While AMD’s Fusion APUs are out in the form of low power Bobcat cores in netbooks, ITX and mATX form factors, Llano will be their APU to serve notebooks and desktops. The latest information reveals why the graphics solution presented makes for a far better balanced system and makes it much more suited for the mainstream market compared to Intel’s latest offerings
While AMD’s Fusion APUs are out in the form of low power Bobcat cores in netbooks, ITX and mATX form factors, Llano will be their APU to serve notebooks and desktops. The latest information reveals why the graphics solution presented makes for a far better balanced system and makes it much more suited for the mainstream market compared to Intel’s latest offerings
The A8-3550 and A8-3550p will have 400sp at 594MHz and claims to be the most advanced integrated graphics solution to date making up what is now known to be the DX11 capable Radeon HD6550. What’s more it seems that there may be a possibility to use Hybrid CrossfireX with 6570-6670 discrete cards to deliver ‘6690’ performance. This roughly means performance upto the same levels of a NVIDIA GTS 450 or even an AMD 5770.
A diagram displaying the allocation of die resources
The IGP on Llano is said to be a more intrinsic feature of the APU rather than an IGP stuck on the side ala Intel solution which will mean that it will be able to assist the x86 cores in serial processing loads as well gpu compute. The information also states that, while the GPU uses the main system memory, AMD may be considering dedicated sideport memory options too.
AMD have displayed the multitasking prowess of Llano vs Sandy Bridge previously to highlight how a balanced system may be better for the end user.
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