped" up one you had I take it ?

thank you for any help Chris
 
Now if AMD can just get this into all those prebuilt systems with those junk intel graphics and push the intel junk into the trash. An intel system with no real gpu is terrible at anything demanding besides video encoding in a app that only supports the cpu.

If amd can get these system to the masses it could really help pc gaming. Where it will be really useful is in laptop most of which has terrible gpus. Intel my own amd in performance but amd has a better all round budget platform.
 
Wait what? Why does Metro 2033 DECREASE in performance while in dual graphics? Would this also happen to me if I buy an HD 6670 for my A8 3800 APU?
 
On page 2 the Metro 2033 chart is wrong, the "6570 only" and Dual numbers are swapped. Then again on page 3 the wrong numbers got compared to i3 scores. Wonder how it went unnoticed for almost a year. Or if it has been noticed, why it weren't corrected???
 
I have an A8-3850, with a asrock pro4 motherboard and the motherboard came with a program where you can control all your fans etc. also overclock your cpu, my multiplier is can reac 39, and my frequency can reach 250 so you can overlock you cpu like a beast, but i leave it at stock settings, so you can get 9GHz out of the cpu, but i wont try 😀
 
I recently bought an a6-3670k and a cheapo 60 dollar motherboard to act as a media, work storage box , and maybe used for some simple gaming. So I started to benchmark it for fun and games like Rage, Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2 all run beautifully at 1280x720p. My few year old plasma doesnt go all the way to 1080p anyway, so that is fine. I was quite surprised at the speed. The GPU is similar in terms of performance to the 8800gt, but it has the added bonus of direct x11. This means that all games that were made for xbox ( assassins creed, mass effect ) play just fine on these chips.
 
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