Battle At $140: Can An APU Beat An Intel CPU And Add-In Graphics?

[BlackBrigade]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] farcry.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] rcraft.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] mafia2.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] 0/civ5.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] ower-2.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu [...] /metro.pngThis clearly shows that the Pentium G620 is indistinguishable from that Athlon, so no it didn't win. You know what? To get indistinguishable performance for the same cost up front, well you pay for it in FAR more power usage. In fact, that power usage chart clearly shows the Athlon system using twice as much power as the Pentium system.Obviously, I was right when I said that the low end AMD CPUs only beat Intel in gaming when they are overclocked. At stock we see the AMD system using twice as much power, how much are YOU willing to pay to get better performance? Remember, power usage increases exponentially with linearly increased clock rates, so for every little bit of performance you get in the AMD system, power usage goes up substantially.Only the Metro 2033 benchmark shows an advantage on the Athlon system that might be seen (depending on the person). I might see a 10FPS difference, but to a lot of people it's not a discernible difference. Considering such a low end market, I'll even bet that most people looking for such a weak system can't tell the differences too well anyway.Besides that, you called the 455 a Phenom II, now you call it an Athlon II. Which do you want to call it? Either way, it hurts your already stretched credibility. I even got to prove you wrong with your own link.[/citation]


Sorry my bad. Im referring to the Athlon II X3 455.

I might have counted a bit wrong and really a +/-1 to Intel / AMD scores from that review wont make a difference, when its clear that AMD 455 has better numbers than Intel G620 (if not so close). Its goes against what your claiming as G620 being clearly better. "It will only perform better in most games if you overclock" and "Obviously, I was right when I said that the low end AMD CPUs only beat Intel in gaming when they are overclocked.".

Again, how is that, when the cpu used in those charts is @ stock speeds?

As for power, yea AMD uses twice as much as the g620. So far as the temperatures are ok, and it doesnt mean ill need a special psu, it doesnt matter much. No one is considering overclocking (who overclocks budget pc's?), we are talking stock speeds. So again power is irrelevant.

70W going to a thing to consider for budget pcs? Really?

Im not being a fan boy or anything, just that an 70usd AMD cpu for this review would have been fairer (oh yes they can show that power chart against AMD's 455). It would show what this article was meant to show in a fair manner (cpu+gfx card vs apu), rather than turning it into an AMD vs Intel thing.

 

[blazorthon]

They are indistinguishable at stock speeds so neither truly BEATS the other. If the AMD Athlon was overclocked, it would beat the Pentium. That is what I was saying when I said that the current AMD CPUs only beat the Intel CPUs when the AMDs are overclocked.

Over two to three years, yes, 70w can matter, especially if this system is on more than just a few hours a day. Even at four hours per day, it comes out to cost ~$10-$15 a year,, maybe more if you have high price per KW electric bills. Not substantial, but this machine will likely be on longer than that, if not 24/7. Being on 24/7 means it can use between $40 and $60 worth of power more than the Intel system (again, if you pay about the national average for power) each year and that is not a favorable situation to be put in. Even assuming a fairly normal three year replacement time, this machine would cost at least $120 more over it's life time than the Intel machine. Yes, it's not a huge amount of money, but that's still wasted money and a considerable amount of it.

I'm not trying to be a fanboy for anyone here either, just pointing out the importance here. The AMD CPU shows a clear disadvantage if you don't want to pay over a hundred USD more for it to have basically identical gaming performance over three years. If like many people you keep the machine for more than 3 years and just upgrade the graphics once or twice, well then it adds up to even greater amounts of wasted money.

It's unfortunate, but AMD has some serious problems to fix. AMD can't make new CPUs for the very low end like these Athlons and the dual/tri core Phenoms without redesigning the FX dies since there is no way AMD will cut an eight core die down into a dual core part and they can't really make it a tri core part the way they're going. AMD might make a dual module die and cut some of them into single module dies, but that doesn't seem to be high on their priority list right now, although AMD has been rather quiet about how they will move on from Bulldozer as of late.

I've said it before, it's funny how AMD has yet to fix some of Bulldozers problems. Several of them are fairly easy fixes and they are mostly the biggest problems that are the easier ones. AMD could get FX performance way past Phenom II (possibly to Nehalem, maybe even a little further) if they know what they are doing. However, their big mistakes in the graphics division have left me kinda skeptical of AMD getting back on their feet anytime soon.

 

[BlackBrigade]

Well atleast you admit that the AMD 455 is equal to if not better than the G620.

 

[silicondoc_85]

We all know amd's crap llano is one gigantic fail. We are enthusiasts, not noobie doofed users who cannot imagine where our email is actually stored.
Llamo
BlewItDozer
--
At least the 79xx part of the series pleases me since the loser amd company finally copied Nvidia arch and dumped their HD2000 simpleton cores they merely multiplied on die and tweaked allthe way through the 6000 series.
--
Now I can pray the skeleton crew left after the recent you're fired axxing at amd will be so scared they will actually try to deliver good drivers - although the track record on 79xx is PATHETIC so far - as we all are aware of, even though most cannot admit it.
I'm really hoping I won't have to shake my head and my fist in anger any more at my crashing amd cards - that NO LLAMO will ever be allowed to power.

 

[blazorthon]

We all know amd's crap llano is one gigantic fail. We are enthusiasts, not noobie doofed users who cannot imagine where our email is actually stored.
Llamo
BlewItDozer
--
At least the 79xx part of the series pleases me since the loser amd company finally copied Nvidia arch and dumped their HD2000 simpleton cores they merely multiplied on die and tweaked allthe way through the 6000 series.
--
Now I can pray the skeleton crew left after the recent you're fired axxing at amd will be so scared they will actually try to deliver good drivers - although the track record on 79xx is PATHETIC so far - as we all are aware of, even though most cannot admit it.
I'm really hoping I won't have to shake my head and my fist in anger any more at my crashing amd cards - that NO LLAMO will ever be allowed to power.

You're a complete idiot if you're not being sarcastic there. AMD's GCN architecture is NOTHING like anything from Nvidia. Llano isn't an enthusist product, it's a low end, an entry level gaming product. It's not the best option right now (Intel CPU plus a discrete Radeon is the best option right now), but it's better than using a Nvidia card at that low end since Nvidia has nothing modern to compete there against AMD's low end Radeon cards. AMD already fixed their drivers and now the only problem is crossfire support in GCN cards, granted that really isn't a big deal yet since the only ones worth CFing that are out right now are 7900 and they are fast enough without it for now. The Radeon 4000s and 5000s used different architectures. The 6900 cards use another architecture (that is why 6900 CF scaling is the best of ALL multi-GPU technologies right now).

Nvidia is now assuming the same strategy as AMD, many slow cores instead of a few faster cores. This is because it is a more energy efficient strategy than hot-clocking. AMD has been ahead of Nvidia in value and power efficiency for a while now. Also, the Radeon 6000s are better at all price points than the Nvidia GTX 500 cards with current prices. The only GTX card that comes close is the GTX 560 TI, the rest all have significant disadvantages.

For example, GTX 560 versus Radeon 6870. The 560 doesn't beat it in performance, but it uses FAR more power anyway and is more expensive. The GTX 560 TI versus the Radeon 6950. The 6950 is about 5% faster most of the time, but is usually cheaper. The 570 has several problems against the 6970 including it having too little memory capacity and being too expensive. The 580 doesn't have a direct competitor from the 6000 cards, but it has the worst value of pretty much ANY video card. Two Radeon 6950s could be bought for the same price and they will fly past the 580.

Llano isn't a fail. It has sold a lot of chips and is often sold out because demand keeps overcoming supply. Granted, supply wasn't too great before, but it's yield issues have since been fixed. Llano is also the king of the low end notebook computers right now.

Also, 7900 is still fairly new. Nvidia often has problems with their cards until almost a year after they have been released so flaming a new card family for not being perfect yet is pointless. The AMD cards don't crash since AMD got into gear on their drivers.

 

[blazorthon]

EDIT: There is an exception to the AMD card's not crashing right now, the Radeon 7850. However, it was using beta drivers and it isn't even released yet so it's problems should be completely fixed when it comes out. If they aren't fixed soon then AMD should just not release it at the same time as the 7870 and will delay it until it woks. Don't go bashing AMD for this screw up either... Nvidia is still the ONLY user of TSMC's 28nm process that has any problems right now and they keep delaying Kepler more than AMD delayed GCN. At this rate we may have all or at least most of the GCN cards out before a single Kepler card is out.

 

[allenin]

I am just totally surprised that the article didn't mention running the APU with both the internal 6550 and an external 6670 (I think that's the one.). Seems to me that adding the cheap second graphics card would definitely take these scores to a much higher level for a relatively small amount of cash.

 

[ezzep123]

OK guys, I'm a huge AMD fan. I go back to my high school days when Intel had nothing on AMD. So, this is a loyalist writing this.
I got out of the gaming market before I got married (2+ years ago), and have seen the market change so much. I don't know about where the rest of you, but here in Twin Falls Idaho, they sell nothing but the A4 and a couple of A6 laptops. Oh yeah, Best Buy also has some of the A6 desktops. No quad cores, unless it's the 1.4ghz laptop. So, having built a Phenom II X3 (my first build BTW, was quite pleased with it), and seeing the impressiveness of the HD4200 IGP, I decided to build an APU.
I knew by seeing my mother-in-law's A4 laptop that I needed more power for watching iTunes HD movies, and doing whatever it is I do.
I did some reviews, and everyone keeps saying "This sucks! It can't beat my i7!" My question for you whiners is DID YOU EVEN LOOK AT THE FUCKING MARKET THE APU IS MARKETED AT???" It's aimed at the casual gamer (me and my wife) who have jobs and stuff, and don't have the option to sit on our butts all day while mommy and daddy pay the rent.
So, I built my APU. I ordered the A8-3870 and the Gigabyte a75 whatever board with it. I did Gigabyte with my last build, and I fucking love what Gigabyte does with their boards. Screw you Asrock, you suck.
Anyway, the APU kicks ass. You Intel boys don't realize how sucky your i7s are. See, one thing I realized early on in HS, was that Intel machinese run perfect for 1-3 tasks, and they all have to be small tasks (notepad, command prompt terminal, and a copy of wordperfect 5.1 runnning on dosbox) and non-graphic intense. And by that, I mean your wallpaper has to be one solid color. With my APU, I can run Skyrim, Word 2010, a blu-ray on VLC player, and some other crap all at the same time. And I got some pretty cool freaking wallpaper up that changes whenever the hell it feels like just cause I want it to. (OK, that's Windows 7 doing that last part.) Oh, did I mention I'm doing this all on 4GB of ram? Yeah, the guy who wrote this article...I don't know what he smokes. Did he actually play the game or just some crap program that runs skyrim in the background, using code that's optimized for Intel's HT hardware??
I don't care how credited the author is, but I can play Skyrim just fine without overclocking. I did some OCing just to see what I can do, and it's all good even without it. He says that the Pentium is great for gaming, but sucks at multi-tasking. Let me ask you guys: What do you do with your computer more--gaming or multi-tasking? I'll tell you what--when I'm writing a paper on word, I'm not gaming--that's for sure.
BTW, here's my specs just so you know I'm not some fanboy.
A8-3870k stock at 3gzh, OCed to 3.2
OCZ ram 1866mhz, running at 1600 or something--I don't pay attention that much.
4GB (yeah, 4. I'm going to get 8 when I feel like it) Gigabyte a75 microatx board. The blue one with a displayport that I have no idea what it does.
500GB WD Sata Green drive. Yeah, I am not going to pay $300 for a SSD that makes things go 5 seconds faster. Sorry.
500W Antec Green PSU. I paid the extra money for a green PSU. I think it looks good. I get sick of "black or white or silver".
NZXT H2. This thing is freaking sweet. Except one of the USB ports doesn't work. Can't figure that one out.
I have an external DVD burner and blu-ray player. I don't like having those loud DVD burners in my case using my power when I just use it to install something.
Seriously though folks, the A8 is good on the desktop. It's faster than my wife's Toshiba p775 i5 with a dedicated gaming card. So quit wussing out you AMD fans. When someone shows you their i7 rig, check to be sure if they paid for a GPU. If they did, and you have an a8 without one, you can laugh in their face because your rig does the same thing for $1000 less.

 

[ezzep123]

And if I hear one more bitch about Sandy Bridge, I'm going to crawl through the network cable, go to your house, and dump a bunch of sand in your computer, and then dump a crapload of sand in your room, and say with a cheap used-car salesman smirk "Here's that sandy bridge you ordered!"

 

[blazorthon]

@ezzep123

i7s aren't gaming oriented CPUs (games rarely use their 8 threads) and anyone who thinks otherwise should do some research on each game they play. Sandy Bridge i5s are just as good in gaming as the i7s so the i7s are a moot point for gaming. An i7 in a gaming computer is either for a computer that also does heavy productivity or is for epeen. The Llano APUs are not marketed towards casual gamers, but are marketed towards entry-level gaming. This can include casual gaming, but is not just casual gaming (which actually isn't even the main point of them at all).

If you spent money on 1866MHz memory instead of a supplementary video card, well that isn't too smart. A Radeon 6450 would have improved performance more than going from 1600MHz to 1866MHz (also, going from 1333MHz to 1600MHz is a bigger performance jump than going from 1600MHz to 1866MHz. Every concurrent jump gets smaller and smaller despite the price jump getting larger and larger). 8GB of memory is actually recommended because 4GB is not enough for playing at the higher qualities and sometimes with other stuff running too. It also depends on the game and is partially for future proofing. 8GB is also recommended for Llano systems because you can allocate more memory to the GPU than you could with only 4GB. The A8 graphics (6550D) is only about as good as a 5550 or 6570. Even a 6670 beats it greatly (by about 40-50% with 1600MHz memory according to Tom's and 1866MHz isn't enough to close that gap).

Games aren't optimized for Hyper-Threading (which is HTT, not HT. HT is AMD's Hyper Transport. HTT is Hyper-Threading Technology). Many games don't even use more than one or two threads and the games that do rarely use over four threads. However, Windows is optimized for HTT. Of course, it would be stupid for it not to be. MS is now optimizing Windows for FX's modular architecture, so Windows isn't optimized because of an Intel bias; AMD simply didn't have something to be optimized for until Bulldozer. Developers can't really optimize a game for HTT; only the OS gets optimized. The HTT threads appear to be normal threads to the game; there's nothing special about them. It is the OS that tells the threads what to do and where to go. Optimize a game for eight threads, well then it utilizes the eight threads of an i7 if the OS supports Hyper-Threading. However, it would then also utilizes the eight cores of the FX-8120 and 8150 too, just as it would for any other compatible, eight threaded CPU. Optimizing for HTT would just be making the game use more threads and that means it will also run on a CPU with the same number of threads be it Intel or AMD. The FX-8150 could run a game optimized for eight threads about as well as the Sandy Bridge i7s do.

As I said before, the 6550D is nowhere near as fast as the high end video cards and can't even come close. It is only a minuscule fraction of them. The 6670 is about 50% faster than the 6550D and the 6770 is about 40-60% faster than the 6670. The 6970 is about 100% faster than the 6770. I hope that puts things into perspective. So no, your APU doesn't run anything that the high end video cards can nearly as well as they do no matter how high your memory bandwidth is.

You are under-valuing SSDs. For some things, sure, they aren't really worth the money. However, if you do anything even remotely storage intensive, well then they are definitely worth it. You can get sub $100 64GB SSDs (some ~90GB drives are also very cheap, I've also seen a few 128GB drives going for ~$100 when on sale at Newegg.com). SSDs can improve storage-heavy performance by between 50% and up to several hundred percent with the difference being especially greatest when you are multi-tasking with multiple storage heavy things being done. Games tend to not see a huge performance increase from an SSD, but the computer can boot more than twice as fast (a lot more than twice if you don't have a fast hard drive) and storage heavy games will have smoother play, especially when you are multi-tasking. Expensive SSDs are usually more for people who need a lot of very fast storage or for epeen. I'm on a very tight budget most of the time so I don't have an SSD, but I would like one because I do a lot of storage heavy work such as many very large archives and a lot of VM work and it's very slow on my older hard drives.

As a CPU, the i7s are the fastest consumer CPUs in the market. Nothing from AMD comes close except for the eight core FX CPUs and even the, only in highly threaded work. The i7's IGP is not for gaming or really much besides regular stuff. However, you are also underestimating it anyway. I often work with very low end GPUs and if they can do the basic stuff you complain about the HD 2000/3000 (which are significantly faster than mine), well then you are obviously wrong. I've also used them myself so I can vouch for them. No, they're not enough for modern gaming, but they are great for regular stuff such as 1080p video playback (Blu-Ray movies and the like), web browsing, and office work. If you want more than this then you simply get a video card. The Llano GPUs are entry level gaming and productivity GPUs, not general purpose GPUs. Intel's HD IGPs are general purpose GPUs and (HD IGPs on i3s, i5s, and i7s only, not Celerons/Pentiums) encoding/trans-coding graphics (of which they are the best).

Also worth mentioning is that the 4250/4290 GPUs are weaker than Intel's HD 2000 and that the GT540M in that Toshiba laptop is not far behind the 6550D in performance so you seem to be over exaggerating the difference greatly. Besides that, any difference in performance there is because of the video card, not the CPU, so saying that this "proves" the A8 to be a faster CPU is stupid. Sure, it is faster, but that's an extremely biased way to convince people that A8s are faster than i5s. You compared a dual core, laptop i5 to a quad core, desktop A8. That is biased beyond reasoning if used to think that it proves that AMD is better than Intel (Intel is actually better than AMD for CPUs right now). Why don't I just compare a dual core, laptop A4 or A6 with a quad core, desktop i5 to say that Intel is better? Well, I won't because I can use unbiased comparisons to come to unbiased, correct conclusions.

A desktop, quad core i5 will beat the A8s pretty much every time (they are simply much faster CPUs and that's an irrefutable fact that has been proven far more times than necessary). They can all be overclocked too, so overclocking the A8s won't close the gap. An A8 is pretty much just an Athlon II where performance is concerned and the i5s have something like 50-60% more IPC than the Athlon IIs. It's not even a competition because the Athlon IIs and Llano are that far behind. Even FX is faster than Athlon IIs and Llano. Looks like I can laugh in your face for your ignorance of computing technology and actually thinking that an A8 with 4GB of memory and a hard drive is anywhere near as good as an i5 or i7 system with high end graphics, one or more SSDs, and a more memory capacity. I am getting sick of people bitching about Llano when there are far better solutions from both AMD and Intel than it. Want four cores and fast graphics for the money? Go with a quad core Athlon II and a Radeon 6570 or 6670 or a quad core A6 with a 6450 or 6570.

Don't mind having less than four cores, but want fast graphics for the money? Go for a dual/tri core Athlon or a Sempron and unlock it's second core and get a 6670 or 6750, or get an Intel Celeron or Pentium with a 6670 or 6750. All examples will have greater gaming performance for the same (or less) money than an A8 and the Athlon x4/A6 solutions will have similar or greater CPU performance in addition to better gaming performance. Desktop A8s are poor values compared to other solutions that involve discrete cards, plain and simple. This is an easily proven fact. Faster memory with Llano is also a waste of money because that money could instead be spent on a supplementary video card like a 6450 or 6570 that improves performance a lot more than the memory does. Going over 1600MHz is wasteful and going over 1866MHz is stupid and/or for epeen (unless you overclock 1600MHz memory to reach the higher speeds).

EDIT: You said that the Intel graphics can't even handle non-solid color wall papers, yet I have the much slower than HD 2000 Intel GMA 950 that I have wall papers and even play some games such as Unreal Tournament 2004 on so you are blatantly wrong there. Also, the HD 2000 and 3000 graphics aren't all the same, the different CPUs can have differently performing versions due to differing clock frequencies. For example, the i7 2600K's HD 3000 is faster than the i3-2105's HD 3000 graphics. HD 2000 and 3000 only denote the EU count, not the exact performance of the two.

My GMA 950, which is far slower than the HD 2000, can handle far more than you seem to think even the HD 3000 graphics on an i7 can handle (not all Sandy Bridge i7s have HD 3000 anyway; some have HD 2000 or no IGP at all). The Radeon 1270M in my laptop is also a lot slower than i7 2600K HD 3000, yet it is able to handle a little more than the GMA 950, which is even more than you think the much faster HD 3000 can do. If you really managed to get i7 graphics that can't do these things than there is a serious problem with that i7 system you looked at.

Honestly, how do you think we got by with integrated graphics on most computers for years (and still) before Llano? It's not nearly as bad as you claim it is. The GMA 950 has been a very common GPU and it can even handle older/light games at or near minimum settings and resolutions. For example, I play several Unreal Tournament games up to the 2004 version and I've also played World of Warcraft and a few others including several other Warcraft games (WC3 comes to mind), all on the GMA 950. Sure, it can't do modern gaming, but it can most definitely handle regular work and home usage and the HD 2000/3000 IGPs are far better for this purpose. They can even do 3D 1080p video playback, something that my GMA 950 can't do.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]kakapapa[/nom]the CPU + video card might be the same price as the AMD APU but the Intel motherboard is 50+$ more than the one used in the AMD system .. at least in my country.[/citation]

Please explain to me why that matters. There are cheaper Intel boards (without sacrificing quality too), the Tom's guys just didn't have one of the cheaper boards. Board price has been proven to not change performance much so it doesn't matter. In my country, we have the H67 motherboards competing with Llano's cheapy motherboards and the Z68 motherboards competing against the more expensive Llano motherboards. There are expensive H67/Z68 motherboards, but there are also cheaper ones, just as there are also expensive Llano motherboards. The same is true for AMD's 9xx(x) (well, all CPU chipsets too) motherboards for the Sempron/Athlon II/Phenom II/FX CPUs.

If there is really not a single cheap Intel board in your country then that would be a valid complaint, but I can go to newegg.com right now and find dozens of them so please forgive me for being skeptical.

 

[ezzep123]

I was being a bit too literal when I said Intel GPUs can't handle wallpaper. Good grief fanboy...if your system can't handle a wallpaper, there's something more than just your video card that's wrong.

My main argument was that what good is a system that excels at gaming, but is outrun in everything else? That's not a possibility is it? Or maybe it is nowadays.
My a8 is just as fast as my phenom II x3 system. The difference between them is that my phenom system uses ddr2 while my a8 uses ddr3. Of course I don't really notice much difference between them, until I start doing stuff like watching something on iTunes, or gaming. And then I notice a difference.
You do know that the Athlons are not as fast as the Phenom, right? They lack L3 cache, and when you start taking away stuff like that, you have to look at your system differently. It's like comparing Pentiums to Celerons. Sempron??? Please, have you looked on Newegg recentely?? Nope, I guess not. You do realize that the Semprons are even slower for doing anything because they're SINGLE-core. I had a Sempron 2600+ 64-bit back in the day, and it did a good job. But you do realize that Semprons are no longer considered mainstream? They might be capable of HD, but I doubt it.

This article is on an A8 versus a Pentium, not a Athlon vs. whatever.

Unreal 2004 is 8 years old. So, that one doesn't count. This is the 2012--we have HD games, and HD/3D games.
I had a laptop (Centrino Duo Core) that had a 3000m Intel IGP, and it could play HD--out of sync. It jerked every few seconds, and guess what? I played LOTRO on it, and it was fine--until water or mist was around, then had to crank the settings towards lower. My IGP ATI HD4200 handled everything I threw at it fine.

Wait, maybe I should mention I don't have 3 monitors on any of my systems--I have one. Would that actually make a difference?

 

[ezzep123]

And was the tester running the HD mod for skyrim or just skyrim? The HD mod adds almost 2gb of data to the game, and then I could see the frame rates the way they are on the test.

BTW, no one has yet to answer me this question: What good is a gaming machine if it can't multitask? That's like getting a pay raise that includes sweet benefits like health insurance, dental insurance, but using your own health insurance, even though the company's is better and cheaper.

 

[blazorthon]

I was being a bit too literal when I said Intel GPUs can't handle wallpaper. Good grief fanboy...if your system can't handle a wallpaper, there's something more than just your video card that's wrong.

My main argument was that what good is a system that excels at gaming, but is outrun in everything else? That's not a possibility is it? Or maybe it is nowadays.
My a8 is just as fast as my phenom II x3 system. The difference between them is that my phenom system uses ddr2 while my a8 uses ddr3. Of course I don't really notice much difference between them, until I start doing stuff like watching something on iTunes, or gaming. And then I notice a difference.
You do know that the Athlons are not as fast as the Phenom, right? They lack L3 cache, and when you start taking away stuff like that, you have to look at your system differently. It's like comparing Pentiums to Celerons. Sempron??? Please, have you looked on Newegg recentely?? Nope, I guess not. You do realize that the Semprons are even slower for doing anything because they're SINGLE-core. I had a Sempron 2600+ 64-bit back in the day, and it did a good job. But you do realize that Semprons are no longer considered mainstream? They might be capable of HD, but I doubt it.

This article is on an A8 versus a Pentium, not a Athlon vs. whatever.

Unreal 2004 is 8 years old. So, that one doesn't count. This is the 2012--we have HD games, and HD/3D games.
I had a laptop (Centrino Duo Core) that had a 3000m Intel IGP, and it could play HD--out of sync. It jerked every few seconds, and guess what? I played LOTRO on it, and it was fine--until water or mist was around, then had to crank the settings towards lower. My IGP ATI HD4200 handled everything I threw at it fine.

Wait, maybe I should mention I don't have 3 monitors on any of my systems--I have one. Would that actually make a difference?

Anyone looking at a system this low end doesn't seem to care so much about non-gaming performance, otherwise they would get a system with some real productivity performance and I already gave solutions to fix that anyway. My argument involves the fact that the A8s are poor values and there are better solutions from both Intel and AMD. Also, on the Sempron, notice how I said Unlocked. Unlocked (I've not heard of many current Semprons that don't, in fact I haven't known any Sempron user who's Sempron didn't) makes it a dual core, not too different from an Athlon II x2 except at a slightly lower price. I'd expect any AMD fan to know this. I know that Athlons are slower than Phenoms and it's not just because of the lack of L3 cache, they also have slightly different cores. You failed at reducing my credibility and call me a fanboy. Well no, I'm not.

I have AMD systems that include a Phenom II x6 1090T based desktop and Turion 64 x2 TL-60 based laptop. In fact, I have more AMD systems than Intel. I even went to lengths to mention better AMD alternatives to A8s, not only Intel alternatives. As of right now, Sandy Bridge is the most efficient, highest IPC and raw performance CPU architecture on the consumer market and Ivy Bridge is coming out to take that crown away from it. Below Sandy is the Nehalem families, then Core 2 and Phenom tied for third, FX in fourth, and Athlon II/ Llano in fifth. I could go on, but I think this is a good enough list.

Unreal 2004 was an example of the limitations of the GMA 950. If you can't understand that, well then you have some problems. The 4290 (the best of AMD's on-board IGPs) is considerably superior to the GMA 950, but inferior to the HD 3000s and 2000s (depending on the CPU, as I said they vary between different CPUs even from the same family). Tom's state this in at least the last several gaming graphics card charts.

What does three monitors have to do with anything? I don't have three. I have one. I didn't even say anything about them. Also, the A8s would struggle with 3D/HD in all modern, heavy games (unless you count 720p, the A8s then only struggle in the most intense games at that resolution without 3D. With 3D? Forget it). Tom's has shown that too.

Really now, too literal when you say the HD 3000 can't handle wall papers? Literal is the exact opposite of what you were. Literal is real, not an exaggeration so extreme that it's an outright lie. The HD 3000s could handle far newer games than Unreal Tournament 2004. The GMA 950 is almost to it's limits with it and it was an example of such.

Also, Centrino isn't even a CPU nor GPU, it's a WiFi and WiMax adapter family, so I have no idea what you meant to say there. If the CPU in that system is anything less than a Sandy Bridge i3, i5, i7, well then it can't have HD 3000.

Sure, this article may have been about Pentiums versus the A8s, but they obviously trade blows depending on the workload (with the Pentium system winning in the important part of the article, gaming performance), so I offered up a better alternative that beats the A8 system in both gaming performance and meets or beats it in non-gaming performance.

The Sandy Bridge Celerons only have 33% less L3 cache than the Sandy Bridge Pentiums, not no L3 cache, so comparing Athlon IIs to Phenom IIs is not like comparing Celerons to Pentiums. It's 3MB on the Pentiums compared to 2MB on the Celerons.

 

[ezzep123]

I really really want to know what the purpose of a machine is that games good and sucks with everything else.
Do HD movies on iTunes count as 720p or 1080p? Either way, my a8 can play them. Otherwise, I must've got a batch of something else. I know what I bought because I'm looking at my receipts right now. That's odd. They say A8-3870k.
And are you thinking of the A6? The A6 is a bit different.
I apologzie..I didn't put what the Centrino was. My bad...1st Gen. Duo Core....I think it was 2 or 2.2ghz. And yeah, it was a 3xxxHD Intel. I think it was a Gateway.
And yes, I mean to say I was exaggerating a little.
And I hope you find a sand castle in your room tonight sandy boy. You know there's a song I learned growing up about a guy who built a house on a sandy beach. There was a storm, and his house fell apart. His neighbor was smarter, and built his house on the rocks. The storm couldn't take his down though.
Man you two are nuts! Semprons?? Ugh, please, someone kill me. If you guys want to compare semprons, then you must also compare them to atoms, and celerons. And you can keep all that crack. I will never use celeron or sempron stuff. Celerons are made for banking and those pet-collar vending machines in the mall. Semprons are made for banking, playing flash games, and those pet-collar vending machinese in the mall.

Oh, I thought that maybe (and I didn't think so) having more than one monitor makes stuff run slower? I mean, this is the 21st century.
And the 950s...never used 'em. I had a celeron laptop with a 915. Oh wait lol. The Atoms use the 945 for their gpu on the laptops! Those wussy things! Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, those suck too. They can't even handle 480p w/2gb of ram. Of course if HP (or anyone really) would enable how much RAM was dedicated to video in the BIOS, then we might be able to try something. But I doubt it.

I'm just going to ask you out of curiosity--do you own an a8, or are you just going off of everyone's reviews? I'm not meaning to get personal or other crap, but I just wondered. Everyone on newegg either hates em or loves em. Hey! There's a review were one guy dares to use a blu-ray player with it, and he loves it!

 

[beavermml]

ok ok.. the a8 in the article is very good at everything else but lose to intel pentium in gaming BUT do the pentium really SUCKS at everything else? i mean, tell me a software that runs really good in a8 compare to a pentium ( refer to the article ).. a dual core can handle multitask just fine.. and average joe wont need more than that.. i mean do u really need to have a quad core just to run office + winamp + gaming in the background? i have recently bought an i5 sandybridge and frankly, i feel no difference at general usage ( facebook, winamp, casual gaming, multitasking ) compare to my old p2d e5200 which is inferior to the pentium sandybridge in the article. infact, my old p2d can even run/paused skyrim in the background while i casually check my facebook, toms page, etc.. the only difference i can tell is when i transcoding video and play cpu intensive game which are the reason why i bought an i5 anyway..

so enlighten me any software that an a8 runs EXCEPTIONALLY well compare to the pentium + discreet ( in the article ).. and no synthetic benchmarks pls.. come on you wont even notice a 5ms difference...

 

[beavermml]

it seems i just shoot myself in the feet with the post.. but stills the Pentium does not sucks too much to be graded like that.. if u want to use professional software, u will certainly buy professional hardware too..

 

[youssef 2010]

At $140, AMD is pushing it's luck with an APU. the APU's real allure is either at lower prices or in Netbooks, competing with Intel's Atom

 

[ezzep123]

LOLOL When I think of Pentium, I think of the junk that they company gave my co-worker to do our time cards on. Rather than at least spend $150 on a newegg system, they go grab the neartest POS that's left over from their junk pile. P4 (NO HT??) @2.8ghz. That's not the best of it--the system has a 2.5" HD that needs brought out to the desert and shot a few times. And what's better?? They put Office 2007 on it! Seriously??

 

[ezzep123]

No, trust me--I've used an A4. A4s are meant to compete with Atombooks. A8s--different story. It's a different experience for me than a regular slowjoe life in the slow lane $500 laptop.

 

[blazorthon]

I really really want to know what the purpose of a machine is that games good and sucks with everything else.
Do HD movies on iTunes count as 720p or 1080p? Either way, my a8 can play them. Otherwise, I must've got a batch of something else. I know what I bought because I'm looking at my receipts right now. That's odd. They say A8-3870k.
And are you thinking of the A6? The A6 is a bit different.
I apologzie..I didn't put what the Centrino was. My bad...1st Gen. Duo Core....I think it was 2 or 2.2ghz. And yeah, it was a 3xxxHD Intel. I think it was a Gateway.
And yes, I mean to say I was exaggerating a little.
And I hope you find a sand castle in your room tonight sandy boy. You know there's a song I learned growing up about a guy who built a house on a sandy beach. There was a storm, and his house fell apart. His neighbor was smarter, and built his house on the rocks. The storm couldn't take his down though.
Man you two are nuts! Semprons?? Ugh, please, someone kill me. If you guys want to compare semprons, then you must also compare them to atoms, and celerons. And you can keep all that crack. I will never use celeron or sempron stuff. Celerons are made for banking and those pet-collar vending machines in the mall. Semprons are made for banking, playing flash games, and those pet-collar vending machinese in the mall.

Oh, I thought that maybe (and I didn't think so) having more than one monitor makes stuff run slower? I mean, this is the 21st century.
And the 950s...never used 'em. I had a celeron laptop with a 915. Oh wait lol. The Atoms use the 945 for their gpu on the laptops! Those wussy things! Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, those suck too. They can't even handle 480p w/2gb of ram. Of course if HP (or anyone really) would enable how much RAM was dedicated to video in the BIOS, then we might be able to try something. But I doubt it.

I'm just going to ask you out of curiosity--do you own an a8, or are you just going off of everyone's reviews? I'm not meaning to get personal or other crap, but I just wondered. Everyone on newegg either hates em or loves em. Hey! There's a review were one guy dares to use a blu-ray player with it, and he loves it!

The IGP from a Core 2 Duo is not HD 3000, or at least not the same HD 3000 used in the Sandy Bridge models which is exponentially faster. The HD 3000s hang around the Radeon 5450 in performance. The A8s are far more than powerful enough for blu-ray 1080p movies. I don't know what quality the itunes movies are because I don't use it. The quad core A6s are almost in line with A8s for CPU performance and a small overclock brings them up to A8 graphics performance without them even using much more power (very little power usage difference there, unlike the difference between a Pentium/Radeon 6670 system and the A8 systems, Pentiums use far less power whilst gaming performance is better)

Having more monitors changes nothing unless the total resolution of the monitors is greater than a single monitor that would otherwise be used. For example, two 1080p screens in Eyefinity 3840x1080 would have near identical performance to a single 2560x1440 screen, but would use about double the GPU performance of a single 1080p screen and would use more than a single 2K (3x4, 2048x1536) screen. Dual 720p screens would use about the same amount of performance as a single 1080p screen and four 720p screens would use about the same performance as a single 2560x1440 screen. A single 2560x1600 screen would use more than dual 1080p screens and quad 720p screens, albeit only slightly more. Monitor count doesn't matter, only the total resolution matters for performance requirements.

The 950 is a lot better than the 945, a LOT better, despite the similar names. I have trouble with 360p and 480p on my father's Atom netbook like you said (it freezes or pixelated the screen for a few seconds in intense frames such as very bright or variable frames, but the audio keeps going), yet my 950 has no trouble with 720p and I've watched a little 1080p on it. My usual monitor has trouble with it, but the 950 doesn't when it has a 1080p capable monitor.

A Sempron is right behind an Athlon II so no, it's nothing like the Atoms that it hammers. A Sempron can almost always be unlocked and when it is it is almost identical to Athlon II x2s in performance. I don't own an A8, but I did play around with a friend's A8 system and tourist tells us that he/she has an A8 system. I can also reference the systems made for the several Tom's articles that concern Llano.

Semprons are not nearly as bad as you make them out to be regardless of unlocking. The current models are plenty for simple web browsing and office work even if you don't unlock them. If you do, well they are almost Athlon IIs, so close it doesn't really matter that they're actually Semprons. Just don't expect this sort of thing in the future because AMD retired single core CPUs, unlocking or otherwise. AMD seems to agree with Intel that anything less than two cores is foolish nowadays.

1st gen duo core? You mean it's a Core or Core 2 Duo? Yeah, that IGP could have a name like 39xx or something like that, but it's far worse than the GMA 950 and is not the current HD 3000 graphics, but something very different and FAR slower. I actually only have one Sandy Bridge system, but several Athlon systems and a Phenom II system, along with some older Core 2/Pentium Dual-Core (same/similar archs, but those Pentiums have a little less cache and lower clock frequencies, so not far behind in performance) based systems.

People loving the A8s probably didn't have obtusely high expectations like most of the Llano haters seemed to have. People often dislike a product when it doesn't hold to ridiculous expectations brought up and up through rumors. Look at the sighs targeted at the latest in leaks of the GTX 680 for further proof. At first we had been expecting it to be almost 50% faster than the Radeon 7970 through the rumors that kept building it up, now we hear that it will only be around 10% faster and a lot of people were upset by this. Of course, stop looking at it from the subjectivity of the rumors, and you realize that 10% faster than AMD's top card is not bad, especially since they are currently priced the same (Asus's preorder GTX 680s cost a little under $570 and the Radeon 7970s cost about that,s sometimes a little more).

Llano is entry level and anyone who thinks otherwise should look at some benchmarks. The top A8s can't beat a Radeon 6670 even when the 6550D is overclocked by more than 50% and has 1866MHz memory. At stock with 1600MHz memory like most buyers would use them at, well they are about 33% slower than the 6670. See that? A 6670 is about 50% faster than the 6550D most of the time. Llano is great considering it's only integrated graphics, but it pales in comparison to some of the lowest end, modern video cards on the market.

 

[ezzep123]

I'm not sure if it was a Core or Core 2 Duo. It had 2 cores I do believe. It could've been a one-time thing or some special Intel/Gateway naming thing.
Yeah, I'm seeing what you mean. I'm just glad the A8 works as well as it does for me. The market has changed so much in the last 5 years....ram type has changed. It's cool to see the competition, but it's too bad we never get to see this stuff taken advantage of for such a long time. I mean, how long did it take for MS to make a mainstream 64-bit OS for consumers? The 64-bit arch has been out at least since 2005, if not more. I don't pay attention to the mainstream stuff. Takes too much time and makes me want stuff I have no purpose in having.

 

[geekchaser]

Gamers will cross this APU with a 6670.. Which I have happen to do.. On this level, there is no competition.

 

[ezzep123]

There's an article where someone actually did test the a8 +6670, as well as without.

Here's the conclusion of it. http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...l-graphics-performance-review-conclusion.html

 

[blazorthon]

I'm not sure if it was a Core or Core 2 Duo. It had 2 cores I do believe. It could've been a one-time thing or some special Intel/Gateway naming thing.
Yeah, I'm seeing what you mean. I'm just glad the A8 works as well as it does for me. The market has changed so much in the last 5 years....ram type has changed. It's cool to see the competition, but it's too bad we never get to see this stuff taken advantage of for such a long time. I mean, how long did it take for MS to make a mainstream 64-bit OS for consumers? The 64-bit arch has been out at least since 2005, if not more. I don't pay attention to the mainstream stuff. Takes too much time and makes me want stuff I have no purpose in having.

The AMD Athlon 64/FX families were the first consumer CPUs to feature 64 bit extensions of the x86 instruction set architecture back in 2003. Intel had 64 bit Itanium CPUs (EPIC, not x86) even earlier in 2001, but it was not (and still isn't) x86 compatible like AMD's solution, so most software already written for most computers is compatible with the AMD solution, but not with the Intel solution. AMD's 64 bit solution caught on much better because of it's compatibility with 32 bit x86, so Intel later copied it in the 64 bit versions of the Pentium 4s in 2004. Windows 7 was the first x64 Windows OS to be widely adopted in the consumer markets.

Some Opterons had 64 bit extensions before the Athlon 64/FX families and some Xeons had it before the P4s did.

Sadly, the 64 bit OSs took so long to catch on because of both poor driver support and many CPUs (even ones made after the release of Athlon 64 and EM64T capable P4s) were only 32 bit CPUs. The first 64 bit consumer Windows OS was XP Pro x64 back in 2005, but with many CPUs being only 32 bit and a lot of driver problems in addition to a wide range of software incompatibility (thankfully, much malware was also incompatible too), it didn't become an exceptionally common OS. Vista x64 was the next one, but it had similar driver problems and software compatibility problems and many CPUs were still 32 bit only. Unfortunately for Vista, it's 32 bit version also often had driver problems and both the 32 and 64 bit versions were junk at the time. They're better now, but Vista is still Vista.

Now we have 7 in a time where most CPUs are 64 bit compatible, most software is compatible with it even if it's only 32 bit software, and driver problems are almost a thing of the past except with certain devices (mostly very old devices such as 10 year old printers or 6 year old wireless adapters, etc)

The A8s aren't bad and I didn't say they're bad. Their biggest problems are that they are too costly in comparison with other options that offer similar or greater performance to them and their high power usage. Their advantage is simply having no video card necessary to play games at low resolutions and/or picture quality settings and little to no AA and being able to supplement low end video cards (up to the 6450, 6570, or 6670) for somewhat better performance. People often expect them to be these extremely fast processors and they simply aren't high end processors despite these ridiculous expectations. Then people realize that they didn't actually get high end products for a steal of a price and they complain.

There are also some problems with some Llano motherboards (mostly caused by overclocking), but those buyers really should read the reviews so they know what they are getting into. If they buy something with few or no reviews, well then they should know they are taking a risk. Most people with a tech related problem are more or less at fault be it directly or indirectly, but they'll complain anyway because either they don't know this or they know this and they're angry about the stupidity of their choice(s). The key to buying from sites such as Newegg.com is figuring out when the reviewers were stupid and then making a decision.

I wouldn't buy a Llano APU right now because they are using an old CPU architecture with an old GPU architecture. Llano uses Husky cores (slightly modified Phenom II cores) and a modified Redwood GPU (Radeon 55xx/56xx) with the Blu-Ray capabilities of the Radeon 6000 GPUs. Basically, AMD took parts of the older Phenom II CPU architecture and the older VLIW5 architecture (Radeon 5xxx and 6xxx, excluding the 69xx cards, 6930, 6950, 6970, and 6990 which use the newer VLIW4) to make a "new" processor. I'm waiting for Trinity before I even consider buying an APU because it is supposed to have Piledriver cores (supposed to be far superior to Bulldozer) and should have GCN graphics (like the 77xx,78xx, and 79xx Radeons), which is shown to be slightly better than VLIW4 and like VLIW4, far better than VLIW5. Llano was okay when it first came out, but it's not so great anymore in comparison with other, more modern setups. The problem with such low end setups is that the low end tech is all (excluding the Sandy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums) old.

If Trinity doesn't have as large memory bottleneck problems as Llano does (AMD could improve the memory controller efficiency since it is sorely lacking here, it is more than 25% behind the current Intel controllers. AMD could also increase channel count and this would help the GPU a lot more than the CPU since CPUs have been shown to not use wide memory interfaces too well, but GPUs can use them as wide as we make them), then it won't have much trouble scaling in performance far above Llano. This very article shows us first and how memory bottlenecked Llano is. A 50-60% overclock on the GPU cores usually provides a nearly linear performance increase on video cards that have the memory bandwidth to accommodate the increase GPU performance, yet it barely gave a 20-30% performance increase on the A8-3870K system here.

Gamers will cross this APU with a 6670.. Which I have happen to do.. On this level, there is no competition.

Actually, there is, they're called the Radeon 6750, 6770, and 7750. It's worth saying that although they are all faster, they are also all a lot cheaper than getting the 6670 to go with the A8s. In fact, the 6750 is only $15-20 above the 6670 in price, so spending $210 on an A8-3870K and 6670 versus $80 on an Athlon II x4 and another $90 on a 6750 ($170) to get roughly similar/slightly better performance seems like a much better deal to me. The 6770 and7750 cards are only a little more, usually about $110 each, so the Athlon II x4 and video card total $190 now, but now they go well past the A8+6670 in performance. In fact, there is even enough headroom in the budget to get a Phenom II x3/x4 or FX-4100 to be paired with the 5770, 6770, or 7750.

The 6670 is simply an upgrade path for A8s in the future. It has even less performance for the money than the A8 does, despite it performing better (about 125%-150% better than stock A8). None of these are even high end setups, just mid-range. Nvidia also has the GTX 550 TI that competes in this performance range, but it's price is a little too high even after the price cuts on the GTX 5xx series cards.